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Today: Brian Hioe, Taipei-based editor, translator, activist, DJ, co-founder of New Bloom, and author of Taipei at Daybreak. Issue No. 382The Reckless Hopes of Hong Kong Teens
Brian Hioe HYDRANYM No. 12: Vote! The Reckless Hopes of Hong Kong TeensLast month, news broke of the arrest of four members of a Hong Kong political party, the Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union. The youngest arrested was 15 years old. This type of arrest is increasingly commonplace in Hong Kong, but something jumped out at me about this one. Reports claimed that those arrested were accused of tearing up the Chinese national flag at an alleged flag-raising ceremony in Taiwan, where they had also sung the 2019 protest anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong.” A while later it clicked for me; news outlets, including Chinese state-run media, were reporting on this flag-raising ceremony as an event that may have taken place in Taiwan. There were no pictures of the flag-raising ceremony anywhere, in any outlet. And yet I had seen the ceremony with my own eyes the week prior; I had just forgotten about it over the course of a week of overwork and getting over a cold. I’d seen a notice about the protest on Facebook, in a post that appeared to me to be AI-generated, announcing a flag-raising ceremony as a counter-protest against Chinese National Day. The event wasn’t being shared much online, but since it was in my neighborhood I decided to go check it out anyway. A week later, it appeared that some of these protesters might have been arrested in Hong Kong. Had they traveled over just for the protest, then gone back home? The group seemed to have some history of doing that. I’m not sure there’s been any other case to date of a Hong Kong group targeted for taking part in protests in Taiwan under the draconian national security law imposed in 2020. Yet news of this event seemed to have flown under the radar. In the spring of 2018 a man from Hong Kong, Chan Tong-Kai, killed his girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing, in Taiwan. The murder attracted little attention at first; it seemed a strange cross-strait crime of passion, and little beyond that. But in 2019 the Hong Kong government used the case as a pretext to attempt to pass new laws allowing Hongkongers to be extradited to face charges. Hongkongers feared that these laws, if passed, would be used to target political opponents. The extradition bill sparked the largest wave of protests, by proportion, in modern history, with two million of Hong Kong’s population of seven million taking to the streets at their peak. Though I’d written an article on the killing of Poon, I never imagined that this single event would fundamentally reshape the history of Hong Kong. Looking back, though, it’s clear that Hong Kong was a powder keg, and had it not been this crime, some other trigger would have ignited the explosion of the 2019 protests. It strikes me that the story of the Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union could have similarly outsized reverberations. I had thought the arrests might impact the recall elections set for later this month, but the story quickly receded into the maelstrom of events. The unpredictability of the news cycle again reminded me of how we’re all just caught in the gears of history. The story disappeared so quickly, perhaps, because the group seemed to have no local ties in Taiwan. I noticed at the protest that there were no Taiwan-based Hong Kong groups in attendance, nor any of the usual Taiwanese civil society groups supportive of Hongkongers. Also the protest was conducted in Cantonese, and everybody seemed very young. They looked like high schoolers or college students, mostly. I decided after a while that maybe it was an event meant primarily for Hongkongers in Taiwan. After reading news of the arrests, it all clicks: the group seems mostly to have been young and careless, carrying out communications on unencrypted platforms or on public channels. Since the arrests, a number of party members have announced their withdrawal from the group, blaming the party’s chair for a lack of security measures. It’s strange that members of this putative political party, aspiring to free political prisoners in Hong Kong and push for Hong Kong independence, failed to realize that they were risking serious consequences for their actions. Some in the Hong Kong diaspora have been less than sympathetic to the plight of those arrested, likewise blaming the party chair for irresponsible and reckless behavior. But then it also seems clear that some of them at least were just idiot kids, for whom it all might well have seemed like a game—until it wasn’t. Again, the youngest of them was 15, that is, nine years old at the time of the 2019 protests, with no direct memory of a time in which protests led to dire consequences, even as arrests and crackdowns continue to take place in Hong Kong. A long time ago I met a young Chinese activist who didn’t realize that criticizing the government as openly as they had while studying abroad could result in permanent exile from China. I was shocked later on by their lack of awareness of security. Even when suspicious characters had taken to hanging around, it never occurred to them that someone could be a spy. There’s something to admire about young people who want to take a stand, even if they haven’t thought it through all the way. I’m not sure they’re entirely to blame when the crushing weight of the world comes down on them. Both the youth and the maturity of the protestors I met in Hong Kong in 2019 have stayed with me. Having traveled around the region in the years since, I’ve met many other teenagers from other youth movements. It’s always striking speaking to someone literally half your age who has experienced and done so much more than you have in your three decades. Young people are often more daring, and more reckless, than their older counterparts, who have become more set in their ways. Some of them will experience a crash course in growing up, but in the end can anyone blame the young for being young? There’s a time to be young and stupid for all of us, but the world does not always allow for it. Sometimes that still haunts me. It’s only a few—the Joshua Wongs of the world—who are put on a pedestal on the world stage. Wong himself today faces the possibility of life in prison. But for every person like that, there are thousands more whom you will never hear about. SERPENTS SHINEHYDRANYM No. 12: Vote!by The EditorsYour responsibilities are grave, for the results will echo down the corridors of time. Crown the victor of this week’s game, whose winning entry will be posted on the ANNALS of HYDRANYM page. THE RULESPlayers create an ENTERTAINING and APT acronym from the letters provided, using only (and all) the initial letters—and in the order shown. If there is a theme specified, your HYDRANYM should refer to it in some way. For example if the theme were ATMOSPHERE and the letters given A T K I Aa possible submission would be: Asthma trouble? Keep inhalers around Come back on Monday to witness HYDRANYM history.
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