The Revolution of Our Times: Hong Kong's History of Protest and the 2019 Protests

Few events captured the world's attention in 2019 like the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. What began in early 2019 as demonstrations in response to a proposed extradition law quickly became a larger pro-democracy movement that engulfed Hong Kong and received widespread international coverage. Antony Dapiran recounts these events and explores the effects of those protests in his most recent book, City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong. Dapiran, a lawyer and journalist based in Hong Kong and Beijing for over two decades, has covered Hong Kong protests at length. His body of work also includes the 2017 book, City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong, which focused on the 2014 Umbrella Movement.¹ City on Fire is not just a continuation of his earlier work, but also a chronological retelling of the 2019 protests and its extensive connections to Hong Kong's unique history of civil disobedience.

Dapiran opens City on Fire with a dramatic recount of an undated and tear gas-filled protest on the streets of Hong Kong. Such a scene was all too common during 2019, so close observers of the demonstrations are familiar with the events that Dapiran describes. Still, the vivid detail with which he describes both the physical and psychological effects of the tear gas on the protestors can only be written by someone who has lived those experiences. Dapiran's characteristic dramatic writing style persists throughout City on Fire. In recounting the immediate cause of the protests, Dapiran writes the tragic murder of Hong Kong national Poon Hiu-wing by her boyfriend in Taiwan was the "spark."² While Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) justified the extradition bill with Ms. Poon's untimely death, the public remained wary of any extradition agreement with Beijing due to the extrajudicial extraditions of Hong Kong booksellers in 2015. With both the tinder and the spark, the March 2019 eruption of protest in Hong Kong was all but inevitable.

City on Fire benefits from Dapiran's first hand experiences during the 2019 protests and his knowledge of the political and social nuances in Hong Kong. Dapiran began his career in corporate law in Hong Kong over two decades ago. He subsequently worked for a number of Hong Kong and Beijing-based law firms where he developed a keen understanding of both the Hong Kong and PRC legal systems.³ While he is well known for advising a number of large Chinese state-owned enterprises on initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong, he is also a commentator on Hong Kong politics, known for his criticisms of Beijing's policies towards the special administrative region. His extensive time in Hong Kong and first hand experiences of its recent history of protest bolster his primary argument that there is a through line between Hong Kong's antecedent protests and the 2019 anti-government protests. Illustrating this point, he argues the underlying causes for the 2019 protests can be traced to unresolved issues from the Umbrella Movement, and to lingering economic inequality.

Dapiran's experience and immersion in the protests also provides for incisive insights on how the 2019 protests learned from the shortcomings of the earlier Umbrella Movement. Specifically, Dapiran argues the failures of the central decision-making body of the Umbrella Movement prompted the 2019 protestors to "be water" and decentralize decision-making.⁴ This became clear to Dapiran as he watched a siege of the police headquarters during the 2019 protests and compared it to a similar but failed attempt he observed in the closing days of the Umbrella Movement. Instead of relying on a central figure with a loudspeaker to direct the protests (as seen during the Umbrella Movement), the 2019 protestors used online forums and secure messaging applications to coordinate regular protests and direct the wider movement.⁵ These technologies made the protest movement more resilient and difficult, if not impossible, for Hong Kong's police to contain...