Forum 2000, Praha
Democracy & Education 2015
Topic: Do you hear us? The role of young citizens in today’s societies
10’20- I am Alex Chow, I’m from Hong Kong. The topic is “Do you hear us? The role of young citizens in today’s societies”. There are a couple of questions that have been delivered to us, that would like us to answer, I would try to (answer) them. There is a question: what is the role of young citizens in today’s society.
People may expect to hear some stories from Hong Kong, it seems that the Umbrella Movement would be one memory that comes up your mind when we talk about or discuss Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement happened last year, thousands and millions of people, including teenagers, students, youngsters, people from different generations, they came to streets and made their protests, they occupied the streets for nearly three months and they blocked three main streets in three major commercial areas in Hong Kong. This was a kind of insult to the government and an attempt of struggle for democracy and democratic change in Hong Kong.
In the Umbrella Movement we could take youngsters as catalysts or forerunners, but nothing comes from nothing, so this story, this continuity was also things that laid down by the people who had been fighting for different things in the past few decades.
In Hong Kong, before 1997, Hong Kong was a colony of Britain. In 1997 there was the “return to sovereignty” of Hong Kong from Britain to China. In the 19th century, half of Hong Kong was borrowed to UK up to 1997. In WWII, Hong Kong was occupied by Japan, after WWII, UK took back Hong Kong, by the time, the Communist Party did not intend to take back Hong Kong, their intention of doing that was to utilize Hong Kong as much as possible, that was their tactic.
Starting from 60s, youngsters in Hong Kong started to initiate and engage in different social movements. 70s and 80s were one of the peaks of social movements in Hong Kong, the Communist Party also had a hand in Hong Kong and Taiwan government also played a role in Hong Kong, so there was quite a lot of dynamics happening in Hong Kong.
Starting from 70s, the UK government and the China government noticed that 1997 was coming, so they had to negotiate the future of Hong Kong, what system would be operating in Hong Kong, was it that the communist system operating in China would be copied to Hong Kong, or would Hong Kong adopt a capitalist system? What would that be? They started negotiation in late 70s, there was a lot of dynamics again, UK would like to turn Hong Kong into a more advanced city so that they had more bargaining chips with Beijing, Beijing would like to put their political agenda in Hong Kong.
In 80s they signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration. After 1997, although Hong Kong was so-called returned to China, Hong Kong would be practicing “One Country, Two Systems”; Hong Kong would adopt a system slightly different from China. This is how the story started and continued to what we faced in the Umbrella Movement.
Starting from 80s, youngsters would like to pursue the dream of democracy. Democracy in a narrow sense was democratic change in the political system, so we had the vote to elect or vote for our mayor, the equivalent term in Hong Kong was chief executive. We would like to vote for our chief executive and also for the parliament, termed legislative council in Hong Kong. So we would like to have a fair, equal, and open election in Hong Kong.
This dream has been pursued for three decades, this is what youngsters have been doing in Hong Kong. Up till now, students in Hong Kong are still pursuing this dream, but there was also limitation on participation of youngsters.
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22’17- Q: Do you feel heard?
A: This is a very complicated question. It always involves a dynamics, if you only speak by yourself, usually your words would not be heard, because you are being systematically oppressed, your voice will become soft and transparent; even you speak, your voice will not be heard. You need connection with one another so that your voice can be heard in a concrete way.
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43’52- Q: You seek for support and help and pressure from other similar student organizations outside Hong Kong.
A: Yes I do, connection is important. I agree that democracy is not something natural, it’s something we have to protect. This is also a problem of Hong Kong, this explains why I have to tell the story about Hong Kong from 80s to now.
From 80s to now, the democracy people have been pursuing was liberal democracy, but it also has problems in party politics and also the social movements. Liberal democracy stresses a lot on representative, so representatives have to take up important roles in mobilizing party politics, even social movements.
Then it comes a problem. People in Hong Kong can be highly mobilized in social movements, but they have little connection in Hong Kong. Even though Internet is widely spread nowadays and we can use Internet as a tactic to mobilize people to go to streets, the point is still people do not have a healthy and strong conversation and dialogue through Internet, this is what still happening in Hong Kong. Rather, Internet is like a battlefield, a lot of false news are spread through Internet, there are many messy things happening on Internet, so it’s kind of two ways. On the one way, the political culture in the city is kind of too representative, too (much about) elitism; then on the Internet it’s kind of representation of the political culture but not to counter this phenomenon.
But of course Internet can be used as a tool to try as hard as you can, but this still comes with a problem. Liberal democracy is not simply the solution for the world or for the people to rebuild the connection with one another, so how we could fix democracy, or what kind of democracy will be healthier for community, so that we could have healthy society, healthy community that we can really initiate connection and dialogue.
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47’52- Q: Why in Mainland China, there are not similar upheavals in Hong Kong?
A: It’s like the room we have in Hong Kong is much larger than that in China, so people in China, no matter students, activists, or scholars in universities, they would face more severe oppression from the government. So the control and different sorts of oppressive tools in China are more common. People in China are quite hard to resist. Even for labor unions, it is hard for them to connect one another. If there are significant people or figures that could be recognized in your movement, then you could be oppressed in a very severe way, so it’s different from Hong Kong. The circumstances, the room you have are different, and it also … different kinds of social movements in Hong Kong and China.
Q: Do you get any reaction in the Mainland?
A: We do have some alliance from Mainland China, but they would not come to be very strong voice, because it is more scattered in different places in China. The control of press and information in China is still relatively strong. Although people could try to use some software to make a breakthrough from the control, the information spread by the China government or even the ideology in China still have an upper hand over people.
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58’49- (In Hong Kong) we have a student organization called the Hong Kong Federation of Students. It was composed of the student unions of eight universities. People go for the election of student union, and they would then get into the Federation. They would have meetings on weekly basis, they discussed issues happened and initiated actions or campaigns on different issues. But it also comes upon that though we have this kind of liberal democracy in student unions or even for political parties, people in Hong Kong are still not that active to be mobilized, if there is nothing big happens, people will stay on their own.
Q: People in Hong Kong have been used to voice their opinion quite frequently for hundred years. They’ve had a system which is closer to the western system than the China system. How come they are numb?
A: It’s about the colonial tactics of the British government before 1997. The colonial government had a lot of policies on de-politicizing people, distracting their attention from politics. The government would describe themselves as benevolent, they were kind, they adopted policy like laissez faire, so the development of Hong Kong, the importance of Hong Kong, how it would turn to be rested more on the effort of individuals. The life goal of an individual was to work hard on their economic aspect. So this was the trick they were playing on people, in this sense, people would be depoliticized or just being kept away from politics in public sphere.
Q: So the numbness of the population has already been practiced by the British colonial government and the China government continued learning from that?
A: Yes it’s kind of internalized, what matters to Hong Kong is competition and culmination of wealth, it’s a capitalist idea. It’s like Hong Kong (adopted) a very ideological pattern of capitalism, but on the other hand, it seems that this part didn’t really strengthen the voice for democracy, but rather, it turned people to be quite inactive.
Q: How would you name such a system? It seems there is a combination of extreme libertarian capitalism in certain places combined with quasi-totalitarian politics?
A: It is also a question that we have to articulate. So here is the question: Is capitalism or the current form of capitalism really saving or strengthening democracy, or killing democracy? I think Hong Kong is really a good example to have this study to fix the current form of capitalism and to rethink how democracy would survive in such kind of form.
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1’08’41- The taboos would be the common sense, I would say. Things that we take as truth, that we challenge it, or the definition of those common sense is being distorted or being described in a way that smartly crafted. Democracy or liberal democracy or capitalism, it is really a question in Hong Kong which is that, is the current form of capitalism saving or killing democracy? It seems that the capitalism in Hong Kong teaches people in Hong Kong that the form of democracy is simply about election but nothing more. So the democratic movement in Hong Kong is heavily about liberal democracy, but not a radicalized form of democracy.
If democracy is about participation, mutual trust, mutual responsibility, could simply the democracy about election bare this responsibility? I doubt it. But in Hong Kong, the case is that capitalism is still taken as common sense, liberal democracy is still taken as common sense, as the only way out for the current situation in Hong Kong, so this is something established, people would not rethink it in daily (life), but this is really a problem, this is actually a taboo.
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1’13’55- It is very important comment on the current situation on how to analyze who we should oppose to. On the one hand, it is obvious that enemy is the one on top, they are the ones who are ruling the society; on the other hand, it seems that we ourselves are also something we have to counter about, because we also assist the current system to operate in its way. So it seems that there are two ways and we have to counter both.
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1’17’04- To me it would be compatible, it’s a tool to be free from fear, free from dictatorship. But on the other hand it is not only about the system, it is also about the culture, the practice, the everyday life we are engaged in, so democracy, on the one hand, you have to shape the system in a political, democratic way, but on the other hand, you can’t only talk about election, it’s also about how the society operates.
But my point is, democracy does not stand alone herself. Democracy works with other systems: the economic system, the social system. When we talk about democracy, we cannot ignore other parts because they are interacting or influencing one another. If we focus too much on democracy and ignore the current economic system, say the crisis since 2008, we are simply being ignorant and putting much false hope on democracy.
It’s like democracy is an ideal way for human to practice, to communicate in a fair and respectful way, but we could not simply focus on democracy, we also have to fix democracy with the help of the current economic system, we have to fix both so that we have a sustainable world but not a world that is bankrupting.