The Blue Umbrella Revolution

The Blue Umbrella Revolution 

The blue umbrella revolution is the most attracting news of 2014 .It all started on Sept. 26, when hundreds of students gathered in a courtyard in Central Hong Kong, demanding an end to Chinese oppression and control.  China’s modern history with Hong Kong has been complicated, to say the least. For more than 150 years, Hong Kong belonged to Britain.  Then in 1997 Britain handed the thriving metropolis back to China in a political deal called “One Country, Two Systems,” which allowed Hong Kong to maintain some of the freedoms and independence mainland Chinese people do not have, such as freedom of the press and the right to assemble. The people of Hong Kong would even be allowed to elect their own leader in 2017.

But this summer China started to backpedal. It announced to Hong Kong that those elections could proceed only if the Chinese government selected all the candidates. To the people of Hong Kong, that meant they wouldn’t have much control over their own government after all.

The students hit the streets, and thousands from Hong Kong rushed to join them in the days that followed. The Chinese government and the protesters have dug in their heels, and negotiations have failed. Now counter-protests from pro-China residents are complicating the situation.

 Why the umbrellas?

Hong Kong students are currently protesting for more political freedom and have been using umbrellas to protect themselves from police pepper spray. The umbrellas became a symbol of the movement and gave it its nickname, the Umbrella Revolution. Though protest leaders say their campaign is not a revolution but a civil-disobedience movement, the name Umbrella Revolution has stuck.

 Main players

The movement was initiated by a group called Occupy Central With Love & Peace, led by Hong Kong University law professor Benny Tai. Tai’s original agenda was to stage a sit-in on Oct. 1 in Central — the city’s financial district — but he decided to begin a few days earlier to capitalize on political momentum after several students were pepper-sprayed and arrested. That heavy-handed police action also spurred parallel sit-ins in Causeway Bay and across the water in Kowloon.

There are also student groups separate from Occupy Central but with very similar aims. The two main ones are Scholarism, led by a precocious 17-year-old, Joshua Wong, and the Hong Kong Federation of Students, led by Alex Chow, 24, and his deputy, Lester Shum.

Demands of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters.

The main demand is full democracy. Protesters want the right to nominate and directly elect the head of the Hong Kong government, known as the chief executive.

China, which resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong after it stopped being a British colony in 1997, wants to screen who can stand for office. Beijing insists that candidates for the chief-executive position must be vetted by an electoral committee of tycoons, oligarchs and pro-Beijing figures.

As a secondary demand, protesters want the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign, which he has flatly refused to do. Leung is widely disliked because he is seen as prioritizing China’s interests over Hong Kong’s. He was also indirectly elected by an electoral college of just 1,200 voters, of which 689 voted for him. He is mockingly referred to as “689” after this feeble tally.

Why China just let Hong Kong have more freedom?

The Communist Party insists on maintaining political control. It isn’t about to let China’s most international city — which is already highly porous — choose its own leader, in case an opponent of the Communist Party gets elected as chief executive and becomes an advertisement to the rest of China of the possibility of democratic change.

At the same time, Beijing is aware that Hong Kong, because of its past as a British territory, is a special case. Hong Kong has an independent judiciary, common law, freedom of information and movement, a reasonably free press and so on. The Communist Party thinks this semiautonomy should be enough for Hong Kong, but a well-educated and well-traveled generation of young Hong Kongers wants more. They have always enjoyed Western-style freedoms and want the political enfranchisement that comes with it. They feel little in common with mainland Chinese and want Hong Kong to become politically autonomous — almost independent. These are the people at the forefront of the Umbrella Revolution.

 Hong Kong's public support 

No. Many, especially the older generation, are actively opposed to it because they are afraid of antagonizing China. They remember the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen uprising in Beijing in 1989, and point to the currently harsh political climate in China, and conclude that Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution is doomed. They argue that, by challenging the party, the students are only inviting Beijing to withdraw the freedoms that Hong Kong does have.

The older generation is also more concerned about economic stability. It’s already hard enough to make a living in hyper-expensive Hong Kong, they say, without sit-ins bringing the city to a halt, and all in the name of a cause that has no hope of winning anyway.

Nobody is really sure. But whether the current occupations end peacefully, with a student withdrawal, or violently, with riot police sent in, one thing is certain: Hong Kong’s democratic movement is only just getting started. It will come out of this with greater skills and experience and it will have groomed young leaders who know how to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and who know how to put across their cause in international media. For the party bosses in Beijing, that’s a big