Social Movements, Expressive Practices, and Political Culture In

THREE

Hybridity, Civility, and Othering

In Search of Political Identity and Activism in Hong Kong

WAI-MAN LAM

In the months after June 2019, the protests against the Extradition Bill in Hong Kong fundamentally altered the territory’s image as a place of political apathy. With leaderless, anonymous, and confrontational resistance, the protests also signified an important turn in social unity in Hong Kong, in which the opposing factions wo lei fei fei 和理非非 (peaceful, rational, nonviolent, and no profanity) and yong mo 勇武 (valiance) have stood and fought together without interfering with the other’s approach. As the protests signify important changes in civil society and the local culture, it is worth looking back at the cultural trajectories that have led to these developments. The political culture of Hong Kong has undergone significant changes in recent years, especially around the time of the Umbrella Movement, with the emergence of various brands of localism and activism, as well as enhanced social divisions due to different political beliefs and strategies in pursuing democratization in Hong Kong. Using the postcolonial concepts of hybridity and othering, this chapter reviews the development of political identity and political activism in Hong Kong from colonial times up to the period of the Umbrella Movement.1 It assumes that the hybrid political culture of Hong Kong nourished during colonial times has created room for the growth of a distinctive dual Hong Kong identity

1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the conference “Sunflowers and Um- brellas: Social Movements, Expressive Practices, and Political Culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong,” organized by the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, on 16 and 17 March 2018. The author wishes to thank Professor Thomas Gold and Profes- sor Sebastian Veg for their kind invitation, and the participants of the conference for their helpful comments. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

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after the territory’s return to China. The local Hong Kong identity would also unavoidably be internally inconsistent and disunited with strong tendencies to “otherize the Other” because of its multiple and truncated cultural sources. With a focus on the development of political activism, this chapter unravels the meaning and significance of the narratives of civil disobedience and yong mo as political strategies during the period of the Umbrella Movement in late 2014. I argue that the strategies of civil disobedience and yong mo, differentiated into negotiative activism, assertive-expressive activism, and yong mo activism, with their acceptance of confrontation and militancy as political strategies in pursuing democratization, signify important deviations in Hong Kong’s political culture marked by depoliticized inclinations and civility, and the dual identity of Hong Kong Chinese. The brands of activism and their dissensions are considered natural developments in a historically hybrid political culture. The budding tendencies of confrontation in the brands of activism at that time, nevertheless, articulated the activists’ collective reflections on the necessary actions to be taken to reinstate Hong Kong’s constitutional ideals and reconstruct the local Hong Kong identity. The following analysis is based on interviews with protest participants and various published sources.

Political Identity, Decolonialization, and Activism Whereas the process of identity construction takes place in every society, it is a particularly interesting subject of study in colonial and postcolonial societies (e.g., Anderson 1991; Derrida 1981; Smith 2001; Triandafylli- dou 1998). This chapter conceptualizes identity from a poststructuralist perspective as defining the “one who is” by identifying the “sameness” of individuals through which they are recognized as members of a community. In that, the process of self-definition necessarily defines the “one who is not,” or the Other, and how the oneself is different from the Other. The definition stresses the self-perception of the uniqueness of oneself. Depending on the perceived extent of threat to one’s identity, one may or may not feel the need to eliminate others because of the perceived uniqueness and difference. Scholars have pointed out that colonialism rules by both physical and ideological forces. To maintain control, colonizers develop systems or policies that enable their power to extend over the colonized territory and people. Ideologically, colonizers cultivate belief systems beneficial to their rule and maintain a hierarchy of cultural superiority. Of relevance here, such belief systems are often depoliticized and denationalized, and, in the name of saving souls, aim to make the indigenous people more

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“civilized”—that is, more like the colonizers. The term civility, in the European sense, refers to values such as dignity, respect, politeness, and tolerance. As some would argue, these values aim at producing a peaceful coexistence with others, including the colonizers (Haiven 2017). Thus, despite the ethical values, civility is an important ideological category that helps depoliticize the indigenous people and facilitate social stability in colonial rule. Citing Frantz Fanon, Glen Coulthard argues that the colonized are trained to elicit the colonizers’ recognition by adopting their standards. Revolutionary moments come only when the colonized reject the colonial politics of recognition and start to look upon and/or rebuild their own traditions as a source of self-empowerment. The struggle leads them to strive for a new sense of self and a postcolonial political order (Coulthard 2014; Haiven 2017). Decolonization thus involves conscious reflection, adoption, and/or rejection of the values, including civility, socialized by former colonizers and the reconstruction of one’s personal identity in terms of his or her relationship with politics and the nation. In reality, decolonization is always a complex story. Under British rule, Hong Kong was depoliticized and fed with a strong sense of political powerlessness. Civility and the rule of law had been cultivated by the British as important elements of the colonial order in the society. Although Hong Kong carries a tradition of political activism, political radicalism was minimal until the protests against the Extradition Bill in 2019 (e.g., Lam 2004; Szeto 2004). While political activism signifies the readiness to participate in politics, which may or may not aim at bring- ing about fundamental social and political changes, political radicalism refers to the beliefs, critiques, or actions of people that advocate complete and fundamental social and political changes to the current value systems and structures (Dictionary.com; Oxford Dictionaries). The latter entails the idea that political change has to “come from the root” (Vocabulary. com) and includes a readiness to participate in illegal, and sometimes violent, political action targeting thorough social and political changes (Moskalenko and McCauley 2009, 239–60). It should also be noted that radicalism is different from extremism. Being a contested concept, radicalism has been a signifier of mainly left-wing progressive, liberal, and prodemocracy political forces. It is affiliated with a progressive reformism rather than utopian extremism, “whose glorification of mass violence radicals generally rejected” (Bötticher 2017, 74). Although radicalism is critical of authoritarianism and outdated political order, it is selective on the use of political violence. It is also emancipatory in nature, relatively tolerant of different ideas, and seeks to extend human rights, as com- pared to extremism that considers violence as legitimate and conformity as desirable. As such, radicalism, although often stigmatized, bears no

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essential link to terrorism and may be considered as legitimate resistance to corrupt regimes (Bötticher 2017). Notably, Hong Kong was denationalized along with being depoliticized. The development of Chinese nationalism had been highly discouraged by the colonial government (e.g., Morris and Vickers 2015, 305–26). While the Western world was set as an exemplary to colonial Hong Kong, China was the opposite. By the time of the political handover in 1997, Hongkongers had already acquired a hybrid ethnic identity with elements of Chineseness, Westernness, localness, and cosmopolitanism. The Hong Kong identity, as described by Homi Bhabha, is a cultural hybridity that is far from univocal or unambiguous, and which has access to two or more sources. Such an identity is both internally contentious and unstable, but is facilitative of new outlooks (Bhabha 1994; 1996, 87–106). So, one may imagine, since the colonial identity construction was successful in Hong Kong, the reconstruction of a politicized, empowered, and national self has been difficult. Indeed, the series of political incidents that besieged the two decades of posthandover Hong Kong are the histories of Hongkongers making choices among different ethnic identities, and rediscovering their relationship with politics and how much they would value the key beliefs culturally constructed by the colonizers and selec- tively perpetuated by China, their new sovereign. Whereas colonial identity was hybridized by the time of the political handover, decolonization in Hong Kong has been a process of soul-searching and identity building. The emerging local identity during the Umbrella Movement placed more emphasis on being Hongkongese, as reflected in the discourse of the Hong Kong Nation, indicating that Hong Kong is neither Chinese nor British, but Hong Kong itself. Also, the different types and intensity levels of political action signify some Hongkongers’ determination to empower themselves and to pursue their aspired identities and values. Some political actions are confrontational and violent, embodying the rejection of civility as a basic standard of political strategy, which is to decolonize even the key civil society standards inherited from the British and which is upheld by the posthandover Hong Kong and Chinese governments in the name of “rule of law.” Importantly, these political actions represent the locals’ attempts to take control of their political destiny by self-redefinition, repo- liticization, and political self-empowerment—discouraged if not forbid- den by the governments both before and after the political handover. As argued by Bhabha, colonial hybridity is, interestingly, a strength in itself. It represents the third space, the in-betweenness, where the colonized straddle two cultures, attempting to acquire the ability to negotiate the differences between them, hence facilitating the emergence of new political identities and positions (Bhabha 1994; 1996, 87–106).

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Stigmatization of Political Activism and China as the Other

Hong Kong’s political stability during its colonial era has been called a miracle. Notwithstanding empirical and academic challenges, colonial rule in Hong Kong had never faced any significant radical attempts by Hongkongers to overthrow it. Previous studies show that the colonial government’s success was attained, to some extent, by projecting a fear of communist China as the Other. In the years and even decades after World War II, the local public imagination of communist China was commonly associated with negative terms such as poor, backward, politicized, politically unstable, and authoritarian whereas Hong Kong was civilized, prosperous, economically oriented, politically stable, and free. It was claimed that Hong Kong could flourish in its borrowed place as it had trodden down a path different from that of China (e.g., Cooper 2018, 94–113; Mathews, Ma, and Lui 2008). Notably, the colonial government’s attempts at denationalization were coupled with attempts at depoliticization, stereotyping politics as some- thing dangerous, bad, and associated with the communist subversion of peace and order in Hong Kong. As a result, the culture of depoliticization, embedded with extreme sensitivity about political involvement and a negative view of politics, functioned to limit or undermine collective mobilization by constructing a local identity that detached itself from politics but remained pinned to stability, freedom, and the rule of law. The view was supplemented by portraying economic and political developments as mutually exclusive (Lam 2004). The consequence was self-repressed political activism and minimal political radicalism in Hong Kong during this period; any political activism was commonly perceived as related to communist agitation. In reality, the most significant radical political activities in the 1950s and 1960s in Hong Kong were indeed about Chinese politics—for instance, the intense political struggles between the pro-Taiwan and pro-Beijing activists in the territory. These political sentiments led to the 1956 Riots during which pro-Kuomintang (pro-Taiwan) activists attacked pro-Beijing activists in the competition for supporters in the political labor movements, and the 1967 Riots that were started by pro-Beijing activists in Hong Kong, echo- ing mainland China’s Cultural Revolution. During this period, the colonial government played one side against the other by balancing the power of the pro-Beijing and pro-Taiwan factions, and deliberately repressed the popularity and influence of pro-Beijing elements in Hong Kong. The colonial government even successfully quelled the 1967 Riots with general public support and enhanced political legitimacy. Notably, those demanding relatively fundamental social reforms during this period, for example,

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the equal pay movement, employed moderate actions to achieve their goals even though the political demands were fundamental. Some political radicalism did survive among certain groups of young people and university students in the late 1960s and the 1970s. The influence of Trotskyists was evident in the radical youth movement, which adopted both a thorough critique and confrontational action that targeted colonial rule in Hong Kong, and capitalism and imperialism in general. The movement was short-lived, but its legacy was far-reaching, including the generation of several action-oriented local organizations such as the April Fifth Action Group. Another example is the well-known political strife between the pro-Beijing student camp and the social-action student camp in the 1970s, reflecting how radicalism in regard to Chinese politics had continued in the student movement. While the former aimed at promoting PRC nationalism and leaving the dark nature of colonial governance intact to expose itself in Hong Kong, the latter focused on chal- lenging the colonial government in order to introduce social and political reforms. The period thus saw the emergence of radical actions targeting the colonial government rather than communist China. Examples include the first and the second campaigns for Chinese to be an official language, and the Godber scandal in which university students demanded the colonial government implement measures to curb corruption, which led to the establishment of the Independent Commission against Corruption. As protests were utterly illegal at the time, it was common for the general public to criticize young people’s political actions. More often than not, activists were chastised as disruptive and parallels were drawn with the Red Guards in China, followed by an assertion that people in Hong Kong just wanted stability and prosperity. Meanwhile, the colonial government resorted to arresting people for illegally assembling and protesting using certain repressive colonial laws and regulations, such as the public order ordinance. These government actions prompted young activists to question why such laws deserved obedience. They even deliberately challenged these laws by simply breaking them (Lam 2004, 206–8). Subsequently, depoliticization facilitated an expanding development of the restricted concept of the rule of law in Hong Kong (Lam 2020). Despite limited data, it is obvious that popular understandings of the purposes of law in the 1980s and 1990s were incoherent. For instance, in a survey conducted by Siu-kai Lau and Hsin-chi Kuan in 1985, 68.1 percent of respondents stated that the goal of law was to protect citizens’ rights to choose any moral criteria, and 17.2 percent considered that the goal of law was to compel citizens to abide by society’s definition of right and wrong (Lau and Kuan 1988, 47). Their 1988 survey also found that 41 percent of the respondents chose law as the most important factor in maintaining social

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stability (135). The dilemma remained: if a law is unjust and infringes on people’s rights, would or should people still obey it? Overall, political activism was self-suppressed whereas political radicalism was minimal, short-lived, and mostly associated with Chinese politics and conceived as communist agitation. The colonial government might have encountered fundamental critiques, but it was rarely challenged. Paradoxically, colonial rule in Hong Kong was sheltered from political challenges through the stigmatization of activism and radicalism that was commonly associated with the prevalence of the conceptual Other—communist China. Hong Kong set out on the path of decolonization during the political transition from the 1980s to 1997. A more cosmopolitan and hybridized Chinese–Hongkonger–Westernized identity emerged as Hong Kong became more affluent. With the crackdown on the student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, China continued to be seen as the Other in the local public imagination. The democratic reforms of Chris Patten, the last Hong Kong governor, helped strengthen people’s identification with universal values such as freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, and thus filled up the local identity that emerged in the 1970s with more substantive contents. The cultural identity of Hongkongers became even more hybridized. This period also saw a growing number of political groups and expanding political participation that used a language of rights and freedom to ask the colonial government for more domestic reforms and greater protection before it left. There was increasing political activism undergirded by a language of universal values and operating on the principle of civility. Examples of significant local political movements in the transition period included protests against the Tiananmen crackdown in China, democratization reforms, and the campaign for Hongkongers’ right of abode in Britain after 1997. By the time of the political handover, Hongkongers generally had retained the cultural Chinese qua cosmopolitan identity. As suggested by Bhabha (1994), the hybridity of the colonial identity serves as the third space by which the colonized use what they have learned from the colonizers to shape their identities and fight for their interests.

Living with the Other and the Revival of Political Activism The return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 as a special administrative region marked the beginning of Hong Kong’s “living with the Other” period. In the post-1997 era, both the Hong Kong and Chinese governments started renationalization on all fronts. This included an emphasis on national education and setting hegemonic political standards of pa- triotism for the selection of the chief executive and principal officials of

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Hong Kong. There was also increasing criticism, if not condemnation, of Hongkongers by pro-Beijing media and Chinese officials as unpatriotic, ungrateful, jealous of the success of mainland Chinese, and blindly nos- talgic for the colonial past. The government’s attempts at renationalization triggered intense ideological conflicts between the Hong Kong and national identities. Polls found that a dual identity of Hongkonger and Chinese prevailed, except in the first few years after the political hand over and until 2014. The proportion of people who regarded themselves as Hongkonger has risen over the years and surpassed the dual identity as the most popular option since 2014 (e.g., Lam 2018a). After the political handover, there emerged not only political activism but also political radicalism with more confrontational actions. For example, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), formed in 2006, is distinguished for its socialist democratic beliefs and confrontational strategies. Its founder Kwok-hung Leung (Long Hair) had been jailed for burning the national flag and was disqualified from being a legislator. Together with the LSD, People Power, formed in 2011, is also notable for its political action. Party leader and legislator Raymond Yuk-man Wong carried out violent protest actions in the legislature, such as throwing a glass at then chief executive C. Y. Leung. At the same time, alternative and new media flourished in Hong Kong. Key opinion leaders on social media, Internet forums, community radio, and television programs have prompted a wave of drastic critiques of the Hong Kong government and communist China. The aggravated feeling of alienation among some has incited activism in Hong Kong, along with growing local efforts to explore, protect, and nourish political identities and beliefs. In the rising tide of politicization, there was an increasing number of participants, civic groups, and new media agents of varied backgrounds. Their political agendas and corre- sponding actions varied, ranging from the protest against the national security bill (2003) to the local heritage preservation movements (2006 and 2007), the anti–express rail protest (2009), the de facto referendum campaign (2010), the protest against the national education curriculum (2012), the Occupy Central Campaign, which turned into the Umbrella Move- ment (2014), the anti–parallel trading protests (2015), and the Mongkok unrest (2016). These campaigning and protesting strategies were action- oriented, diverse, and sizeable, ultimately demanding a truly democratic government, genuine political autonomy for Hong Kong, and even separation of Hong Kong from China. Among the political events mentioned here, the series of heritage protection movements since 2006, which employed occupation as a protest strategy, were the turning point that triggered more widespread street activism

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(Cheng 2016). In the protest against the demolition of the Star Ferry Clock Tower, activists staged hunger strikes and climbed up the clock tower to try to stop the demolition. These actions were unprecedented at the time. Similar performative actions were adopted in the anti–express rail protest during which protestors practiced a prostrating walk like that of Tibetan pilgrims and besieged the Legislative Council building where the debate on the rail budget was in process. Thereafter, confrontation and physical force became prevalent in the local protest scene with the protest against the national education curriculum in 2012 yielding apparent success. The government’s proposal to introduce moral and national education as a compulsory subject suffered a major setback and was withdrawn after ninety thousand protestors rallied outside the government headquarters. Political activism in Hong Kong has been on the rise since 1997, along with several significant changes. First, while the Chinese authorities and the Hong Kong government remain the most important targets of challenge, new targets have also emerged: mainland Chinese tourists, property owners, and Chinese immigrants. Since 2003, as the Chinese authorities have become more overtly involved in Hong Kong’s affairs, China as the Other has been inextricably tied to the developing activism in Hong Kong. Second, instead of being a subversive tool of the Chinese communists, political activism has been taken by some as a justified means for political struggle, fighting for democracy, expression of political emotions and identities, and even public education. The culture of depoliticization was fundamentally questioned as the Occupy Trio (Benny Tai, Kin-man Chan, and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming) proposed the use of civil disobedience to strive for genuine democracy. China’s 8.31 (31 August) Decision in 2014 came as the last straw. By subjecting the future elections of Hong Kong’s chief executive to the screening of a small-circle nomination committee, it was believed that no genuine democracy could take place in Hong Kong. Locals widely interpreted the act as a betrayal of the promise of the Hong Kong Basic Law and the denial of their very identity, notably their constitutional ideals. The result was the Umbrella Movement, which signified a fundamental questioning of the culture of political self-restraint, a refram- ing of the belief of the rule of law and the local identity, and a reclaiming of constitutional ideals. In what follows, the features of different brands of activism, including embedded political ideals and views on political action, civility, and Hong Kong identity, will be analyzed.

Negotiative Political Activism The act of civil disobedience was unprecedented in Hong Kong before the Occupy Central Campaign. In March 2013, the Occupy Trio called for

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an electoral system complying with international standards and contain- ing local deliberation and authorization in realizing genuine universal and equal suffrage in Hong Kong. To achieve the goal, they advocated for civil disobedience protests, which though illegal were meant to be nonviolent. The campaign consisted of a series of actions: signing a covenant, deliberation day, citizen authorization, and civil disobedience. One action followed by the next would be taken when talks between the authorities and Hong Kong citizens failed (Occupy Central Manifesto 2014). Based on this plan, the campaign organized deliberation days and referendums, which led to arguments over the relevance and effectiveness of the campaign on the one hand and protest actions for the same demands by other players on the other. Instead of the planned course of events, the Occupy Campaign was kicked off one day early when tens of thousands of people gathered at Admiralty after the police used pepper spray to disperse protestors outside the government headquarters. The occupation in Admiral- ty and subsequent occupations in other parts of Hong Kong were named the Umbrella Movement. It is evident that the Occupy Central Campaign represented a significant moment of reflection on one’s relations with politics. Instead of clinging to the culture of depoliticization, the campaign organized direct protest against the authoritative decision of the Chinese government to not grant Hong Kong genuine democracy as promised. It also embodied fundamental critique and confrontational action against the authorities. Civil disobedience became the participants’ tool to assert their rights and realize their constitutional ideals. The campaign also provided new conceptual categories to reshape the conventional public understanding of civility and the rule of law. As discussed earlier, Hongkongers generally stood by the principle of obeying the law, the lower end of the concept of the rule of law. The justification for an act of civil disobedience would thus require the justification of the right to break the law in the first place. Despite the different interpretations of the rule of law, Benny Tai’s “tiered approach,” which integrated both formal and substantive notions, had driven the Occupy Central Campaign and the Umbrella Movement (e.g., Craig 1997, 467–87; Tai 2017, 141–62; Waldron 2016).2 According to Tai, there are four distinguishable levels of the concept. The first level is the existence of the law, meaning that the

2 The formal notion addresses the principles and manner by which the law is adminis- tered, and the required procedures and institutions. The substantive notion explicates that other than the principles and procedures of the administration of the law, the scope of the rule of law should also embrace the protection of individual rights, justice, and democracy. The general protection of rights and contents of government policies thus matter in achiev- ing the ideals of the rule of law.

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major activities in the society are covered by law. The second level requires that government officials and citizens are bound by law and abide by the law, implying the necessity of an effective mechanism to ensure the rule of law. The third level is about limitation, which means that governmental powers are subject to legal limitation. The fourth level is justice attained through law in which fundamental rights, such as procedural rights, civil rights, political rights, and social and economic rights, are to be protected. Citing Brian Tamanaha (2004), Tai further argued that the rule of law includes a belief in legality, a law-compliant attitude, some critical attitudes, and a rights consciousness. Based on the tiered approach, the high- est notion of the rule of law is constituted by a basket of ideas about law and government. If these ideas are not fulfilled, citizens may then exer- cise their right of civil disobedience but with full knowledge of the legal implications. By proposing the concept of the rule of law, Tai successfully articulated that the act of civil disobedience broadened the understanding of the rule of law and enriched the imagination of political repertoires of Hongkongers. Rather than depoliticization, this form of activism suggests the necessity of deviation from the principle of civility and adoption of civil disobedience as political action. Paradoxically and strategically, this form of activism was intended to be peaceful, self-restrained, and even rational. Its whole narrative was crafted within a framework of civility. As stated, the ultimate aim of the campaign was not occupation but to increase the protestors’ bargaining power and press the government into dialogue. The deliberation days were aimed at educating participants to carefully consider their level of involvement and also to empower the campaign through soliciting more support for the act of civil disobedience. Campaign organizers stressed that their actions would be totally nonviolent and therefore no physical contact or force would be employed, and that civil disobedience would be the last resort only when all other legal means had been exhausted. Indeed, the organizers were ready to compromise if their basic demands were met. According to Kin-man Chan, the campaign was meant to be a peaceful movement upholding a culture of negotiation. To quote: “If we did not use a peaceful movement [to push for negotiation] . . . no one would want to negotiate anymore and violent guerrilla actions would occur.” Benny Tai admitted that some people disliked his ideas of deliberation days or referendums because such actions were not radical enough (K. Cheng 2017), and political confrontation was proposed to save Hong Kong from further cleavage. Civility, rationality, and self-restraint thus featured the Trio’s justification for the act of civil disobedience and their negotiative activism. As such, the Trio’s proposals seemed to share an affiliation with progressive reformism. The fact that the Trio had put so much emphasis

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on nonviolence is worthy of further exploration, which seems unique to Hong Kong’s social movements and depoliticized culture. With regard to the constructions of Hong Kong identity, negotiative activism attempts to realize certain Western democratic ideals and universal values, including the rule of law, deliberation, consensus, and autonomy in Hong Kong. Its narrative has the staples of cosmopolitanism and civility, and is built upon Western conceptions. What the protesters aspired to achieve resembled the democratic and hybrid identity intentionally and unintentionally cultivated by the colonial Hong Kong government since the 1990s. What was different may be that negotiative activism attempted to embrace all those who were willing to talk. Despite its challenge to the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, it did not otherize them, as the Trio had emphasized their intent for dialogue and negotiation. Its narrative had attempted to include rather than to exclude, which acted against the part of the psyche of the local political culture that proposes confrontation. While the moral and constitutional ideals of this activism are admirable, its paradoxical nature lessened its appeal. Some considered this “civil disobedience 1.0” (Chan and Ng 2017), not radical enough to pressure the governments. Moreover, its civilized, rational, and negotiative nature had held it back from becoming the vent for the repressed anger, hatred, fear, and sense of alienation and disempowerment some Hongkongers had accumulated during the process of decolonization and recolonization. The direct result was the “civil disobedience 2.0” of the Umbrella Movement.

Assertive-Expressive Political Activism Dubbed “civil disobedience 2.0” (Chan and Ng 2017; Lian 2015), assertive-expressive political activism refers to the forms of critique and action employed by Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Stu- dents (HKFS) during the Umbrella Movement. Their actions, by nature, are inarguably more confrontational. Scholarism has gained popularity and a political legacy through its youthful activism and leadership, as well as its success in the fight against the national education curriculum. The HKFS and Scholarism, dissatisfied with the Occupy Trio’s delay in actually starting the declared occupation, called for class boycotts before the final breakout of the Umbrella Movement. They were the ones who broke into Civic Square on 26 September 2014 and effectually sparked the movement. Moreover, Joshua Wong, the leader of Scholarism, also held a hunger strike toward the end of their struggle. They were highly and openly critical of the 8.31 Decision. Both student organizations insisted on civil nomination as one of the methods to elect the chief executive, reflecting their strong demands for realizing constitutional ideals in Hong Kong.

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This brand of activism was relatively more assertive of Hongkongers’ individual and collective political empowerment. In terms of identity, the student groups (essentially Scholarism and the HKFS) during the Umbrella Movement had clearly distinguished themselves from the Occupy Trio and traditional democrats as well as the yong mo faction. These parties, together with the authorities and the proestablishment camp, were perceived by the student groups as the Other. Tactics-wise, they considered the Trio’s civil disobedience actions and the traditional democrats too moderate. They regarded nonresistance to possible police arrests in the protests as too passive. Instead, they proposed actively using their bod- ies and roadblocks to obstruct police action during protests. While they maintained the principles of nonviolence and minimum confrontation, they would proactively assert their space in the encounters with the police by moving forward slowly and with their hands up. This gesture was both assertive and expressive of one’s power. In this tactic, “activists refrain themselves from resorting to violence while pushing nonviolent action to the threshold. In this way, on the one hand, the widest spectrum of ‘specta- tors’ of the protests would be gathered, and possibly ultimately triggering disproportionate violence on the side of the authorities on the other hand. The dissent against the authorities so aroused could then be transformed into public support of the movement and a greater empathetic participation in subsequent quasi-violent actions” (Lian 2015; my translation). Moreover, this activism had not addressed, as much as the Trio did, the legal and moral implications of participation in breaking the law. Dur- ing the Umbrella Movement, the students disagreed with the Trio’s strategy to call off the occupation if the government refused to negotiate with them and their demands went in vain. They also disagreed that another de facto referendum triggered by the resignation of pan-democratic legisla- tors would be an alternative protest method. As dialogue and compromise failed, Scholarism and the HKFS parted with the Trio (Chan and Ng 2017), and with their ideas of civility and nonviolence. Thus, far from being depoliticized, the student groups, from the beginning of the movement, demonstrated a strong sense of political self-empowerment and significant breakthroughs in their standards of civility and choice of political tactics, ranging from accommodative to relatively confrontational ones. This helps explain the ever-heightened acceptance of militant protest strategies by both the young people and the wo lei fei fei faction, which led to a growing and steadfast civil society unity in the protests against the Extradition Bill in 2019. That said, it should be noted that this camp of Occupy Central participants still distanced themselves from the yong mo faction. First, like the Trio, they acknowledged the possible positive effects of civil disobedience

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on civil awakening. For example, to quote Alex Chow, former secretary- general of the HKFS, who explained why he participated in the rehearsal of the Occupy Central Campaign on 2 July 2014, “With regard to ‘2 July Occupy Admiralty,’ which was in effect a rehearsal of Occupy Central, HKFS followed its practice and did not apply for ‘Notification of Pub- lic Meeting / Public Procession’ under the Public Order Ordinance. The intent was to kick-start civil disobedience . . . and to prepare the public in overcoming the fear of civil disobedience.” Civil disobedience, said Chow, was “mystified by the Trio, and stigmatized by the proestablishment faction, while only students were ready to step forward to rehearse in front of the public, and this is a very unhealthy development for the social movement” (Au 2014; my translation). Echoed by Billy Jing-En Fung, former president of the University of Hong Kong Student Union, “When the ‘protectors of law’ are not functioning, civil disobedience serves as ‘the last resort’ against authoritarianism. Civil disobedience as a means embeds the public urge for collective values, and by no means does it equate with revolution, nor does it effectually overturn the authorities. Civil disobedience is calling upon the people of Hong Kong, and the global society concerned at large, to for- mulate into solidarity, putting forward demands to the local and central governments” (Au 2014; my translation). Second, the activism proposed by yong mo activists, one without a baseline, appeared too unrealistic and ineffective in face of the hardline authorities and the generally conservative Hongkongers (Cheung 2014). Different from the yong mo activists, Scholarism and the HKFS would call themselves social movement activists rather than revolutionaries. To quote Joshua Wong’s views of yong mo as an example: “Are you sure about staging revolutions? Are there resources to buy arms necessary for revolutions when Hong Kong is not even able to equip itself with pistols? Where is the room and who are the financiers for violent revolution? Besides, one without the determination to fight until death is not qualified to call oneself a revolutionist” (Meme News 2014). Wong frankly admitted that he was not prepared to give up his life and that “I have no idea if the localist opinion leaders would insist on fighting for independence even at the expense of personal safety. What I could do and would only do in the movement is whatever possible but within the principles, baselines, and personal capacities. . . . I would rethink my action if I would be charged with rioting and sentenced to eight years of imprisonment” (Yuen 2016; my translation). The pragmatic attitudes and self-restraint in this brand of activism partly explains the conflicts between the leaders of the Umbrella Move- ment and the yong mo activists in the clearance of the Admiralty site. Yong

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mo activists resented the leaders’ call for nonresistance and their condemnation of those who attempted to clash with the police (Cheung 2014). Ironically, the delusion surrounding the concept of martyrdom for Hong Kong, as stated by Wong and others, had evolved in the post–Umbrella Movement years. In 2019, protestors against the Extradition Bill shouted out loud “if we burn, you burn with us” and that “one after another we would rise to fight.” Yong mo activism and the local political culture have been rekindled. It is unclear how the assertive and confrontational inclinations of the Umbrella Movement gradually evolved into expressive dispositions with art creation, performance, talks, and singing as the movement significantly expanded. As An Tu observed, the movement became expressive and artistic more than instrumental as it gradually developed (Veg 2016). Even though the original instrumental demands the occupiers made had already failed, the movement was sustained without further specific demands. The “claims” displayed in slogans, artwork, and so on at the occupation sites were only expressions of the broader democratic nature of the movement itself (An 2014; Veg 2016, 699). Indeed, the movement was peaceful, orderly, and creative. In the illegally occupied areas, protestors demonstrated good order and morals, voluntarily clearing garbage and building communal rapport to keep the area neat and tidy. Protestors further beautified the occupied area with artwork and built staircases, study corners, battery charging stations, first aid stations, a files and archives service, and even movie showrooms. The occupied area in Admiralty in particular was described as comparable to a socialist utopia (Cheung 2014). One may even surmise that the ways the movement was sustained vividly reflected its embedded tendencies of self-restraint, civility, a sense of political powerlessness, and pragmatism. As rightly captured by Veg, the Umbrella Movement, like the public sphere in the nineteenth century, “became depoliticized and impoverished, as critical discussion bowed to cultural consumption” (2016, 692). Discursively, the assertive-expressive radicalism deployed a language of justice and constitutional ideals similar to the Occupy Trio’s. Differently from the Trio, it set up more Others in its criticisms, which included the Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong government, the proestablishment camp, the traditional democrats, the Trio, and yong mo activists. It was not as inclusive as the Trio’s narratives and was more inclined to endorse an advanced notion of the rule of law and carry out direct action. In this perspective, it represented a greater deviation from Hong Kong’s depoliticized cultural past. As analyzed earlier, this activism was assertive as well as pragmatic and expressive. One may say the activists wanted to

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straddle a middle way, but the balance was difficult to gauge. This dif- ficulty may partly explain the depoliticized turn in the latter period of the Umbrella Movement. With regard to its identity narratives, this activism emphasized the uniqueness of Hong Kong and the importance in preserv- ing Hongkongers’ cosmopolitan, democratic, Westernized, and diverse (hybrid) core values against the encroachment of the Other, especially China. It directly challenged Beijing’s 8.31 Decision and aimed at achiev- ing genuine democratic self-determination locally through nonviolent actions. It embodied a kind of “civic localism,” reflected in the political platforms of Demosistō, which was formed by the former leaders of Schol- arism in 2016 (Lam 2018b, 83–84).

Yong Mo Activism The resistance strategies of yong mo have been associated with the various brands of localism in Hong Kong. Although localist organizations, such as Hong Kong Indigenous, the Hong Kong National Party, Youngspiration, Civic Passion, and Hong Kong Resurgence, have different political agendas for Hong Kong, they are all highly critical of the Chinese authorities, Chinese nationalism, mainland visitors, and mainland immigrants. More- over, they also share views on the separation of Hong Kong from China and use confrontational strategies, including violence (Lam 2018b, 72–93). The last point implies that the localist strategies are no longer self-restrained or operate on the principle of civility. Rather, they are a drastic disjuncture from the past, aiming to challenge the authorities, preserve Hong Kong’s uniqueness, promote its autonomy and even independence, and achieve genuine democracy. In this sense, they adopted a new Hong Kong identity and political tactics by radical negations of their perceived Other and the conventional tactics. The Other variously included the authorities, the proestablishment camp, mainland visitors and immigrants, traditional democrats, the Trio, the student groups, apathetic Hongkongers, and even some localists themselves. The conventional tactics were denounced as wo lei fei fei (peaceful, rational, nonviolent, and no profanity). Paradoxically, this activism aimed to achieve constitutional ends via unconstitutional means. It is commonly believed that even before the Umbrella Movement, Civic Passion, People Power, and Wan Chin (founder of the Hong Kong Resurgence) promoted militant street politics. The localist organizations, despite differences in their justifications, converged on their opposition to negotiation, civil disobedience, and the Trio’s conception of the rule of law. Instead, they advocated militant protest struggles against the police and attacks on government facilities. They

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did not buy into the legal or moral justification for prosecution of illegal political acts and suggested protestors wear masks during yong mo. During the Umbrella Movement, the yong mo faction pushed a “no-leader movement.” They criticized the leadership of Scholarism and the HKFS as weak and urged decentralized decision-making at the occupation areas. No longer abiding by the principle of civility, they promoted the elevation of resistance and confrontation (Cheung 2014). There are several justifications for the escalation of more direct action by this brand of activism. First, for the yong mo activists, civility and peaceful resistance, as core elements in Hong Kong’s political culture, were no longer appealing. Like any discourse that seeks a break from the past, this narrative began with setting up a key target of challenge. Wo lei fei fei was depicted as the resistance strategy of traditional democrats that was rigidly bound by civility. Traditional democrats, mainly the Democratic Party, were seen as part of the establishment. The localists criticized traditional democrats for repetitive protest strategies, such as peaceful dem- onstration, signature campaigns, and letter petitions, over the past twenty years. Wo lei fei fei was considered ineffective and even fake resistance. Not only was peaceful resistance ineffective in realizing democracy, the strategy was also unrealistic in the situation of Hong Kong. To the localists, peaceful resistance can be effective only in Western democratic societies where basic human rights are protected. Hong Kong, however, is facing an authoritarian Chinese regime that is much stronger. Activ- ists thus need to reformulate their strategies and resort to militant resistance. The localists referenced Nelson Mandela to justify the effectiveness of militancy. Although Mandela was a symbol of the peaceful movement against apartheid in South Africa, he was also the leader of armed resistance and the founder of the Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto weSizwe), which endorsed the strategies of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and open revolution. It was the combined efforts of both peaceful and militant means that brought about the success of the anti-apartheid movement (In-Media News 2017; Luk 2016). Second, in this activism, yong mo was set up as a practical and effective alternative to peaceful resistance. For instance, Ray Toi-yeung Wong, founder of Hong Kong Indigenous, argued that yong mo could liberate people from their self-restraint of nonviolence and political alienation, and thus regain their power to fuel an effective opposition. In this sense, yong mo was an important step helping to break the cultural spell of depoliticized civility and restore political self-empowerment in Hong Kong (Stand News 2017f). Similar views that yong mo would make a breakthrough in Hong Kong’s political stagnation by exposing all sorts of conflicts were common among the localists. To quote such a view:

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What is needed most in Hong Kong now? How can one overcome the political stagnation in Hong Kong? To me the only thing is violence, civil violence! Such violence does not necessarily bring about success to the revolution; rather, it would cause it failure, pushing Hong Kong into an ultimate political stagnation. Having said that, the only means to break the stagnation and find a way out is violence, and nothing other than violence. Violence magnifies all dilemmas and exposes all hidden conflicts! (Lee 2015; my translation)

Meanwhile, yong mo was conceived by some localists as the last resort to offer Hong Kong practical help at a critical moment of vulnerability to China. For instance, to Wan Chin, Hong Kong was like Poland under the Nazi rule. The localists would need to buy time to win substantive achievements for Hong Kong’s autonomy or independence as quickly as possible (Stand News 2017d). Third, yong mo was given moral meaning to legitimize its importance. The action was just because the governments were authoritarian and lacked legitimacy. For instance, Wan Chin argued that because the Chi- nese rule was despotic, people were justified to use force. He said: “Peo- ple are entitled to resort to violence in fighting against totalitarian rule and authoritarianism. If not taking up guns and swords, one has to at least obstruct the functioning of tyranny and halt social order to cause the authorities the biggest headache and to awaken the citizens at large” (Chin 2011; my translation). Similar arguments were made by Hong Kong Indigenous. To quote Edward Tin-kei Leung’s deliberation on the outbreak of the Mongkok civil unrest:

[T]he hardline and arrogant authorities have miscalculated their legitimacy in overpowering the civility. . . . The SAR government blatantly alienates the people, oppresses the people. The people are the founda- tion of any government, and it is impossible for the authorities to control everything in society. No government could stand and not be overturned when the people step forward to fight. What happened on Lunar New Year Day [the Mongkok civil unrest] signaled a red light to the authorities that they must stop. (Youtube 2016; my translation)

Ray Toi-yeung Wong stated that they would not back off even though they were labelled as mobs. He said: “The movement to recover Hong Kong was severely criticized in the beginning, and all along we have been labeled by the authorities, media, and citizens as rioters destroying social order. Yet our faith is unfailing. In face of a government that despises the people and ignores our demands, the people are left with no choice but to defend our home and in our own way” (Hong Kong Indigenous 2016; my translation).

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Meanwhile, yong mo was regarded as just since it represented significant historic moments of political awakening in Hong Kong. For some localists, such as Chung-ching Kwong, yong mo represented responsibil- ity and sacrifice. She used to condemn “yellow ribbons” (huangsi dai 黃絲帶), leftards (zuojiao 左膠), pan-democrats (fanmin 泛民), and “Kongform- ists” (Gangzhu 港豬) as irresponsible. To her, the only proper thing to do was to “awaken with the readiness to sacrifice, take up your responsibil- ity toward Hong Kong, and step forward and yong mo and fight” (Stand News 2017e; my translation). For localist organizations like Hong Kong Indigenous and the Hong Kong National Party, Hong Kong should be decolonized, take charge of its own fate, and elect its own government. Radical action would be needed to achieve this. Hong Kong remained a colony without any grip on its own destiny. Hongkongers had no say on its return to China; it was the British and the Chinese who decided the fate of Hong Kong. In terms of power structure and appropriation of interests, Hong Kong people are not allowed to choose their own government (Radio Free Asia Cantonese 2017a). Ideologically, some had attempted to free Hongkongers from a colonial cultural bias and reclaim the positive meaning of violence (physical force) in Chinese culture. The ideological resource used, from Chinese tradition, was distinctive from that of other localists who tended to de- sinicize their identity and justify their actions with Western language. For example, Wan Chin opposed wo lei fei (peaceful, rational, and nonviolent) and reconstructed it as wo, lei, yong mo (peaceful, rational, courageous, and valiant). He quoted Confucius as saying that

mo [valor] is the courage to realize wisdom and compassion; like Sun Yat-sen’s determined revolts and Jesus sacrificing himself, all are a kind of violence. It was indeed brainwashing associating mo with irrationality. The mo in yong mo, the mo in valor and in righteousness, is interpreted as “violence,” but wo lei fei is but a curse to any meaningful revolt as if “nonviolence” is the only criterion for peace and rationality. Violence is ruled out as nonpeaceful and nonrational in all circumstances. Nevertheless, the underprivileged should not be denied the ultimate resort to violence once peaceful means fail them. (Chin 2011; my translation)

The localists proposed yong mo because peaceful resistance strategies no longer worked in Hong Kong, and yong mo was considered practical, effective, and morally just and legitimate. This activism represented a significant deviation from Hong Kong’s culture of depoliticized civility at an important moment in the city’s process of decolonization. Unlike the previous two narratives, this activism was discursively hybrid. Its radical

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critique and radical action are justified on both pragmatic and moral grounds, encompassing both Chinese and Western ideas. The reinterpre- tation of the value of mo (violence) suggested by Wan Chin was grounded on a Chinese cultural perspective that was somehow hardly appealing to all the localists. Another common justification was the example of the Spear of the Nation that was based on Western experience. However, the successful revolutionary experience of the African National Congress is yet to be fully analyzed in relation to the situation of Hong Kong. The hybridity, obviously, was constituted by the localists’ various proposals for Hong Kong and the embedded Hong Kong identity. From the proposal of Hong Kong becoming an autonomous city-state within China based on its acclaimed Huaxia culture (modernized Chinese culture inherited and developed by Hong Kong) to Hong Kong independence based on its civic and cosmopolitan traditions, the localists demanded protection and recognition of legitimate political status for the uniqueness of Hong Kong’s identity and culture (Lam 2018b). It is obvious that the yong mo activism and its pro–Hong Kong independence platforms embodied a lot of anger, hatred, and anxiety as part of the response to the political crisis. As such, the narrative had a host of enemies in defining a genuine Hong Kong identity, including the Chinese authorities, the mainland visitors, mainland immigrants, traditional democrats, Scholarism, the HKFS, apathetic Hongkongers, and some of the localists themselves (Stand News 2017a; 2017b). The process of otherizing was rapid and unpremeditated, demonstrating an identity politics driven by an urge to keep defining and redefining oneself and the localists’ sense of urgency for themselves and Hong Kong. That said, like other brands of activism discussed earlier, yong mo activism originated from the hybrid Hong Kong culture. While it looks different from the negotiative and assertive-expressive activism, it is hardly separable from them. Being a militant activism, yong mo activism is strate- gic, assertive, and expressive. While militant acts are strategically used for a greater success in pursuing democratization in Hong Kong, they are also assertive actions to affirm Hongkongers’ political power and the senti- mental and symbolic expressions of the commitment to sacrifice for Hong Kong as opposed to creating a real disturbance to everyday life. Yong mo activism is an elevated expression of negotiative and assertive-expressive activism. With hindsight, the affinity of the different types of activism that emerged in the 2010s helps explain the growing unity of various camps of activists in the 2019 protests against the Extradition Bill.3

3 The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the insightful comments here.

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The localists’ yong mo activism and their proindependence political identity have been criticized as half-justified and theoretically unarticu- lated. Indeed, in the period of the Umbrella Movement, the conceptual contents of this activism have yet to be fully articulated. In order to dem- onstrate the moral value of yong mo and its related political proposals, critics thought the localists needed to search for the right moral language and ideological traditions. Judging from the depoliticized tradition and rarity of political radicalism in Hong Kong, such criticisms could be easily understood. Yet, from an outsider’s perspective, Elton Wing-ching Chan’s interpretation of the moral imperative of the independence movement in Hong Kong and also its strategy of yong mo deserves further thought. To quote him:

Supporters of independence, aware of the reality constraints and in full knowledge of the low chance of success, are still supporting independence. . . . The independence movement is a call of conscience on the part of those Hong Kong people totally disappointed with the Chinese government for breaking its promise of “one country two systems.” More importantly, why are more and more pragmatic Hongkongers turning to empathize with an apparently unrealistic independence movement? The independence of Hong Kong has evolved into a “moral imperative” transcending linear calculations of interests. (Chan 2016; my translation)

However, the development of yong mo in Hong Kong has certainly been difficult, if not impossible, because of both political and cultural constraints. By its very nature, no state would stand for its sovereignty being challenged. The government’s series of measures to disqualify proindependence or proautonomy legislative candidates and even elected legisla- tors, and its introduction of the national anthem bill to the legislature in early 2019, well illustrated this point. Also, the localist camp was far from united, and not every localist would live up to his or her proclaimed com- mitments. Culturally, Hongkongers are criticized for their colonial men- tality and lack of “resistance subjectivity,” a criticism commonly held by the localists. As stated by Edward Tin-kei Leung:

Hongkongers have been colonized for such an extended period. In the ab- sence of an effectual decolonization process, we are lacking an adequate sense of self. Unlike Taiwanese, whose sense of self is strong and steadfast to defend their homeland. . . . So, what does decolonization mean for Hong Kong? It is when the people of Hong Kong reclaim their collective sovereignty, when power is firmly in the hands of Hong Kong people. Not until then will Hong Kong be an entity in its own right. (Radio Free Asia Cantonese 2017b; my translation)

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This resistance subjectivity would be important if Hongkongers still aspired to resist. As Po-chung Chow observed:

The formation of the subject of resistance evolves in the prolonged course of resistance. To this end, it contains countless invisible struggles of countless real individuals. The struggles include how to overcome the fear of possible violence against law enforcement officials, the dynamics of empowerment and solidarity in the process of actions, and a redefining of the value of one’s own life. Essentially, the construction of the subject of resistance is a key condition to the expansion and sustainability of the democratic movement. (Chow 2015; my translation)

Strategically, Brian Kai-ping Leung, one of the editors of Hong Kong Nationalism (Undergrad 2015), pointed out the weakness of localist camps continually radicalizing themselves. He said: “The tactic to further rad- icalize and further extrematize to arouse growing public support is no longer working. It is pointless for localist groups to continue otherizing all other factions. Rather, they have to rebuild the trust with these organizations such that they can grow and develop” (Stand News 2017a; my translation). Probably because of these constraints, yong mo strategies were adjusted afterward as witnessed in the protests against the Extradition Bill. For instance, some suggested that multiple methods needed to be used, including seeking support from international communities (Stand News 2017c). How to understand this important break or outgrowth in Hong Kong’s political cultural tradition? How to reasonably evaluate the con- tribution of yong mo activism to transforming the depoliticized and civility culture in Hong Kong, the local identity, and the territory’s path of decolonization? How has it led to the protests against the Extradition Bill in 2019, which fundamentally altered the political culture and future of Hong Kong? These are questions deserving deep reflection.

Conclusion In the by-election of the Hong Kong Legislative Council following the Mongkok civil unrest in early 2016, Edward Tin-kei Leung received more than 66,000 votes. Then in the Legislative Council election in September 2016, the two candidates from Youngspiration together received almost 64,000 votes. The five candidates of another localist political alliance, Civic Passion–Proletariat Political Institute–Hong Kong Resurgence Or- der, gained more than 154,000 votes. The social influence of the localist candidates was indeed undeniable. In addition, a study conducted in

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2016 found an unexpectedly high degree of acceptance for various confrontational tactics. For instance, 33 percent of respondents were “strongly accepting” or “accepting” of participation in rallies, petitions, marches, and protests not approved by the police; 19.4 percent accepted occupying public spaces; 16.1 percent accepted occupying government buildings; 14.1 percent accepted throwing objects at officials or those with opposing views; 8.5 percent accepted attacking government buildings; 7.9 percent accepted calling people to use provocative bodily tactics; 7 percent accepted assaulting the police; and 6.9 percent accepted resorting to violence (Lam 2018a). There is no doubt that political activism and yong mo have left a mark on the local culture. Does this mean that Hongkongers’ support for the rule of law has lessened or evolved to the Western standard? Research indicates that the mean score of support for a higher-level notion of the rule of law has actually increased from 2012 to 2016. And the support for the rule of law is significantly correlated with the respondents’ support for the Umbrella Movement. This implies that some likely see the Umbrella Movement as a manifestation of the principle of the higher level of the rule of law (Lam 2020). All these findings together may even signify that some Hongkongers, like the yong mo activists, perceive confrontational tactics as a good way to realize a higher-level notion of the rule of law and to respond to calls for justice in Hong Kong. In conclusion, this chapter unravels the meaning and significance of the narratives of civil disobedience and yong mo as political strategies around the period of the Umbrella Movement in late 2014, with reference to the development of negotiative activism, assertive-expressive activism, and yong mo activism. It argues that the hybrid political culture nourished since colonial times has facilitated the growth of these brands of activism. They represent the attempts to recover Hong Kong’s constitutional ideals and future, and to reconstruct the Hong Kong identity based on common aspirations. Their political tactics are also important breaks from Hong Kong’s depoliticized political culture embodying a common belief in self- restraint and civility. While the Trio’s negotiative activism was more affiliated with progressive reformism, both the assertive-expressive activism of the HKFS and Scholarism and the yong mo activism of the localists embodied serious attempts of political emancipation from the self-imposed spell of depoliticized civility as well as authoritarian rule. As shown in this chapter’s analysis, the developing political activism and radicalism were inspiring even though the conceptual and ethical contents of some brands could be further articulated. Their soul-searching purpose, nevertheless, remains incomplete due to the authorities’ various measures to contain and crush the protesters, notably the youthful ones with the power to threaten national unity. The brands of political activism

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discussed here have undergone challenges, from dissolving themselves to toning down their political platforms. This chapter serves as a record of a particular twist in Hong Kong’s political history before it reaches the point of no return.

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