How Hong Kong caught fire: the story of a radical uprising
On 4 June 2020, as darkness enveloped Hong Kong, thousands of people broke through barricades and slipped into the tree-lined Victoria Park in the heart of the city. Shielding their candles from the wind, and carefully sitting 1 metre apart, they filled the length of the open space. The annual Tiananmen Square vigil had been banned, with police citing coronavirus concerns. But Hong Kong was determined to mark the anniversary as it always has. For three decades, the city has been the only place within China where the massacre can be publicly remembered. The commemoration is by far the world’s largest, but also its most vulnerable. Its tiny flames speak to the endurance of hope and memory, and to their looming extinction.
When the People’s Liberation Army massacred hundreds of demonstrators in Beijing on 4 June 1989, the response in Hong Kong was overwhelming. One million or more residents marched in mourning. People from across society – clergymen, activists, Cantopop stars, businesspeople, foreign diplomats, even triad gangs – worked together to smuggle “most wanted” student leaders off the mainland and to safety.
It wasn’t just horror and sympathy that Hong Kongers were feeling in 1989; it was foreboding. The British colony was due to be handed back to China eight years later, and in the days before the killings, as rumours of an impending crackdown spread, local activists had held signs warning “Today China, tomorrow Hong Kong”.
By that point, the Chinese and the British had already made the handover agreement that would come into effect in 1997. Hong Kong would be allowed to maintain its autonomy and way of life for 50 years, until 2047, under the formulation known as “one country, two systems”. It was a fudge, probably the best outcome achievable under the circumstances – a binding international treaty, but one that everyone knew was essentially unenforceable should China break its pledge.
About 500,000 people left between the signing of the deal in 1984 and 1997. Prince Charles, who attended the handover ceremony, wrote after his departure: “Thus we left Hong Kong to her fate and the hope that Martin Lee, the leader of the Democrats, would not be arrested.”
Yet at the time of the handover, the fear in Hong Kong was matched by a certain excitement. One supporter of the current protests, Li, who is 71 and came to Hong Kong as a teenager from Guangdong, popped two bottles of champagne to celebrate: “One to say farewell to Britain, and one to welcome the People’s Liberation Army to Hong Kong,” he remembered. As a child, Li had witnessed the mass famine caused by the Great Leap Forward and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, but now he felt hopeful. “We expected tomorrow to be better. We’re Chinese people, not just Hong Kongers,” he said.
As the handover passed and life in Hong Kong appeared to be continuing pretty much as promised, sympathy for the mainland grew. China’s years of double-digit growth brought economic rewards to the region and optimists hoped that its ongoing economic liberalisation would, over time, bring political change, too: the mainland might become more like Hong Kong. In 1997, one in five Hong Kongers identified as Chinese; 10 years later, one in three saw themselves that way.
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The Tiananmen vigil has always been a barometer of anti-Beijing sentiment; the first, in 1990, attracted
