Good story. Hong Kong's demise is a heartbreaking outcome. There was a time when I would respond, "Hong Kong!" without hesitation when asked what my favorite city was. I last traveled there in the '90s; I think going back now would feel like visiting a grave.
Great one Noah. My wife and I with our two kids have decided to leave our city last month and moved to London. It was devastating to see how Hong Kong, our home, has changed. No one would ever want to leave their home but people did throughout history. Years later when we look back, it would be a lot more clearer than it is now.
My tear-gassed in Hong Kong story took place in 1967. The protesters were all carrying Mao's little red book. I got too close to the action and tasted the same acrid fumes that Noah describes here.
This was followed by a long harangue on a bus close to the Chinese border. I was the only Westerner on the bus, when an elderly Chinese man singled me out for an angry, finger pointing lecture on, as best as I could understand, the evils of imperialism.
Politics aside, my most enduring memory of Hong Kong during my visit (I was a 22-year-old, hitchhiking around the world) is one that can never be reprised. I took a ferry to Lan Tau island, walked footpaths to one of its summits, passed old women carrying buckets hung from yokes across their shoulders, stayed at a Trappist monastery for the night, and hiked to a shimmering sandy beach to catch a boat back to the mainland the next morning.
The beach I hiked to is now a resort (Discovery Bay) not far from Hong Kong Disneyland.
The ending to this article is my favorite. Rather like the analogy that ideas spread like a virus, via culture. Oppression doesn’t work long-term, and even genocide still leaves witnesses, who remember how it was. Memory is very hard to kill, and transmutes society.
Hong Kong was a real estate oligarchy long before the PRC took over. That's why Dan Wang calls it the least dynamic place in Greater China.
When I lived there in the nineties I didn't really understand how public finances worked, but I gather the city got most of its revenues from selling land development rights, not from taxation. (So the Heritage Foundation's claim that HK is a low-tax paradise is mostly phony. Instead of taxes, people pay ridiculous rents.)
Sorry if this is a distraction from Noah's theme, but someone really needs to analyze the city's economy from a YIMBY perspective.
I visited HK during the protests a few years prior (in addition to many other times) and was struck by the civility of it all. Even though the financial district was occupied for weeks, the protesters and police still treated each other respectfully, streets were cleaned daily and there was no violence. You could walk through the protest site as if it were a jovial urban camping ground.
I fell in love with the HK spirit back then, the optimism against the odds.. and it broke my heart to see it being crushed just a few years later..
I was lucky to see a bit of the real Hong Kong, maybe 15 years ago now. This is so well written, if so sad. I hope for a better outcome in Ukraine . . .
Great piece. I love the HK people and culture. Some of it has seeped into Guangdong over the years (given language and cultural affinity and frequent travel) and even young professionals and cadres from Shanghai and Beijing living in HK (or who were frequent visitors pre-Covid) recognize how special HK is.
Xi recognized it, too. After the lab leak he realized he couldn’t risk having HK, with free speech and a free press, being part of China in its “basic agreement” form. He probably worried there would be western repercussions and needed to circle the wagons and assert control over HK as well as Chinese citizens generally through Covid policies. It seems Xi had little to worry about, not realizing how completely western corporations and government bureaucracies had been bought off by the Chinese.
Beijing’s new idea seems to be to turn HK into a honeypot for Western interests - happy for the mainland to have primacy and for mainland cities to be promoted over HK, whilst using HK to keep a toehold into Western financial markets.
Wow, what an adventure! Thanks for writing about a place I will probably never visit and in such a personal way. I could picture you and BB eluding the police behind your new-found friend.
I was intrigued by your comment "...global Islam can’t even be bothered to stand up for the Uighurs". What could or should the two billion or so Muslims do for the Uighurs?
Unfortunately the protests became increasingly violent as time went on, playing into the hands of the PRC, helping China to legitimise the crackdowns and paving the way for the institutional anti-democratic changes that ultimately suppressed them.
Young HK's were not well served by the western press that tended to uncritically lionise the protesters, rather than stepping back and assessing where things were likely to lead.
It would be unsurprising if some of the most violent protesters were not Chinese security agent provocateurs: that is how things tend to fan out in these sort of situations.
None of the above is to deny police brutality and Chinese oppression.
We do, however, to be beware of our own double standards and hypocrisies: Chicago 1968; Bloody Sunday 1972, before getting too culturally self righteous.
At the the end of the day, the Chinese state combined tactics and strategy; the protesters largely behaved as students with an outcome that was quite predictable at the time.
That is the real lesson that should be borne in mind in the future, even though it requires reason to be elevated over emotion.
If it was a peaceful protest, I'll agree with you Noah but it's not. It's a riot and an organized crime. Attacked of police stations, destroyed government buildings, burning subway stations, burning the University campuses, blocked numerous streets and beat up other residents. How can you support that kind of rude and destructive activities? Many Hong Kong residents couldn't even go to hospitals because the rioters blocked all the major streets and subways. If you don't support the DC capital riot, why are you supporting the Hong Kong riot? I don't get it. Hong Kong was a very peaceful city with ultra low crime rate. The anti-government riot totally destroyed that.
Good story. Hong Kong's demise is a heartbreaking outcome. There was a time when I would respond, "Hong Kong!" without hesitation when asked what my favorite city was. I last traveled there in the '90s; I think going back now would feel like visiting a grave.
Great one Noah. My wife and I with our two kids have decided to leave our city last month and moved to London. It was devastating to see how Hong Kong, our home, has changed. No one would ever want to leave their home but people did throughout history. Years later when we look back, it would be a lot more clearer than it is now.
Intense and kept my attention right till the end. Well-written!
My tear-gassed in Hong Kong story took place in 1967. The protesters were all carrying Mao's little red book. I got too close to the action and tasted the same acrid fumes that Noah describes here.
This was followed by a long harangue on a bus close to the Chinese border. I was the only Westerner on the bus, when an elderly Chinese man singled me out for an angry, finger pointing lecture on, as best as I could understand, the evils of imperialism.
Politics aside, my most enduring memory of Hong Kong during my visit (I was a 22-year-old, hitchhiking around the world) is one that can never be reprised. I took a ferry to Lan Tau island, walked footpaths to one of its summits, passed old women carrying buckets hung from yokes across their shoulders, stayed at a Trappist monastery for the night, and hiked to a shimmering sandy beach to catch a boat back to the mainland the next morning.
The beach I hiked to is now a resort (Discovery Bay) not far from Hong Kong Disneyland.
The ending to this article is my favorite. Rather like the analogy that ideas spread like a virus, via culture. Oppression doesn’t work long-term, and even genocide still leaves witnesses, who remember how it was. Memory is very hard to kill, and transmutes society.
Hong Kong was a real estate oligarchy long before the PRC took over. That's why Dan Wang calls it the least dynamic place in Greater China.
When I lived there in the nineties I didn't really understand how public finances worked, but I gather the city got most of its revenues from selling land development rights, not from taxation. (So the Heritage Foundation's claim that HK is a low-tax paradise is mostly phony. Instead of taxes, people pay ridiculous rents.)
Sorry if this is a distraction from Noah's theme, but someone really needs to analyze the city's economy from a YIMBY perspective.
I visited HK during the protests a few years prior (in addition to many other times) and was struck by the civility of it all. Even though the financial district was occupied for weeks, the protesters and police still treated each other respectfully, streets were cleaned daily and there was no violence. You could walk through the protest site as if it were a jovial urban camping ground.
I fell in love with the HK spirit back then, the optimism against the odds.. and it broke my heart to see it being crushed just a few years later..
Gripping!
Thank you for bumping it.
My god. Has it been THREE YEARS already? I swear that I remember when the original post came through as if it were from last year.
I was lucky to see a bit of the real Hong Kong, maybe 15 years ago now. This is so well written, if so sad. I hope for a better outcome in Ukraine . . .
Great piece. I love the HK people and culture. Some of it has seeped into Guangdong over the years (given language and cultural affinity and frequent travel) and even young professionals and cadres from Shanghai and Beijing living in HK (or who were frequent visitors pre-Covid) recognize how special HK is.
Xi recognized it, too. After the lab leak he realized he couldn’t risk having HK, with free speech and a free press, being part of China in its “basic agreement” form. He probably worried there would be western repercussions and needed to circle the wagons and assert control over HK as well as Chinese citizens generally through Covid policies. It seems Xi had little to worry about, not realizing how completely western corporations and government bureaucracies had been bought off by the Chinese.
Beijing’s new idea seems to be to turn HK into a honeypot for Western interests - happy for the mainland to have primacy and for mainland cities to be promoted over HK, whilst using HK to keep a toehold into Western financial markets.
i also was radicalized by the Hong Kong protests. 加油！
Wow, what an adventure! Thanks for writing about a place I will probably never visit and in such a personal way. I could picture you and BB eluding the police behind your new-found friend.
I was intrigued by your comment "...global Islam can’t even be bothered to stand up for the Uighurs". What could or should the two billion or so Muslims do for the Uighurs?
Unfortunately the protests became increasingly violent as time went on, playing into the hands of the PRC, helping China to legitimise the crackdowns and paving the way for the institutional anti-democratic changes that ultimately suppressed them.
Young HK's were not well served by the western press that tended to uncritically lionise the protesters, rather than stepping back and assessing where things were likely to lead.
It would be unsurprising if some of the most violent protesters were not Chinese security agent provocateurs: that is how things tend to fan out in these sort of situations.
None of the above is to deny police brutality and Chinese oppression.
We do, however, to be beware of our own double standards and hypocrisies: Chicago 1968; Bloody Sunday 1972, before getting too culturally self righteous.
At the the end of the day, the Chinese state combined tactics and strategy; the protesters largely behaved as students with an outcome that was quite predictable at the time.
That is the real lesson that should be borne in mind in the future, even though it requires reason to be elevated over emotion.
If it was a peaceful protest, I'll agree with you Noah but it's not. It's a riot and an organized crime. Attacked of police stations, destroyed government buildings, burning subway stations, burning the University campuses, blocked numerous streets and beat up other residents. How can you support that kind of rude and destructive activities? Many Hong Kong residents couldn't even go to hospitals because the rioters blocked all the major streets and subways. If you don't support the DC capital riot, why are you supporting the Hong Kong riot? I don't get it. Hong Kong was a very peaceful city with ultra low crime rate. The anti-government riot totally destroyed that.