Anyone who seriously believed that defying the world’s largest dictatorship would lead to China buckling after a year of unprecedented protests in Hong Kong will be seriously disappointed as they contemplate the movement’s first anniversary.

However, anyone who seriously believes that the uprising has achieved nothing must have forgotten that it succeeded in its initial aim of killing off the infamous extradition law. More generally, those who insist on painting the past year as a failure must be severely ignorant of how history works.

Rarely are powerful, entrenched regimes moved by single events nor do they crumble overnight. Change tends to be a long process, punctuated by tragedies and euphoria.

In Hong Kong mass political activism has a relatively short history, although stirrings of unrest have punctuated both the period of colonial rule and rule by Hong Kong’s new colonial-style masters in Beijing.

The uprising of 2019 was different in a great many ways, most obviously because it was so widespread. With some two million people, over a quarter of the entire population, taking part in a single rally, Hong Kong established a new global record for protest. By the end of the year, there had been no less than four rallies with over million attendees.
Numbers are important but equally important is the way the protests, for the first time, spread into all Hong Kong’s localities, sometimes with flash demonstrations, at others when housing estates erupted into fury as people opened their windows at designated times to shout, bang and sing in solidarity with the protests and at other times citizens covered the now famous Lennon Walls with messages, artwork and other postings to make their point.

There was also an outpouring of creativity with music, art, light shows and other innovative expressions inspired by the protest movement.

By November, the protests moved to the ballot boxes where democrats scored an amazing victory in the District Council elections, confounding the lies of the anti-democrats who were putting about the tale that a silent majority of the population was opposed to the protest movement.

The pro-China camp is still trying to get its head around the spontaneity of the movement and the fact that it grew to the extent it did without identifiable leaders and based its growth on the individual initiatives of those who participated. Their explanation that the real leadership comes from shadowy forces abroad is the default explanation of all dictatorships who refuse to believe that the people hate them.

The fact that the streets are no longer filled with protesters and that many of those who have taken part are now either exhausted, somewhat disillusioned by the lack of concrete results and, let’s face it, intimidated by the growing level of repression and jailing of protesters, does nothing to extinguish the fires that burn in people’s hearts.

The flame is still alight, albeit now smouldering. The fact that protest is now less visible does not signify that Hongkongers will meekly accept their fate.

To counter this movement the Chinese Communist Party has reverted to the only method that it really understands when it comes to supressing opposition. It has embarked on a path of terror and violent crackdown. The reliance on brute force to ensure compliance is an act of weakness, not strength.

The infamous so-called ‘moderates’, who declare support for the democracy movement but think that liberty can be preserved by being as quiet as possible, blame the protests for provoking this kind of extreme response. Do they really believe that the Communist Party would have kept its hands off Hong Kong if it were faced with a silent and compliant population?

The answer is to be found in one word – Macau. The former Portuguese colony kept very quiet and was ‘rewarded’ by becoming just another Mainland city, where the rights of citizens are severely curtailed and the remaining freedom setting it apart from other Mainland cities revolve around a massive gambling industry that comes with all the familiar debris of a gambling hub, such as loan sharking, money laundering and high levels of prostitution. Does anyone seriously dare suggest that this is a model for Hong Kong?

While Macau sinks further into oblivion, Hongkongers became famous throughout the world for their courage and determination to keep the flame of liberty alive.

This is no small thing but it may be argued that it matters not to people still struggling to fill their rice bowls and to achieve a better standard of living.

At this point we must enlist the philosophy of Marxism, much lauded on the Mainland by people who barely understand the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism, which demonstrates the links between material prosperity and the transformation of society. I admit that this is a limited and selective interpretation of Marxism but, like it or not, the works of Karl and his associates still have their uses as analytical tools.

In Hong Kong the democracy movement remains very much as work in progress but let no one tell you that what happened in the past year is not important and will not be seen in retrospect as one of the key moments that led to the ‘revolution of our times’.

Glory be to Hong Kong!

(Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist, writer and broadcaster and runs companies in the food sector. He was the founding editor of 'Eastern Express' and founding publisher of 'Spike'. In London he was an editor at The Observer and in Asia has worked for international publications including, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC, Asia Times and The Independent and, during Hong Kong’s 2019/20 protests, for the Sunday Times. Vines is the author of several books, including: Hong Kong: China’s New Colony, The Years of Living Dangerously - Asia from Crisis to the New Millennium and Market Panic and most recently, Food Gurus. He hosts a weekly television current affairs programme: The Pulse")

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