For about 80 days in late 2014, hundreds of thousands of mostly young Hong Kongers took to the streets in an unprecedented act of protest against China’s rule over the semiautonomous territory and the increasing detrimental effects of late capitalism.
The student-led occupation of streets and public spaces, called Occupy Central and the Umbrella movement, began after the government said they would not enact democratic reform and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) said it would not relinquish its power to vet and veto candidates for the Chief Executive elections planned for 2017.
The former British colony’s politically disenfranchised have once again disrupted the territory’s status quo and shown they pose a threat to the pro-CCP elite. Last week, elections for the legislative council (LegCo) saw many voters switch from the more moderate established factions of the pro-democracy opposition to the new radical ‘localist’ parties born out of the Umbrella movement, culminating in six young activists gaining seats on the 70-seat council. The election also drew a record turnout of some 2.2 million voters or 58 percent.
Of significance is the election of 23 year-old Nathan Law, who, together with fellow activist Joshua Wong, founded the Demosisto party in the aftermath of the 2014 demonstrations. The party, along with a few other one seat factions, represents a political discourse that wasn’t really uttered publicly a decade ago. Law and Wong embody a youthful discontent mass that is seriously questioning China’s rule over the financial metropolis.
Since being transferred to China in 1997, Hong Kong has been governed under the ‘one country, two systems’ principle and enjoys a few democratic functions and liberties that are non-existent in mainland China. Largely due to a strong sense of a national identity separate of China’s, Hong Kongers have increasingly called for more autonomy.
“I think Beijing is worried about what happened today, that we have a new voice of resistance,” Law told Al Jazeera, “they are worried about that.” Not only has Law and his colleagues sent a strong signal to the pro-CCP cabal, but they’ve also struck a blow against the so-called pan-democracy parties that have comfortably dominated Hong Kong’s opposition politics.
There are problems for the new kids on the block. Twenty different parties have seats in the LegCo and there’s a lack of unity among the many pro-democracy parties. It's often more complicated than identifying parties as either for Beijing’s rule or against. Oppositional demands vary from a referendum on full independence to more trivial democratic protocols. The fragmentation in the pro-democracy camp is unfortunate, because cross-party cooperation will be needed to block unwanted measures the government introduces to the LegCo. But this is democracy and a new one at that; these things won’t have straight lines and will be messy for a while.
The revolution that started in the streets of Hong Kong two years ago was formalised in last week’s election. New voices have arisen and entered the mainstream. The Chinese Communist Party is shaking in their boots and, looking ahead, will have to tread lightly on a political landscape that has been fundamentally transformed.