TRASHFUTURE - Dispatches from Hong Kong feat. Brian Hioe

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, trash future listeners. This is Nate. We've got a quick segment that we're going to publish on our feed outside of the normal publication order for episodes. I had a chance to speak with Brian Hugh, who is the editor for New Bloom Magazine and is reporting on the ground in Hong Kong at this moment. We had a quick discussion about what's taking place in Hong Kong and the attempts to organize a general strike and some of the larger contextual issues around what's happening there and specifically how Hell World Technology of the future plays a role in making protests more difficult. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Alright, so we're speaking with Brian Hugh, the editor of New Bloom Magazine. Brian, how

Starting point is 00:00:52 are you doing? Pretty good. Thanks for having me. Very, very glad to have you. So could you maybe give our listeners a little bit of background as to what's going on in Hong Kong right now? So currently, Hong Kong is the middle of a set of protests, which are quite large. The one on Sunday, for example, is thought possibly to be the largest protest in the history of Hong Kong, mobilizing over one million people, which is one in seven residents of Hong Kong. And so the protests are against an extradition bill that is being pushed forward by the Hong

Starting point is 00:01:19 Kong government at Beijing's behest. And the bill would allow for Hong Kong citizens to be deported to China to face charges. Currently, previously, there was no extradition treaty along those lines. However, the concern is that this could be used as a way to persecute political dissidents. For example, if you are a democracy activist or you advocate Hong Kong independence, you could be deported then to China to face charges, this being illegal. And so it could be a way of carrying out, for example, these kidnappings that were previously taking place in Hong Kong. For example, there were five booksellers that were previously kidnapped and they appeared in China to face charges because they were publishing books

Starting point is 00:01:56 that were critical of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. But this was done again, clandestinely, and with the new law that's been done openly. It's also thought it could interfere with Hong Kong's judiciary. For example, judges will make rulings on the basis of not judicial independence, but just in the knowledge that if they don't rule the way Beijing wants them to, they could be deported to China too. And so this is kind of very wide-ranging effects. One speculation is that if you're transiting through Hong Kong airport, Hong Kong International Airport to another destination, you could still be pulled off your flight and actually sent to China to face charges there. And so this actually, given how much air traffic

Starting point is 00:02:31 passes through Hong Kong, this could affect people in other countries that maybe have done things to make China not too happy. For example, myself, where I come from Taiwan, and so some of the writing I do does not make China happy. And so this could actually affect not just Hong Kong, but also surrounding locations. But yeah, I mean, this is the largest set of protests in five years, and again, possibly in the history of Hong Kong. It's just a question now, whether it will continue, whether the government will back down or not, or what next happens. Looking at this, it seems like there's an echo of the protests that took place in 2014.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's very similar to the Umbrella Movement protests. I mean, I wasn't around for those, but you do see callbacks to the movement very quickly. For example, in some of the initial actions, when there was kind of, you know, just a call for direct action outside of the Legislative Council, like Co, there after several hours there, demonstrators tried to kind of build up a supply station, and that supply station was kind of a callback to the Umbrella Movement. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you had people setting up tents there in a similar manner to the Umbrella Movement, and some of the kind of iconography reappeared on the yesterday, when there was quite a lot of place funds. For example, during the Umbrella

Starting point is 00:03:45 Movement, they set up a wall of sticky notes on the side of the Legislative Council building, and it was called a democracy wall. That was also very quickly set up again. Yeah, to kind of have the recollection of this movement five years ago, and also kind of guide some of the tactics that the demonstrators have picked. Gotcha. And so among those tactics includes a general strike and a student strike, if I'm not mistaken. That's right. It's very interesting because that's quite unusual. You did see student strikes in the past before in Hong Kong. For example, student unions, usually college student unions, played a large role in the Umbrella Movement in which there were quite a lot of students mobilizing.

Starting point is 00:04:21 There is a student strike in the week that before the movement broke out, if I recall, but then the movement just suddenly escalated, and it became this thing that nobody anticipated it would be so large. In 2014, when that student strike happened, I think there's also kind of based on the thought that maybe the movement had petered out, that it wouldn't actually be so big. And actually, just going back to 2014, there was Occupy Central with Love and Peace. That was the planned action to Occupy Central, which is a district in Hong Kong. And you can see the influence of the kind of Occupy style movements that had appeared around the world during that time, including obviously Occupy Wall Street in America, but also, for example, the Sun Farm Movement in

Starting point is 00:04:58 Taiwan, which is sort of Hong Kong's neighbor in many ways, and so forth. But then the general strike, I mean, that's an interesting tactic because in memory, it hasn't really been tried in Hong Kong before. Maybe last time that actually really happened was a Canton Hong Kong strike that occurred in 1925. And so, of course, the notion of having a general strike and having a society ground to a halt as part of that, and this being the way to show the power of the people to the government, that's a new development. But unfortunately, it wasn't actually as successful as people thought. The focus was still on, I think, this protest action outside of the legislative council, and also this Occupation style, kind of this attempt at a big occupation in the recollection

Starting point is 00:05:42 of the umbrella movement. I think the key factor may have been just that not enough unions and not enough companies and so forth signed on to the general strike beforehand. It was 100 companies, over 100 companies, but those were mostly small businesses. And so, you didn't have huge amounts of workers not going to work. Society was still mostly operating. And I think also part of it is that the notion of a general strike was suggested very late, and it took hold of activists and so forth, because in the absence of other ideas, other creative means besides repeating the kind of the same things that had been done and tried before in the past that have not succeeded. Gotcha. And so, you said that given the police response that's taking place today and

Starting point is 00:06:24 yesterday, are you foreseeing a potentially enlargement of those protests, or more concentrated action along the lines of the strike, or are you seeing the potential for it just to be shut down because of the fact that the state has gotten involved? It's a good question, and I don't know actually now, because I think that we're at an interesting moment in which things are up in the air, as we speak. For example, there was the attempt to kind of maintain that occupation yesterday after the kind of putative attempt at an occupation around the Legislative Council Building was taken apart and police came in with the largest amount of police force since the hand over of Hong Kong from British control to Chinese control in 1997, and tear gas was set off, and

Starting point is 00:07:09 they were firing water cannons and rubber bullets and things of like nature. The attempt was made to occupy central again, and so the attempt was to move there and kind of hold a street and to control the street, and that didn't really work out eventually. I mean, people could have stayed there overnight, they could have tried that, but the consensus was reached to kind of withdraw for the time being and take the supply that people had and leave before the train stopped running and to save energy for another time. The idea of a general strike might come up again. I think that it did really capture the public in that way, that it was something that was new and not been tried, and that's what I think activists are desperately searching for, but if so, it needs

Starting point is 00:07:47 to be much wider in society, and I think one of the issues is Hong Kong's lack of labor activity historically, the fact that, you know, Hong Kong, the system government, you actually have these, you know, non-elected, these representatives that are not elected by members of the public, functional constituencies in which they're represented by corporate or business interests or industrial interests, and, you know, there is a past of, for example, like you can look at the 1960s, the leftist riots in Hong Kong and so forth, but that kind of history is not as salient to the present, and, you know, unions too divide along pro-Beijing and pro, you know, pan-democratic lines. I mean, the largest pan-democratic union did actually throw support behind the general

Starting point is 00:08:26 strike yesterday, however, that was still not enough to, you know, mobilise enough people to ground everything in society to a halt, and so I think it really has to expand to different industries now. Key industry is vital for the operation of society. For example, you know, bus drivers, they did not strike, but they said yesterday that they would drive more slowly, you know, as a slowdown, basically, in order to, as their show of protest. There's actually this kind of talk over the fact that they posted, a bus unit posted just, you know, slow down, do not speed up as your sign of protest. That would be dangerous, and so I think that's a question now. I mean, after the Umbrella Movement, there was increased organisation among, particularly,

Starting point is 00:09:05 I think, white-collar workers in, for example, NGOs or different organisations that are occupationally based, but is that still enough to actually influence society as a whole? I mean, just for example, the demonstration on Sunday did mobilise one in seven people, and in theory, that should be a broad swath of society, but just how to, you know, disrupt the key functioning of society. And I mean, one in seven is, if one in seven people took the day off from work, that would actually probably ground a lot of things in society to a halt, but even getting to that point may be difficult, and I think that it was just announced on way too short notice. That makes sense. I'm also wondering too, because when you harken back to the Occupy

Starting point is 00:09:42 Movement, there are obviously a significant amount of concerns and issues that were raised, you know, that gained traction with people, and I'm wondering, the Extradition Treaty seems like it's been, or the proposed Extradition Law seems like it's been a spark, but I'm wondering if you could speak to maybe some of the other concerns that might be animating some of this, because from a little bit of just digging and gleaning on my part, it strikes me that there are significant amounts of concerns, both with what you described as like the non-representative nature of the government and also issues like cost of living or stagnating wages and things along those lines. I'm wondering if you could speak to that condition in Hong Kong.

Starting point is 00:10:17 Yeah, I mean, Hong Kong is one of the most unequal societies in the world, and young people face low salaries, long work hours, they live in cramps, extremely cramped buildings. And so these are, again, like, I mean, I think I was also with the Occupy Movement and so forth, these are also an animated concern that you have these socioeconomic discontents that motivate people into action, and that action also is tied to democratic freedoms, the fact that people don't have, you could say, economic democracy, and is also tied to the changes in Hong Kong which have occurred after the handover with the rise of China. For example, Hong Kong, which was in theory supposed to serve as China's gateway to the West and the international world for at least

Starting point is 00:10:57 50 years with no system, without the whole on-country two systems being changed, that did not happen. China took off pretty quickly, and so Hong Kong became, it could be just become a Chinese city, and that's kind of the fear, and that is also tied into, I think, these economic discontents. And, you know, there's also concern about Chinese immigration, which there is a lot of in Hong Kong at this point. To that extent, I think just the issue of the extradition tree, it could have been one issue that set off protests. And in the past years, there have been a lot of issues. For example, Canada's being prevented from running from office on the basis of their political views. Canada's being removed from office on different auspices, even if they had

Starting point is 00:11:36 an election just right before, or Canada's being arrested and put in jail, even very young people, people in their 20s or early 20s, and probating mobs being mobilized to attack people. So, these concerns are all present, but they did not spark a protest that galvanized all the society into the streets. And so this extradition treaty did. And I wonder why myself, why is it this issue, did that? I mean, I think it may have been burnout in the five years from the umbrella movement up until now, that there's a need for people to recover and, you know, become less tired and be willing to protest again. I think the other factor is that the extradition treaty could in theory affect everybody. It's not that, you know, you have to go vote, or maybe you lose

Starting point is 00:12:14 the right to vote, or some candidate can't run or whatever. It's that you can just maybe be arbitrarily sent to China. And you don't know for what reasons you can be sent there. I mean, for example, a creator of LGBTQ fan fiction was sentenced to 10 years of jail in China. So things like that, like just even just like drawing, you know, slash fiction between your favorite characters from, I don't know, Game of Thrones, like that could, you know, be something that you could maybe get sent to China for, I don't know. And so these kinds of concerns, maybe that's why it sparked so much protest this time. You also mentioned in some of your reporting that there were some solidarity protests and gatherings taking place elsewhere within the region, within Taiwan and

Starting point is 00:12:55 in Japan. I'm wondering, have you seen any participation or any ways in which people say outside of Asia might be able to support this or even just learn more? Yeah, it's actually very interesting, because there have been Saudi rallies in cities around the world. Major cities usually, you know, let's say London, New York, I think Melbourne, just came a few off top of my head. I think unless it's like 20 or so cities and a lot of time that is organized by the Hong Kong diaspora in these cities, you know, Hong Kong does have people that are of Hong Kong descent in various parts of the world. And so they're still concerned with issues that take place in Hong Kong as they organize. And what's interesting too, is that with the

Starting point is 00:13:32 umbrella movement five years ago, you had these kind of networks forming to hold Saudi rallies then five years ago. And now five years later, these networks are still around in some form. And so it's easier to organize more quickly. And I think that's had a kind of legacy. And I think Taiwan, because you know, Taiwan also faces the issue of claims by China over that Taiwan is part of China, despite the fact that unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is de facto independent. So there's this kind of concern with Hong Kong. And, you know, there are also ties between, for example, social movement actors in Taiwan and Hong Kong that go way back. You know, so many people have known each other for years and years and years. And so it's not surprising why there'd be so many

Starting point is 00:14:11 Saudi rallies in Taiwan currently. For example, there was basically five consecutive days of Saudi rallies to date. And that's never happened before for any cause, basically. These are all organized basically by different social movement actors. And yeah, they just keep taking place. I mean, I think there's one taking place Saturday too. And there's one in Japan that was organized by Tani's expats in Japan, Tani's activists living in Japan, who are expats living there, I believe, in collaboration with local Japanese activists. So that's also just something I've never seen before. And I think that's quite interesting. So from where you are, I mean, I've been following your reporting since we spoke yesterday. It seems like it's been a lot of long days,

Starting point is 00:14:51 long nights of reporting. What does it feel like if you can just describe that like on the ground? Does this, do you feel like a certain degree of momentum or enthusiasm? It really depends on what day. I mean, like today, it's quiet. There's nothing, nothing has happened. There's no protest action. And so just an empty street and, you know, the area around the Legislative Council has been empty. It was like that on Monday too, after the big protests on Sunday, you know, the historic possibly largest protests in Hong Kong history, in which just all the traces of the protests were removed. And just the area around like, oh, it was just empty. And that you can see the police setting up barriers in preparation for

Starting point is 00:15:26 just anticipate a future protest. You see the office workers just testing the barriers because they seem bored and have nothing else to do and things like that. But it's also kind of surprising how these explosions of mass activity and they just disappear. And then you'll have another explosion and it disappears. I think I just, in general, with the, you know, let's say occupation style protests from Lockup I Wall Street up until the present, it's one of those things that's like almost a little frightening that the city just kind of devours protests. You know, if you're around the block, you might not even notice a protest. That's tens of thousands of people. And then the next day, it's very few traces of the remain. I mean, I think that with some of the debris that

Starting point is 00:15:58 gets left behind for these protests, you know, that it's, there's still visible signs. But also another thing is that, you know, protesters in order to maintain a civic image, a civil image, which makes them more amenable to the eyes of a public, which sometimes will criticize them for being troublemakers. They tend to clean up after a protest. And so, you know, they'll clean up the supplies they had and the cardboard they had and any, any, you know, cigarettes or whatever left behind and that kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm also wondering, because I remember that the Occupy Wall Street product protests in 2011, at the time, the idea of social media being significantly involved in protest was kind of novel. Now at this point, it's sort of par for the

Starting point is 00:16:36 course. I'm wondering how has that played out in, in social media, local to Hong Kong and Chinese language media? What have you been seeing as far as like the way it's being portrayed? Yeah, I mean, social media has come to play an important role in, I think, a lot of contemporary Asian social movements in mobilizing people. I mean, sometimes the way you announce an event is just like a Facebook page now. But I think particularly in Hong Kong, now there, what we see is increasing concerns with technology and digital surveillance, particularly in the last five years since the umbrella movement. For example, a lot of the protesters are very concerned about having their image captured. And so they try to hide their faces that the surgical mascaras is

Starting point is 00:17:13 common to wear in Asia if you're sick. And also, it's a good way to prevent you from breathing in tear gas. And also, I mean, the concern is facial recognition software. We also have reports of people that are traveling to protest sites being afraid to use their usual MRT card, the Oculus card, because of concern that this could be used to track them and to know, you know, what their movements are. And so they're buying paper tickets. Well, not paper tickets. I mean, they're these, you know, plastic card things, but they're buying those instead. And so they can be tracked. And I think a lot of communication is coming through Telegram, for example, there's these big Telegram groups in which there's like 10,000 people and people are sharing updates and stuff

Starting point is 00:17:53 all the time. And sometimes you can't actually sort out what is real information and what is a rumor. And there was actually a big issue recently in past day, the administrator of one of these groups was reportedly arrested. And he was a 22 year old house student. But now the after he was arrested, now that police have his cell phone, they have access to everyone in that group. And so the police know the identities of these, or the phone numbers, anyway, of these 10,000 people in the group. Yeah. And so it's one of those things that even with a so-called encrypted antenna encryption, you can still have fairly low tech means of getting information to his indies groups just through, you know, arresting the administrator and looking at his cell phone

Starting point is 00:18:28 or his computer, you know, things like that. So these concerns are so significant. And I think communicating information is very difficult. Particularly on Tuesday, when there was a kind of a, when the kind of attempted occupation of round like code began, that was just strangely enough, just internet rumors of, you know, a gathering there at 10 or 11 or what have you and just like these different times floating around. And as a result, just a young people just started appearing there in the hundreds, eventually like probably around like 2000, just around like nine or eight or so. And that was also just kind of surprising because just how did this happen? Does people just show up expecting something will happen? And then it

Starting point is 00:19:06 happens. And the thing is also a lot of them did have a social movement experience. It seems like just based on how quickly they respond to the police, you know, knowing what to do when there's tear gas called umbrellas, you know, to hand out the goggles and helmets and things like that. And so forth and what the tactics are to take in those cases or went to fall back or went to try to push forward. Wow. That's really, I mean, it's just kind of mind blowing when I think about that, about the extent to which number one, that information is able to be disseminated, that people are able to be informed. But number two, like you just described, the extent to which if something is compromised, then all of a sudden that falls into the hands of the state and,

Starting point is 00:19:40 you know, who knows what's going to happen. I mean, as I understand it, there were crackdowns, not like en masse, but there were crackdowns following the 2014 protests involved with you described it previously with people, you know, even as young as like undergraduate age, going to prison. Has there been, I've seen in some of your reporting that there have been injuries or have been arrests? Have there, has there been any, you know, sort of indication that people are going to be, that they're potentially going to be going after organizers, like not so as like a target of opportunity like you just described, but something more, you know, planned? I think it might be possible. I think it is possible.

Starting point is 00:20:13 And for example, there was the arrest I just mentioned regarding the organizer of that, the administrator of that telegram group. But I think also just a lot of the people we see now are sort of near faces. I mean, some of them seem experienced, but some of them actually seem very young. They seem like they weren't old enough to participate in the umbrella movement. And so it's also not very clear who the demonstrators are even at this point, just that they appear and, and, you know, gather. And it's not very clear who the leaders are, things like that. Or if there are leaders, a lot of it does seem very, very flexible and fluid and so forth. I mean, and so I think that that will become more clear as time goes by. But I think you

Starting point is 00:20:46 probably can find people, the government probably can find people's target. For example, in the age of digital media and social media, you could find key opinion leaders online and target this person as a sign of intimidation. And I think the government will do that. I mean, the police have noticeably adopted a mentality of protesters are the enemy, we're not your fellow students, you're the enemy. And that applies to young people that applies to journalists and so forth. And, you know, you'd have cases that they're targeting, you know, for them a targeting journalist to fire at them or, you know, random searches conducted of young people. And so I think, yeah, the possibility of reprisals is quite high currently.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Alright, Brian, well, thank you so much for your time. And this would really appreciate this update into this information. And it's going to give you an opportunity to plug any of your own work. Yeah, thanks for having me. And so I run New Blue Magazine. I'm one of the founding editors. We're a Taiwanese publication. We were founded in 2014 after the Sun Farm movement, which was an occupation of the Taiwanese legislature for months about similar issues regarding sovereignty and democratic freedom being eroded due to the desire to unify with China. And so we also are concerned with the Asia Pacific products from a left perspective, from an intensively radical left perspective, and that includes Hong Kong, which is why I'm here currently. So yeah,

Starting point is 00:21:59 just feel free to follow us for continued news reports almost going on Hong Kong or in Taiwan or elsewhere. Alright, Brian Hew, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

TRASHFUTURE - Dispatches from Hong Kong feat. Brian Hioe

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