The Struggle for Hong Kong, 2014 to 2024

About the Event

Ten years ago, Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement made headlines as the biggest sustained series of protests in any part of the People's Republic of China since 1989. This effort to achieve universal suffrage for the city failed to achieve its goals, even as it propelled young activists and their aspirations for Hong Kong’s future to global prominence. Five years later, an even bigger round of demonstrations, the largest in the city's history, were met by an even tougher response from Hong Kong authorities –– the beginning of a wider crackdown whose effects continue to be felt to this day.

This discussion will look back to those events of five and ten years ago, and at the dramatic tightening of controls on Hong Kong's civil liberties in the years since. Recent years have been marked by mass arrests, show trials, and resistance going underground. At the same time, new kinds of collective action are starting among exiles and diaspora groups. How can we make sense of what has happened and think about what the future holds for a radically changed Hong Kong? What was predictable and what might have turned out differently?

Speakers