Hong Kong protesters demand democratic rights

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As we go to press, Hong Kong is wit­ nessing the most massive street pro­ tests in its history. Many thousands of people have stood up to police re­ pression, and others have constantly added to their number to maintain an Occupy-style presence in streets sur­ rounding the financial district. The protests have become known as the “Umbrella Revolution” for the um­ brellas that demonstrators have em­ ployed to help shield their faces from tear gas.

The protesters’ main demand is for democratic suffrage rights—for citizens of Hong Kong to have the full ability to choose their chief executive, in opposition to the Aug. 29 edict of the Chinese government that would require any candidate for the office to be vetted by Chinese authorities. The protesters are also demand­ ing the resignation of the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, since he has presided over the po­ lice attacks on the demonstrations.

The mobilization began on Sept. 22 as a student boy­ cott of classes. Two days later, about 10,000 students marched from the university of Hong Kong to the major government buildings. The violent police at­ tack on demonstrators on the weekend of Sept. 27-28 only served to swell the number of demonstrators, as popular outrage quickly mounted. By Sept. 29, crowds estimated as approaching 180,000 people, predomi­ nately students, were in the streets. In some localities, barricades were erected for defense.

Sean Starrs, an assistant professor at the City Uni­ versity of Hong Kong, wrote an eye-witness account of the police violence in the Canadian on-line publica­ tion The Bullet: “The main organizer of the week-long boycott of classes, the Hong Kong Federation of Stu­ dents (HKFS), had planned on ending the strike and sit-in in front of the government buildings on Friday evening [Sept. 26], but late that night some 200 or so students stormed a police line and fence to occupy a square within the government complex. The police re­ acted violently with batons and pepper spray, making over 70 arrests, including one of the most high profile student leaders, 17 year-old Joshua Wong, co-founder of the mostly high school student group Scholarism.

“As news of the violent police repression swiftly spread, masses of students and other supporters poured into the whole area, eventually blocking ma­ jor roads (on Monday afternoon there were still some abandoned BMWs and public buses in the middle of the road surrounded by throngs of students).”

Starrs wrote that “the riot police were formally tak­ en off the streets by noon Monday, officially because the ‘illegal protesters’ have ‘mostly calmed down.’ In reality, the riot police were the ones that calmed down once they realized they could not defeat the students. During the climax of repression on Sunday night, I was in one area that was tear gassed around 4-5 times (each barrage with multiple canisters) in only two hours. The police formed two lines and fired tear gas in order to advance toward the epicenter in Admiralty [an area of government buildings], after which most of the crowd would flee and then quickly regroup, sur­ rounding the police on both sides with hands in the (continued from page 4: “400,000 call for”) [Environmental Goods Agreement] aims to eliminate tariffs on environmental technologies such as wind turbines, water treatment filters, and solar water heaters.” In other words, it seeks to increase global de­ pendence on U.S.- and E.U.-manufactured renewable energy systems and prevent any homegrown renew­ able energy manufacturing from taking hold in poorer countries where such jobs are desperately needed.

This is to say nothing of those initiatives that went unmentioned in the speech, such as the Obama ad­ ministration’s push for development of fracking over­ seas. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was exempted from most U.S. environmental regulations in 2005 and has poisoned the water supply of thousands of farm­ ers and rural residents. The half-million active frack­ ing wells in the U.S. release 4-8% of the heat-trapping methane they produce directly into the atmosphere.

The administration has pursued a gung-ho fracking air to show non-violent intent.” The gesture of hands in the air, together with the chant “Hands up!” was borrowed from the scenes that demonstrators had witnessed on social media of people in Ferguson, Mo., and other U.S. cities who were protesting the police murder of Michael Brown.

Some unions responded with calls for workers’ soli­ darity actions. Starrs reported, “The Confederation of Trade Unions and the Professional Teachers Union both called on its members to strike in support of the students. At least 1000 social workers, high school and university teachers joined the strike, as well as pupils from at least 31 schools. HKFS extended the student class boycott indefinitely. The Chairperson of Swire Beverages Employees General Union, distribu­ tor of Coca Cola in Hong Kong, announced to cheer­ ing students in Admiralty that more than 200 workers joined the strike, while 100 more reduced their hours. There were also reports of some taxi drivers striking.”

In calling for its members to participate in a Sept. 29 strike, the Confederation of Trade Unions demanded that police release all of the demonstrators who had been detained. The federation’s statement read in part: “Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) strongly condemns the police for their violent attack on unarmed students and people. We strongly condemn the government for suppressing the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly in Hong Kong. HKCTU calls for all workers in Hong Kong to strike tomorrow, in protest of the ruling of the National People’s Congress, as well as the brutal sup­ pression of peaceful protest by the Hong Kong govern­ ment. Workers and students must unite to force the totalitarian government to hand state power back to the people.… “Workers must stand up against the unjust govern­ ment and violent suppression. Workers must stand up, as the totalitarian government has to back down when all workers protest in solidarity. To defend de­ mocracy and justice, we cannot let the students fight the suppression alone.”

Hong Kong’s current governmental system was es­ tablished in 1997, when the former British colony was restored to China. The official mantra at the time was “one country, two systems.” This slogan could be un­ derstood in two ways: first, that Hong Kong might re­ main relatively “democratic” (in bourgeois terms) as opposed to China’s authoritarian regime, and second­ ly, in reference to the fact that the Chinese economic policy—at home, as part of Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy, and in the form of “technical assis­ tance” to dozens of countries that the U.S. regards as strategic allies to enable them to develop their own fracking operations (with investments by U.S. fossilfuel companies, of course).

Taken together, these three initiatives create a web of dependence on U.S., European, and to some extent Chinese capitalists designed to ensnare those nations most at risk from climate change, using that very risk as PR bait.

These Obama-style “development” initiatives sim­ ply paint a Green veneer over the same profit-driven mentality that has led the world into the current cli­ mate crisis. Instead of pushing corporate hegemony, the advanced capitalist countries should be paying poorer nations directly to develop their own renew­ able energy systems and support small farmers who use techniques to grow food that work best with the local ecology.

And future protests should put this demand for real climate justice front and center, diametrically op­ (Left) Hong Kong protesters give the Ferguson, Mo., “Hands Up!” sign.

system had been that of a Stalinized and highly bureaucratized workers’ state, while Hong Kong was a capitalist finan­ cial center.

By then, however, the “Communist” bureaucrats had already begun a resto­ ration of capitalism in mainland China, with bargain handovers of state resourc­ es and industry to the burgeoning capi­ talist class, together with a steep reduc­ tion of social services to working people. The Chinese rulers saw the advantages of using Hong Kong’s financial institu­ tions to facilitate the entry of foreign capital into the mainland.

Today, there is no real difference in es­ sential economic terms between the sys­ tems of Hong Kong and the rest of China, while the fiction of Hong Kong’s being “democratic” has been torn away for all to see. Nevertheless, the current protests come at a worrisome time for the Chinese Communist Party, whose top echelons are concerned over indications of economic slowdown and increasing popular discontent. This has magni­ fied the fear of party bureaucrats that the Hong Kong protests might get “out of hand” and spread to work­ ers on the mainland.

Sean Starrs points out, “With President Xi Jinping’s ‘anti-corruption campaign’ so far targeting only his rival factions, the CCP is currently in the midst of the one of the most serious tests to its unity in decades. More broadly vis-à-vis the Chinese people, the CCP is increasingly using nationalism and China’s ‘glorious’ past, including reviving Confucianism, once reviled by the CCP as a product of feudal and patriarchal authori­ tarianism, in order to replace ‘communist’ ideology.

“Indeed, the CCP announced that class struggle was officially over in China, and therefore removed the right to strike from its constitution in 1982. Yet, since especially the Nanhai Honda strike in 2010, there have been hundreds if not thousands of increasingly daring strikes across China, the largest of which was earlier this year when 40,000 workers at a Dongguan shoe factory went on strike, less than 100 km north of Hong Kong. …”

“Hence, especially over the past ten years, burgeon­ ing social unrest in China seems to be increasingly rattling the upper echelons of the CCP. Since 2009 China spends more on domestic security than exter­ nal military defense. And the CCP has reacted to the Umbrella Revolution with record Internet censorship on the Mainland, banning many search words such as “Class boycott,” “Occupy Central,” “Hong Kong police,” and “Hong Kong tear gas …”

The Chinese rulers are hesitant to send army units into Hong Kong to put down the protesters, fearing that brutal repression would only spread the revolt. Their hope is that moderate elements among the pro­ testers might be utilized to “calm things down.”

What has not yet come to pass in the Hong Kong pro­ tests in the formation of a resolute central leadership, which can unite all the disparate groupings within the protests, and with a clear direction for the struggle. Ultimately, Chinese workers and their allies both in Hong Kong and the mainland must build a mass work­ ing-class party, with a full program for the workers to posed to the corporate colonialism pushed by Obama and company.

We should build on the momentum generated by the Climate March to generate organizing for immedi­ ate fights like stopping tar sands pipelines, oil trains, and fracking wells. But we also need more mass ac­ tions to promote unifying demands. These will be the demands that best draw in new forces to not just broaden but to deepen and strengthen the movement against climate change.

Let us stand for 100% renewables, for an end to all fossil fuels, and for a massive public investment in climate jobs to fuel the transition. Let us demand the government support the conversion of defunct auto factories into worker-run mass-transit-vehicle production facilities. Let us require a heavy tax on the sources of carbon emissions, and let us also out­ law those sources over the next decade. Let working people, environmentalists, farmers, and anyone who represents the interests of the 99% come together to decide upon next steps and shared demands for future mass actions. n SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2014 5