Pandemic Halts
Hong Kong Protests

I meet up with J in a cafe on Apr. 19. He is checking the news on his phone. “I heard there's something kicking off in Mong Kok. Wanna go check it out?” he says.

Nothing has happened in Mong Kok and the surrounding districts for nearly two months, although the area had seen disturbances pretty much every week for the whole of the previous year. The last incident was on Feb. 29, when a crowd gathered at Prince Edward metro station. The clashes spilled out into Mong Kok, with billows of tear gas smoke wafting down Fa Yuen Street and Soy Street. 

So we head out in the direction of Sai Yeung Choi Street South, where we find a phalanx of blue-uniformed police with riot shields and batons surrounding a street stall. Inside, boxes of surgical masks and bottled water are laid out on the tables. The people inside sit there without saying a word. Crowds begin to gather on both sides of the street, heckling the police. 

J checks his phone, where he reads that the police have intercepted people “distributing anti-epidemic materials.” We learn later from media reports that these young people had set up stalls to hand out masks and hand gels in the neighborhood. Protest materials were also found on the stalls, and more than 30 people were intercepted and handed on-the-spot fines for violating the Restriction Order.

Suddenly, someone yells, “Free Hong Kong! Revolution now!” The crowd responds. “Five demands, not one less!” “Disband the police!” “Never forget Aug. 31 and Jul. 21!” “Investigate police violence!”

J chuckles. “It's been so long since I heard those chants,” he says. “I didn't expect to hear them again today.” 

After a while, the police move away, to triumphant cheering from the crowd. J and I walk briskly back towards a cafe. “Wait for the red light,” he tells me. “You don't want to get arrested by the police because you ignored the pedestrian stop sign.”

J, who works for a real estate company, has been taking part in street protests since the movement started. But he is pretty inactive these days. Since the pandemic started, he has rarely been out to protest at the front line. 

“Everyone is just waiting for the pandemic to pass,” he says. “I think there is a huge consensus that we have to do our part in fighting coronavirus, and that we don't want our actions to constitute a public health hazard to Hong Kong.

E, from Mainland China, is studying in Hong Kong. She too has been idle of late. E had been an active participant in street protests after starting college in September. But her mother, a medical doctor, warned her that the virus can linger on metal surfaces and in people's hair for a long time, and that it was highly contagious. She should avoid crowds at all costs. “I don't think there's much practical benefit to carrying on the fight in the face of risks to life and health,” E states. “If everyone catches the virus, then everyone will gradually get sick, and we won't see a positive result from our protests,” E adds. 

What's more, “the Restriction Order just gives the police another excuse to arrest people,” she says. 

There has been a sharp decline in the size and frequency of protests in Hong Kong since coronavirus first hit the city in January. 

When news of the coronavirus epidemic first began to emerge in early January 2020, for many in Hong Kong, it brought up memories of the SARS epidemic of 2002-3. There was a huge amount of concern expressed in local mainstream media, in protest materials, and among pro-democracy politicians and frontline protesters. The Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper responded with an article on Jan. 11, quoting a Chinese official as saying that there were no signs of person-to-person transmission of the new disease, and attacking "rioters" for exaggerating the epidemic in Mainland China and smearing China's national image and undermining the authority of the Hong Kong government. 

According to E, a lot of protesters were saying in early January that the coronavirus was actually a plot by the Chinese government, which had deliberately spread the virus to force an end to the protest movement in Hong Kong, and to cow its people into submission. 

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Hong Kong on Jan. 22. The patient had come to Hong Kong via the newly constructed high-speed rail link, heightening protesters' suspicions that China was behind it. The following day, Wuhan was under lockdown, and it was finally confirmed that the authorities had been trying to cover up the extent of the epidemic. 

Meanwhile, the number of cases in Hong Kong continued to rise. On Feb. 2, a newly established labor union of medical personnel went on strike, criticizing the Hong Kong government's coronavirus response and demanding that the borders be closed. The strike gained the widespread support of the protest movement. But the strike lasted just five days, before members voted to end it because they couldn't abandon their patients.

Smaller street protests started to be canceled. Standoffs and clashes between police and protesters, which had already been waning before the pandemic, cooled off considerably. 

Is the movement at a low ebb? J doesn't think so. “You can't deny that there are far fewer people coming out onto the streets now, but I don't think we can judge this movement by numbers alone any more: it is morphing into something different,” he says.

He thinks that part of the reason behind the sudden decline in street protests is the movement's motto: “be water.”

The adage comes from Hong Kong martial artist and movie star Bruce Lee, and means that protesters shouldn't stick to only one form of protest. It was a key idea that formed the movement from the outset, leading to calls for people to use their energy in multiple ways, to gather spontaneously and to disperse quickly. As the clashes intensified, it wasn't mentioned so much. 

But according to J, “be water” is still the essence of the protest movement. For example, instead of insisting on street protests, the movement can use the District Council, build international alliances, and support the Yellow Economic Circle to forward its agenda.

“Take the medical strike, for instance,” J says. “This sprang out of the broader protest movement known as 'Hong Kong sticks together.' It's harder to hold street protests now, so the medics' strike became part of the resistance.”

“But it also had its limits,” he adds. “It was what they were able to achieve in the context of a pandemic…And I think we will still wind up coming back to the five demands of the protest movement, in the end.” 

He sees the support for the medical strike, the public health information spread by protesters, and even the mask distribution stall we saw earlier as manifestations of resistance in the time of coronavirus.

Some protesters changed their slogan from “Free Hong Kong, revolution now!” to “Heal Hong Kong, fight coronavirus!”

By March 2020, the form of protests has changed, although there are still some street clashes. Protesters gather in numerous shopping malls to sing and chant slogans as part of “Sing with You” events. Police issue them with on-the-spot fines under the Restriction Order. 

During Golden Week, which started on May 1, a number of large events were publicized through various channels, leading to an increased police presence in a number of districts. Then the organizers revealed that the events were a call to visit Yellow Circle shops and restaurants, which booked up fast.

Mourners continue to gather every month to mark the death of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology student Chow Tze-lok, who fell to his death during clashes with police on the night of Nov. 9. Dozens of people were arrested at these memorial events on Feb. 9 and Mar. 9. 

“Everyone has to think about how to adapt to various situations,” opines J. “I think this has to be the main focus if the movement is to survive…Next time it may not be the pandemic, but something else. So the movement will need to morph again, so it can continue,” he says.

Back in 2003, after the end of the SARS epidemic, widespread public opposition to national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law led to a turnout of half a million at the Jul. 1 handover anniversary protest march, the biggest since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.  

Given that the movement has fallen silent at times since then, some people expect it to re-emerge after the current pandemic is over. 

"People are recharging their batteries," declares E, who thinks that more people in the Blue Camp will see through the tactics used by the authorities as a result of the pandemic. 

"The pandemic is really striking at the heart of people's livelihoods; we have seen poor decision-making covered up with fake news," she says. "Most people have been severely affected in terms of their finances."

E says that many people blame the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing's failure to report the extent of the coronavirus epidemic for job losses, and are angry at the lack of independence shown by the Hong Kong government. And protesters want to avoid a recurrence of this suffering. 

J says things today can't be compared with the situation 17 years ago in Hong Kong. “There were no protests in the year preceding SARS, so we didn't have the problem of exhaustion,” he states.

"It's already a miracle that the movement still continues today," he says. He definitely doesn't expect to see much of a change in the size of future protests or the numbers of those taking part.  

Instead, he thinks the demands of the protest movement could change. In the early days of the movement, the five demands didn't include independence for Hong Kong; in fact, not many people were calling for independence at all, he says. 

"We didn't want to create too much loss of face [for Beijing]," J states. But the misreporting of the outbreak has increased mistrust of the Chinese government, and tensions have been further exacerbated by the Hong Kong authorities' arrest of pro-democracy figures during the pandemic.

"I think when the pandemic is over, we are likely to see even louder calls for independence," J opines. 

CUHK's Leung agrees that the protest movement during the current pandemic can't really be compared with the SARS era. The Jul. 1, 2003 protest only lasted for a single day, unlike the current protest movement, which has shown great consistency in terms of scale and breadth of public support, and can't really be used to understand what is happening today. 

For now, the pandemic is far from over, and the havoc it is wreaking makes it hard to make accurate predictions about the movement's direction. 

Leung says data is of more use than intuition when it comes to making predictions. He cites a March poll by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at CUHK, which found that only 36 percent of people supported continuing with protest activities during the pandemic, due to health and safety concerns linked to coronavirus. But nearly 50 percent supported further "large-scale mass events after the pandemic subsides," compared with 30 percent who opposed such events. 

Back then he still thought that enthusiasm for the protest movement would rebound, and were likely to take to the streets once more, once the epidemic was over.