A decade ago today Hong Kong’s Central district filled with protesters, angry at Chinese government plans to renege on a promise of a fully democratic vote. What became known as Occupy Central, or the Umbrella protests, paralysed the city’s financial centre and galvanised a generation of young people.
Today Hong Kong’s streets are quiet. Protest has been largely criminalised, and many of the leaders of the Umbrella movement have been exiled, jailed or otherwise silenced.
Looking back, Wendy* remembers the feeling of that first day of Occupy. She was 25 and believed in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and its promise to deliver universal suffrage to the people now that the territory had been returned from British to Chinese control. But instead, China’s government announced that in elections people would only be able to choose from a few candidates handpicked by a mostly pro-Beijing committee.
“It seemed that the government wanted to break their promise,” Wendy tells the Guardian from Hong Kong. “So I went out.”
Protest action against Beijing’s plan had long been in the works. Three activists known as the Occupy Trio – academics Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man, and reverend Chu Yiu-ming – had for months been training a few thousand people in non-violent resistance to occupy Hong Kong’s finance district as a last resort if demands weren’t met. But student protests earlier that week had escalated to the storming of a public square, and the Occupy start date was brought forward. Thousands more joined.
It was 28 September. Wendy thought it would be peaceful, but stayed clear of the frontlines just in case. Then at 5:58pm, police fired teargas into the peaceful crowd.
“I smelled some strange scents and my eyes got uncomfortable,” Wendy says. “I looked up to the bridge over me, seeing a group of police holding shields and stepping forward to the protesters. The scene was frightening. I just kept asking in my mind ‘Why do they treat us in that way?’.”
Emily Lau, a veteran pro-democracy advocate and then a sitting legislator, had gone to speak to police earlier that day about bringing in some equipment for the Occupy Trio. Instead, they arrested her. By the time she was released later that night “the whole world had changed”.
Lau and a colleague took a taxi from the police station to the top of a hill overlooking Central.
“When we looked down, we were shocked because the roads were blocked and there were people just everywhere occupying Connaught Road,” she says.
‘The first step in a bigger war’
The police force’s decision to use teargas on day one against a peaceful crowd had just brought more people to the streets. Soon a vast self-sufficient tent city took over the Admiralty district. Other camps formed in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. Volunteer groups took care of provisions, sanitation, and tutoring of students, while calling for Beijing to reverse its plans and for Hong Kong’s chief executive, CY Leung, to step down.
Tony*, then a “regular office worker”, joined the camp in his lunch breaks and evenings. He describes what he saw as “astonishing”.
“It was a completely new Hong Kong, a beautiful Hong Kong that I had never seen before. We saw Hong Kong people were really passionate about democracy, about their future and having a say in how the city is run.”
Thomas*, a Hong Kong writer now based in London, says a lot of people got engaged in the movement for the first time because of how government and authorities had responded to their concerns.
“There wasn’t any attempt [by Beijing] to just sort of say: I understand this isn’t quite what you want, but this is the best we can get … It was literally: thank us and love us for it, aren’t we wonderful,” he says.
But as Occupy stretched on, the public’s tolerance waned and divisions deepened among protesters. The government remained unmoved, and police became more aggressive. Court injunctions ordered sections of the camps to clear, and Joshua Wong, a leader of the student protesters, ended his hunger strike. Numbers dwindled as the Trio urged people to leave, but the more radical student groups were determined to stay.
“T[he trio] didn’t think the whole thing should drag on for so long,” says Lau. “I supported ending it because it doesn’t mean ending the whole thing. You just go home and prepare to fight another day.”
It ended on 15 December after 79 days, without having achieved its stated aims and with deep fissures between pro-democracy factions, but still with a sense of hope.
“There was a big banner that said ‘We will be back’,” recalls Tony. “People were hugging each other and saying farewells. There was a sense that the battle hadn’t succeeded but it might be the first step in a bigger war.”
In an editorial one year later, the South China Morning Post said the outcome of the Occupy protests “proved that Beijing will not yield to confrontational tactics”. Protest leaders from both the older and student cohorts, including Tai, Chan and Wong, were eventually convicted and jailed.
But, Lau says, “the protests had woken up the young people”. New political parties and activist groups emerged. In June 2019, millions took to the streets again in massive pro-democracy protests. Participants used tactics and strategies fine-tuned during Occupy.
But there was less of the hope and fight of 2014. Instead, the 2019 protests felt like a defiant “last cry of an animal that was dying”, says Thomas. Again Beijing did not yield, launching a crackdown that shocked even the most pessimistic observers.
“The atmosphere and political reality today are totally different [to 2014],” says Willy Lam, a senior non-resident fellow and China specialist at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington.
Wendy looks back at how she felt in 2014 and laughs a little.
“I thought 2014 was shit at that time, but compared to 2019 it was just a piece of cake,” she says. “I was so naive, believing the government would be sensible, respect people’s voice, and abide by the promise in the Basic Law. But now I can say I was totally wrong.”
Tony, now a lawyer based in the UK, says the Occupy protests left an important legacy, strengthening Hongkongers self-identity and their aspirations for democracy, human rights, and rule of law.
“Now I see that as part of the diaspora … and I hope people in the free world don’t forget Hong Kong. There is still something to be fought for.”
*Names have been changed upon request of interviewees
