A lifelong acquaintance with Hong Kong's resistance thinkers suggests that a crackdown by Beijing isn’t the end of the story
,” effectively reneging on the promise that it made in an international treaty to preserve Hong Kong’s way of life.But is it? Hong Kongers as a people are deeply proud of their unique status as citizens of a place that’s not just another city in Asia but a metropolis with cosmopolitanism in its DNA, built on global connections and a strong commitment to free expression.
For his role in political organizing, he faced a 16-month prison sentence, from which he was recently released. In hisbefore standing trial, with references to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., he remarked that when the nights were dark, all one could do was to look to the stars. Reading that, I thought of the time when I offensively asked him what the United States could do to help, his reply was blunt: nothing, just be an example to the world.
We stayed in touch over the years, but never saw each other again. When I first learned of his passing two years ago, what came to mind wasn’t so much his poetry or writing but his gratitude for Hong Kong as a platform where young people not only can speak freely but were also encouraged and conditioned to do so. He trained my thoughts on the next generation—to pay special attention to what they would say.
I got a hint of an answer about 10 years ago, when I sat down with Martin Lee, popularly known in Hong Kong as the father of its democracy,as part of China’s broader crackdown. I told him that on the last night of British rule, in 1997, I had returned to the colony as a young American journalist and had heard him speak from the balcony of the old British Legislative Council Building, declaring that the flame of democracy had been ignited in Hong Kong.
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