How Students Seized the Lead in Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy Campaign

The boycott of classes that has unleashed tens of thousands of young people—many of them college students—into the streets of Hong Kong was meant to be a prelude to a mass pro-democracy demonstration that their professors and others had carefully choreographed.

Instead, the students’ action quickly took center stage, accelerating plans for protests aimed at paralyzing the city’s financial center in an attempt to win an assurance of truly democratic elections.

The unexpected surge of momentum has raised fears among some professors that the Chinese government will crack down harder on the student protesters. At the same time, it has forced some of the older generation to scramble to catch up. Among them are Benny Tai, a constitutional-law scholar at the University of Hong Kong who helped found a pro-democracy group called Occupy Central With Love and Peace.

His group, working with students and other activists, had planned a mass demonstration to begin on Wednesday, China’s National Day, which marks the founding of the People’s Republic, in 1949. But once the student occupation began, with throngs of young people carrying umbrellas to shield themselves from pouring rain, scorching sun, and the threat of tear gas, his group had to join in, he told Foreign Policy magazine this week. This time, though, Occupy Central was no longer calling the shots. “We were very clear that students were the leaders and we just stood behind to support them,” Mr. Tai said.

As the standoff stretches into its second week and tensions escalate, college administrators and professors are nervously watching and worrying. Some have attended the protests themselves, given students leeway to skip classes, and posted lectures online. Mr. Tai told reporters that on September 22, the first day of the boycott, his class was half-empty.

‘The Fury of the Wronged’

But while praising students for their peaceful activism, some professors are getting impatient for students to return. More important, they worry that, with no obvious compromise in sight and no clear leader with whom to negotiate, the government’s restraint in recent days won’t hold.

“What teacher would not be filled with joy to watch his students seize learning so independently, so concretely, and with such passion?” Denise Y. Ho, an assistant professor in the Center for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong wrote in a widely retweeted letter to her students on Monday, after about 13,000 students rallied on her campus.

“If we shed tears at this moment,” she wrote, “it was because we saw how you did not need us anymore, you could learn and act on your own.”

She added, though, that watching the students shout “with the fury of the wronged” made her feel old and afraid, not just for their safety but for their youthful optimism that they could effect change and the possibility that spirit could be broken.

The support some Hong Kong universities have expressed for the boycotting students and their criticism of a police crackdown over the weekend raise questions about whether China might move to exert more control over the curriculum in Hong Kong, which has recently shifted toward an American model. It’s also unclear what effect, if any, the turmoil is likely to have on Hong Kong’s efforts to woo American universities to join institutions, like the Savannah College of Art and Design, that have branch campuses there.

Kevin Kinser, a senior researcher with the Institute for Global Education Policy Studies at the State University of New York at Albany, said he wasn’t expecting a widespread clampdown on universities.

“Individual faculty or students, however, may see consequences to the extent they are actively participating in the protests,” he speculated in an email on Wednesday. “In China, to be clear, academic freedom does not include political freedom.”

He pointed out that Hong Kong’s higher-education system is separate from the rest of China, but that doesn’t mean authorities won’t push back. “If China determines that Hong Kong autonomy is in violation of the broad principles of educational sovereignty that exist on the mainland, no one should be surprised to see the central government set new policies,” he wrote. “I doubt they would hesitate long if foreign campuses were seen to be encouraging protest.”

A Turning Point

The largely peaceful tone of last week’s protests extended into the weekend until, on Saturday, more than a dozen protesters who had scaled a fence to approach a government building were hauled off and arrested. Among them was Joshua Wong, the slight, bespectacled 17-year-old leader of an influential student protest group, called Scholarism, that was started by high-school students.

The major turning point came on Sunday, when the police cracked down on some in the crowd with tear gas, pepper spray, and batons. That approach backfired when thousands more angry protesters jammed the streets on the following day.

Officials at the University of Hong Kong, with 27,000 undergraduate and graduate students, held an emergency meeting. On Monday the university’s president, Peter Mathieson, issued a public statement saying the university “profoundly regrets the escalation of events in recent days.” It went on to say that “we condemn violence of any kind by any party. We cannot understand the use of tear gas yesterday; the police and the government are accountable for that decision.”

Mr. Mathieson said the university would be flexible in “understanding the actions of students and staff who wish to express their strongly held views” by boycotting classes and participating in the protests. The president also urged protesters to engage in constructive dialogue and to avoid conflict.

Way Kuo, president of the City University of Hong Kong, issued a similar statement this week, saying the university “fully supports the students’ peaceful expression of their views” and encouraging faculty members to use discretion in letting students make up classes.

Over the past few days, the Beijing-backed government, while denouncing the protests as “illegal,” has appeared to be waiting, hoping Hong Kong residents will grow impatient with the inconvenience and the protesters will go home.

Students have shown no signs of backing down, though. One of the main organizing groups, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, threatened to “escalate the operation” by occupying buildings if Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, didn’t resign. Beijing officials said that would not happen, and warned of “serious consequences” if the buildings were occupied. They did, however, offer to meet with the protesters and hold limited talks about their demands.

Fears of Another Tiananmen

Although many of the students hadn’t been born in 1989, when the deadly crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square occurred, those who experienced it shudder at the remote chance that such violence could occur again.

“I see no way the Chinese government can tolerate what is happening in HK. Greatly fear this will end badly,” Mike Chinoy, a senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California who covered the Tiananmen crackdown for CNN tweeted on Sunday.

The students crowding Hong Kong’s financial center represent a generation that is facing a dismal job market and exorbitant housing prices. When Chinese authorities ruled, in late August, that all candidates in the 2017 election for Hong Kong’s top administrator must effectively be screened by Beijing, much of their simmering discontent rose to the surface. In their view, the government was breaking a promise that people in this former British colony, which was handed over to China in 1997, would be able to participate in truly democratic elections.

Alex Chow, a student of sociology and comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong, is a leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students whose brash style and uncompromising stances contrast starkly with the more-conciliatory approaches of their older fellow protesters.

When he and his fellow organizers told the crowd that the protests would step up if Hong Kong’s embattled leader didn’t step down, thousands of students cheered him on and went about preparing for another night in the streets.