This is a story told by a Springtime of Nations Associate Lap Gong Leong, a citizen of Hong Kong.

Before Hong Kong’s 2020 Legislative Council Election was delayed twice, the sixth election since the handover was to be held on September 6th of that year. Concerned over the pro-democratic camp’s complacency after winning a stunning victory in last year’s District Council elections, I tried to find any way to volunteer for the upcoming campaign. Understandably, the major and minor parties were unable or unwilling to hire individuals who could not speak Cantonese. I eventually found a small pressure group headed by Gordon Ng Ching Hang who went by the alias Lee Bak Lou. Together, I started to volunteer whatever spare time I had for his campaign. I first met him in person wearing a navy coat and a tie, trying to impress him. Needless to say, he found it unusual. As spring and summer went on, the campaign began to intensify. While every-day people we met were just plain uninterested, a gradual trickle of voters would begin to take our leaflets and ask us as to how a pan-democratic primary would operate. Perhaps what solidified our petition and furnaced the iron will to vote in such a primary was the National Security Law that was enacted the day before July 1st., the 23rd anniversary of the handover [of 1997 from the UK to China]. In what should’ve been a normal and exciting day to raise money for pro democratic causes and create pressure on the parties, the police had harassed any pro-democracy campaigners that were perceived to be ill behaved or illicit. I still remember a policeman shooting blanks at an overhead pedestrian crossing simply because he was slighted at the swearing and jeering, he received from crossers by. As I struggled to navigate myself from chaos to the safety of my brother’s nearby apartment, my brain was only wracked by fear of repercussions of being a pro-democracy lay activist and the hope that a people’s vote could assert a people’s voice. I had not stayed in Hong Kong for this long and yet the environment felt so alien, despite such deep familiarity. The night before, a Democratic Primary activist from Ted Hui’s office contacted me. They wanted all hands-on deck to set up the primary polling booth in his constituency office and smooth operation of the voting process. Needless to say, I was ecstatic, they didn’t seem to be concerned that I couldn’t speak Cantonese. Unfortunately, the day was racked by several technical and logistical issues. Firstly, a sign broke down, and volunteers spent what seemed like hours trying to fix it. Then, technical programs with the voting software delayed the primary until 11 am, forcing us to turn away early voters. With a critical target to hit and millions spent, it seemed that a grand incompetency (as always) was bedeviling the pro democrats. For my moaning, I was sent to a smaller polling station near Lan Kwai Fong, where I could be sure to make less trouble. After repeating my story of my complicated upbringing and inability to speak Cantonese, the voters started to trickle in. Then, the trickle turned into a flood. The small office was inundated. Voters and poll workers did their best to socially distance and prevent infections, but people kept huddling up in order to vote. Later, an older pro-democracy activist took me to the Causeway Bay polling station, conveniently near my brother’s home. The spectacle of trying to help gaggles of first time and longtime supporters use a voting app will never leave me. For the first time ever, my fellow permanent residents were exercising their right to choose their favorite politicians to represent them. For the first time in decades, the pro-democrats were united and centered. For the first time, a superpower couldn’t stop a plea to representation and organization. Unfortunately, this pride was not to last. 604,660 voters cast a valid ballot in a city-wide primary that had seen diners, offices, neighborhood stores, and an old double decker bus made into makeshift polling stations. The admittedly amateurish effort, bedeviled by logistical issues that only come from crowdfunded operations, had still attracted more than 14% of the total electorate, beyond any organizer’s dream. Yet the Chinese Government and its Hong Kong representatives would effectively render such voting useless by christening it an illegal straw poll. They first threatened that such a poll could run afoul of the national security law and soon disqualified the entire pro democratic slate. Then, in January 2021, they arrested all 47 participants and 6 organizers. Their crime was to win a parliamentary majority and veto the budget, which counted as overthrowing the government. Had we chosen our candidates behind closed doors, we wouldn’t have broken any national security laws and likely cruised to an election victory. Had the Pro-Democrats been less democratic, my friends would be bargaining and negotiating with China rather than being behind bars. In many ways, Hong Kong’s crisis was my breaking and unmaking. While I had always been passionate about global affairs, especially about the national question in Britain and Canada, Hong Kong’s conflict wasn’t a polite debate between nationalists demanding respect and sovereignty and federalists defending an act of union. While I prefer unity over division, Hong Kong’s governance crisis was different. It did not possess that many cloying, self-deferential civic nationalist leaders that espoused our great universities or accentuated the city’s free market dynamism. Pro Chinese politicians, until recently, were not obsessed with deifying Chinese communism or angry about the lack of patriotism in a general public they disliked. Upon reflection, the Hong Kong protests were the final split of what was once a single nation. The people who wanted the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law to possess genuine authenticity were finally muzzled and snapped by those who felt “bourgeois democracy” was a destructive and venal distraction from economic, social, and patriotic development.

After a long, violent, and divisive argument in our nation regarding the constitutionality of China’s questionable reforms, the Beijing Government has now rendered our voices irrelevant and our aspirations intolerable. As we all know, they have enacted National Security Legislation to police our thoughts. They have inculcated patriotic education to regulate our horizons. They have arrested 47 men and women for simply having the temerity to gain a Legislative Council majority. Our sovereigns in Beijing have even criminalized off key singing of the national anthem and insufficient reverence to the Chinese flag. Some of us have taken to comfort, imagining our newly rediscovered sprit being dispersed abroad so that it can be nurtured and loved, in hopes that she can return to claim her rightful place when Hong Kong is given more leniency by the regime. However, this is a flawed belief. A diaspora must have strong roots and if Hong Kong were to fundamentally change as our rulers want, any preservation of core values is merely a Pyrrhic victory. Therefore, the task at hand for all of Hong Kong’s people, at home and abroad, is to continue our fight against the insidious machine-men who have put us in a great chain. We must never lose hope that Hong Kong is not yet lost. Too many people observant intellectuals, especially the most well intentioned of internationalists, have slipped into our opponent’s trap of unconsciously weaving their narrative for them. They believe that the “old Hong Kong” (whatever that is) is now rendered to history because of the present situation. They marvel at communism’s gob smacking efficiency and revel at future plans to comprehensively reshape our nation in its own image. They fear and loathe the West’s inaction, and only see the unrecognizable kingdom to come in sorrow and amazement. While I have no idea what the future holds, especially in regard to Hong Kong’s culture and self-perception, I do know that the land has never changed, much less transmogrified, on the basis of one man’s wishes. No one in Hong Kong’s history, even the most powerful of rulers, has changed our nation’s character without consent. And if there’s one predictable rule in Hong Kong’s long life, it is that the Lion Rock’s spawn have always demanded (if not always had) their say. We are a city marooned from the free world, set up against a ruler that seeks to change us without engagement with our voices. We are increasingly a country that is governed on the behalf and at the behest of another country. Our opinions and sentiments will never matter because the understandably large whims and great needs of 1.4 Billion Chinese. To the supposedly utilitarian Chinese government, they are simply fulfilling the supposed will of the Chinese people in Hong Kong. This has led to anger and frustration among the best of us. Many an intelligent youth have now embraced constitutional separation as the only way to realize a modicum of self-respect and the restoration of genuine self-governance. Even if you disagree profusely, nobody can deny that separatism is now a force within Hong Kong. Nobody can deny that a great many people, even if only a small percentage of public opinion, are fed up with the Chinese government’s insistence over how Hong Kong people should identify and express themselves in a complicated world. You don’t have to support pro-independence to understand this emotional ailment. At the same time, many engaged citizens (myself included) have become prone to feeding a dangerous and slimy under-belly of hate. I myself have uttered many incendiary and uncivilized remarks against Chinese people who live in contribute to Hong Kong and her rich and vast seams. This is inexcusable and irrational. Chinese people have every right to support the communist party and its actions, as we have every right to oppose them with full fervor. However, nobody should feel penalized, or dehumanized simply because of their roots. We must remember that we will only win through sound logic and the full force of free inquiry. I don’t know what the path to freedom and liberty for Hong Kong will entail, I do know that devolving ourselves into apathy and anger will only make us into the very boogiemen that Beijing has spent decades trying to construct. Let us be truthful to our own principles and let’s change the world one again.