Rebel City. South China Morning Post Team
who call this city home.
Through a series of detailed snapshots, we hope to give readers a fuller sense of not only the headline events of an extraordinary year, but also their behind-the-scenes dynamics, and the feelings behind the masks.
At one level, the 2019 protests were among the world’s most visible political events in history. The action could be viewed on multiple live streams. At the front lines, dozens of local and international reporters recorded the confrontations between protesters and police. Never have so many had access to what they would consider incontrovertible evidence of what exactly happened on a given day and time.
Yet, debates about who the villains and the victims were raged on. This was the Rashomon effect in the age of Facebook Live and Twitter. As in the fabled Akira Kurosawa movie, eyewitnesses came to conflicting conclusions. To many Hongkongers, police were to blame for the escalation of violence. To others, they were the thin blue line protecting the city from anarchy.
While many observers had the luxury of being both expert witness and judge, the South China Morning Post had to be more modest in our approach. First, because we have more feet on the ground and greater access to all sides than most news organizations do, we are unable to see things in simple black-and-white – or yellow-versus-blue – terms.
Second, this is our city. For most of the world’s media, the Hong Kong unrest was newsworthy largely because it was an apparent proxy war between China and the United States. For the Post, this was a local story. Most of the journalists covering the city’s affairs grew up here, fell in love, married, and are raising children here. We live among the people we report for and about, making it harder to rush to judgment.
Our journalists have strong feelings about recent events and close ties with the community. The city’s pain is our pain, its scars our own. But, collectively, the Post has tried to stick to the basics of fact-based journalism, respecting our community enough to inform it without being swayed by any ideological bias.
Of course, the Post has a firm editorial position on the larger questions facing Hong Kong. It operates within and defends Hong Kong’s press freedoms, and the special status the territory enjoys within the People’s Republic of China. In our editorials, the Post commented on the extradition law’s shortcomings, especially the need for stronger safeguards against abuse. Witnessing widespread opposition to the bill, we called for its withdrawal. We also appealed for an inquiry into police conduct, to assuage concerns on the ground; and we condemned violence by all sides. We accepted that universal suffrage, while a worthy goal, would be difficult to accomplish in the current environment.
Our primary function, though, has been to keep our readers informed. From March to December 2019, the Post published more than 4,515 articles containing the term “extradition,” plus more than 400 videos, 11 multimedia infographics and 55 live blogs. Our archive contains tens of thousands of photos and art.
This book is an edited anthology of that coverage. In some of these stories, we have left the narrative untouched. But in many others, we have gone back to the key newsmakers to have them reflect on the year that went by. Some essays go over similar ground but from different vantage points. The book does not pretend to break new ground. And there are still questions that we are unable to fully answer, like the extent of external interference in the course of events.
But the following pages do go some way in unmasking the fractured yet fluid spirit of a city going through historic change. It captures the landmark events, key debates, and the diverse cast of characters that made this an unforgettable year for all who experienced it.
PATH TO A FIRESTORM
“THE GOVERNMENT WAS COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE, AND LOST CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE.”
Regina Ip, Executive Council member
Top girl Carrie Lam takes a city to the brink
Jeffie Lam and Gary Cheung
Throughout her 13 years at St Francis’ Canossian School and its sister college, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was always a top girl – except once, when she came fourth in a mid-year class examination. She went home in tears that day, fearful of how her teachers and family would regard her, she revealed in a 2016 interview, just before taking office as Hong Kong’s chief executive.
Asked what she did next, Lam replied: “I took the No 1 place back.”
She shared that anecdote when recalling unforgettable low points in her life before her rise to become the city’s first woman leader. It is safe to assume that nothing in Lam’s life could have been worse than the political storm that engulfed her through the second half of 2019, when she sank to the bottom of the public’s estimation.
What began as public anger at a controversial extradition bill, which critics said could effectively remove the legal firewall between Hong Kong and mainland China, morphed into expressions of hatred toward Lam not only as author of the legislation but also as an arrogant leader who insisted on pressing ahead with it despite opposition from all quarters. It sent Hong Kong hurtling into its most serious political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The combative Lam doubled down even after an estimated 1 million Hongkongers marched on June 9 to protest against the bill and demand her resignation. That turnout was double the size of a historic 2003 procession that forced the government to shelve a controversial national security bill.
Defending the legislation, Lam said a day after the march: “We were doing it and we are still doing it out of our clear conscience and our commitment to Hong Kong.” It took another protest on June 12 – which resulted in violent clashes between protesters and police, with tear gas and rubber bullets deployed and more than 80 people injured – before she said the bill would be suspended.
But the legislation was not scrapped. Angry protesters, mostly in their 20s, demanded the withdrawal of the bill and went on to stage more demonstrations, blocking major roads and besieging government offices. As the protests degenerated into violence, vandalism and intense confrontations between masked radicals and police officers, all the rules of engagement for Hong Kong’s long-standing culture of peaceful demonstrations were rewritten.
The protracted battle became an embarrassment to Beijing as the protesters made emotional appeals to Western countries, in particular the United States, against the backdrop of the US-China trade war and at the G20 summit in Osaka that June. They waved the American flag in the city, urging Washington to back a proposed Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act to give the US discretion to sanction those deemed responsible for acts that undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy from mainland China. It was approved with bipartisan support and signed into law in November 2019.
Lam faced the wrath of even loyal allies in the Legislative Council, who feared she would drag them down. Their concerns were not unfounded. In November, the pro-establishment bloc suffered a humiliating rout in the district council elections. From controlling all 18 district councils, they were left in charge of only one, retaining merely 60 out of 452 seats at stake.
What went so wrong for the top girl who became chief executive? By the end of 2019, she was viewed as a lame duck and a likely oneterm city leader. Interviews with members of her cabinet, proestablishment lawmakers and Beijing insiders suggest it was a potent combination of policy failure caused by an overconfident leader trapped in groupthink, inadequate preparation of the ground and a lack of political experience on the world stage. There was no doubt by December that heads would roll once calm returned, but whose and when remained unclear.
Rushing headlong into disaster
Lam’s journey to the brink of disaster and beyond began at 10am on January 29, 2019. Members of the Executive Council, Hong Kong’s