Joshua Wong — hero of Hong Kong’s freedom movement

Joshua Wong is the baby-faced leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy cause. Born in 1996, he has been named by TIME, Fortune and Forbes as one of the world’s most influential leaders of today. In Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now, he sets out the rationale and sentiment of the movement. His life and struggles as the standard bearer of Hong Kong’s younger generation, reveal the soul of the territory’s fight for greater freedom as it chafes under the tightening control of Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2018, Wong was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution. He came on to the political scene in 2011 aged 14, when he founded the activist group Scholarism and successfully protested against the enforcement of a Chinese National Education policy in Hong Kong.

Now, together with the Hong Kong-based author, news columnist and social activist Jason Ng, and with an introduction by exiled Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, Wong has presented this memoir in three acts. In the first, “Genesis,” he shows how locals began calling themselves “HongKongers” during the 2000s. Then came the “Scholarism” activist movement (which he founded) which opposed Chinese national education. Then came the umbrella movement, and the founding of his party, Demosistō, a pro-democracy party which he founded in 2016, advocating self-determination for Hong Kong.

Every step in this trajectory shaped the mentality not only of today’s young protestors, but also Wong’s own passage from activist to politician. It was a thorny path for a teenager. His devout Christian family background made him sensitive to immoral authority.

If the victory of the anti-national education campaign made Wong a rising political star, the umbrella movement catapulted him into the global media spotlight. But the partial failure of that movement also made him a political prisoner. “Far from silencing us, however, jail would only strengthen us in resolve,” Wong says. Perversely, or perhaps predictably, attempts to suppress him simply turned him into a legend.

In the second act of this book, “Incarceration,” he presents a diary and letters recording 68 days of imprisonment in Hong Kong’s Pik Uk prison. While inside he tried to fight for prisoners’ rights in that harsh and opaque environment. At the same time, he seized every opportunity to stay tuned into society outside the walls. In doing so, he learned skills to equip him for further challenges, which included a further two months in prison in 2019 as well as the travel bans and election bans that are now imposed upon him.

“If I am not allowed to play the district tournament, then I will play in a world cup,” Wong said when the Hong Kong government barred him from running in last year’s local elections, even at the relatively non-political district level. When the courts slapped a travel ban on him, he found himself trapped. Yet, he is too globally recognised now to be contained; thoughts and ideas can easily be spread around the world.

His third act, “The Threat to Global Democracy,” is a series of selected speeches and articles with insights and political analysis of the global democratisation movement and Hong Kong’s strategic position in international relations. Serving as an opinion leader standing on moral high ground is now his best fit while he is deprived of access to political power to make real changes in Hong Kong.

Although less ambitious than the first revolutionary figure in Asian history, China’s Sun Yat Sen, who published political thoughts and blueprints for China’s first republic at the start of the 20th century, Wong also sets out some notes and ideas on the future of his city.

Although he is undeniably the most globally recognised face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, Hong Kong people probably think not so much of Joshua Wong but of Edward Leung, a politician, activist and former spokesman of Hong Kong Indigenous, a vocal localist group. Leung was arrested during civil unrest in Hong Kong’s Mongkok district in 2016.

While Wong and his book may be a soft showcase to the West, they do not encapsulate everything that is now happening in Hong Kong. In mentioning the latest round of protests against an extradition law, he correctly positions himself as a supporter, no longer as a leader. The fruitless result and stalemate of the umbrella movement left people fatigued, until they gradually came up with a new style of protest. In a shift from the leader-centred, well-organised, peaceful, open but civil, disobedient tactics, led by Wong in 2014, the new protest movement of 2019 was formless, leaderless, insurgent, anonymous, and sometimes adopted violent tactics that, quite remarkably, won the approval and tolerance of the majority of the public.

“It was you who taught me that peaceful marches are useless,” said some of the graffiti on street walls and barricades. The dissolution of the Hong Kong Federation of Students showed how not only the Hong Kong government but also the leaders of earlier protest groups were being held to account for the failure of the umbrella movement to win change.

So-called localist groups demanding a distinct identity that would distinguish Hong Kong from mainland China are now blossoming everywhere. Edward Leung, the first political prisoner convicted of “rioting” since the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China, now echoes the hard-core protestors. “Restore Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” he is quoted as saying, a frequent chant during the most recent round of protests. Although the protest movement appears to be leaderless, Leung, now serving a six-year prison term, is still a figure whose story inspires and encourages protesters.

A key challenge for Wong is how to handle the delicate balance between reform and more revolutionary tendencies. While many protesters are losing hope that the system can eradicate the cause of its own problems, Wong and his party are still searching for a path to power within the system. Recently, his Demosistō party adopted a resolution to abandon its advocacy of “democratic self-determination” (code for independence from China) in order not to cross the red line drawn by the Hong Kong authorities.

This may upset some protesters who think Wong should live up to his principles and address “the elephant in the room” (code for Chinese Communist Party control and Beijing’s sovereignty). The recent landslide victory of pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong’s district council elections, though, may give some reassurance to the public that votes, in such an unfair and unbalanced political system, do matter, and they can be the levers for change.

Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now by Joshua Wong and Jason Y. Ng. Published by Penguin. £9.99.