Analysis: Hong Kong’s accidental activist

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HONG KONG — She’s young. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. Christina Chan is emerging as the new face of Hong Kong’s increasingly disaffected.

For Hong Kong’s scandal-driven media, 22-year-old Chan offers a prism through which to view the increasingly angry “post-80s generation.”

Yet it’s a shoe that doesn’t quite fit, says Chan. The graduate student in philosophy agrees that dissatisfaction in the former British colony is on the rise. But she insists the backlash on the
streets is not just coming from young people. “This is not a generational war,” she says.

Frustrations are brewing among a large swath of Hong Kong society including rural dwellers, middle-aged workers and teens who want their voices to be heard, says Chan.

“People are getting angrier and angrier,” she says. According to Chan, citizens’ rage is fueled by the government’s failure to deliver on its promise of democracy and its growing heavy-handedness in dealing with protests.

Yet as she sips on a mineral water at a coffee shop in a swanky Hong Kong mall, Chan doesn’t come across as a typical angry activist. Instead she oozes quiet confidence and effortless coolness. Born in Hong Kong and educated in England during her teens, Chan says she fell into political activism by accident.

“The reason I am here today is because I organized some random event on Facebook,” she says in a reference to demonstration she organized protesting China’s treatment of Tibet in 2008. Her access to the social networking website was shut down on two separate occasions without explanation.

Chan says she wouldn’t be surprised if authorities in Beijing were behind the crack down. “The Chinese government is a super oppressive power, obsessed with control,” she says.

When Beijing won jurisdiction over Hong Kong in 1997, it promised to protect the rights and freedoms of the former colony under the “One Country, Two Systems” approach. Part of the deal was a promise of universal suffrage for the city’s 7 million residents.

That promise has not yet been fully fulfilled. Today, half of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council’s 60 seats are geographical constituencies contested under a "one person one vote system.” The others are functional constituencies where voting rights are given to a selected few based on criteria such as belonging to a particular profession, industry or trade.

The territory’s leader, the chief executive, is selected by a committee of 800 people chosen by the Beijing government.

Universal suffrage has been postponed until later this decade. But for many like Christina Chan, that deadline is too far off. The territory’s undemocratic political system is prompting people to vent that it is unfair to a degree rarely seen in Hong Kong before.

Since the start of the year tactics are changing as protesters become increasingly emboldened.

At a pro-democracy march on New Year’s Day, demonstrators climbed over barriers outside the Beijing government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. On Jan. 16, scuffles with police took place when a crowd of around 10,000 people surrounded Hong Kong’s LegCo in a bid to block government support of a controversial high-speed rail project linking Hong Kong to Guangzhou. Chan was arrested a week later for an alleged assault on a police officer and released on bail.

“The police are getting more and more violent,” says Chan pointing to the recent police use of pepper spray to subdue protesters. Yet the police are only an apparatus of a government that wants to control dissenting voices, she says.

In a statement, the Hong Kong Police Force describes its approach in recent protests as “very restrained” and that it had acted “very professionally.” “Rather, some protesters were very abusive and disorderly,” the statement reads.

Compared to other countries the clashes are minor. But in a city and country so focused on creating “harmony” the specter of more street battles should make the territory’s leaders feel threatened, says Chan. “The government should be scared of the people and not the other way round.”

Chan says recent events mark a new departure for activism in Hong Kong. Before, demonstrators were reluctant to push the envelope. Now they are willing to go one step forward. Civil disobedience should be as peaceful as possible and protestors must accept the consequences of their actions, she says. “But sometimes you have to break the law to show the law is unjust.”

Chan admits she is sometimes afraid. “Heroism is kind of dangerous,” she says. “Especially after the arrest.” She says she feels pressure as many pin their hopes for reform on her and her followers. “But [ultimately] people have got to come out themselves [to protest].”

Hong Kong’s often overzealous media is having a field day with Chan’s combination of political fury and burning looks. Chan says the paparazzi have invaded her private life and criticized her lifestyle. Her parents urge her to leave the fight to others, but she refuses.

“This is not the life I want at all,” she says. “I could live somewhere else. Then I wouldn’t have to see the injustices that go on in Hong Kong. But this is my home.”

Chan expects the next decade to be spent fighting for democracy in the territory with no result. “One day eventually it will come, “she says. “Who knows maybe the world will end before it comes?”

Until then she will remain angry. “In fact more Hong Kong people should be angry,” she says. “And if they are not angry, they should ask themselves why.”

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