“Diaspora” is a continuation of “An Exile.” That was about departure from Hong Kong and arrival in a new place. This focuses on the period after arrival.
Both are intended as sequel to the book, Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the freedom struggle, which is about the 2019–2020 protests. That in turn follows As long as there is resistance, there is hope about the period from 2014 to 2018, and Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong about the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
“Diaspora” will appear in installments. The previous installment was “Trauma Workshop.”
5. Political development
In March 2021, “2021 Hong Kong Charter” was published. It was initiated by a group of eight of the more prominent HK exiles, Nathan Law, Sunny Cheung, Ted Hui, Brian Leung, Glacier Kwong, Ray Wong, Baggio Leung and Alex Chow. All young. At 40, Ted Hui was the grand old man; most of the others were still in their twenties.
It reads like a manifesto. Its stated purpose is to “unite the diasporic communities, to come together at the international front, for the eventual Liberation of Hong Kong.” It stresses: “Diasporic Hongkongers shall stand united and not fall into the trap of internal conflicts.” People in the diaspora have a special responsibility to stand up and speak out for “those silenced by the rule of terror in Hong Kong.”
Its most succinct statement of mission: “We vow to stand against the oppression from the Chinese Communist Party, to strive for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, to continue to safeguard our determination for Hong Kong's autonomy both locally and overseas, to advocate for international collaboration in countering the Chinese Communist Party's global aggression, and to safeguard the universal values of freedom and democracy.”
After publication, it was open for signature. The charter articulated the values and principles of those in the HK freedom struggle: freedom, democracy, self-determination, the uniqueness of Hong Kong identity, solidarity, and mutual self-support. Those who signed committed themselves to engaging in activities to uphold those values and principles.
Charter 21 has the ring of a historic document, along the lines of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Charter 08 in China. The difference is, Charter 21 was drafted by members of the diaspora, not people inside the country. People like Vaclav Havel and Liu Xiaobo went to prison for those previous charters. Liu Xiaobo died there. Havel eventually became president of a democratic Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution.
By the end of 2021, 524 individuals and a couple dozen HK advocacy organizations—all in the diaspora of course—had signed. Of course, many would not sign such a document for fear of repercussions: they might be low-profile and wish to return to HK to visit family, they might fear for their families still in HK, they might fear that signing a public document would attract notice from the regime, which in turn could lead to surveillance, harassment and intimidation. So the somewhat modest number of signatories, given that there are at least tens of thousands of HKers in the diaspora who presumably assented to the principles and ideals professed in the charter, was unsurprising.
A little over two months after its publication, Wix, its web host, took down the website. Following an uproar of complaint, within days it was up again. Wix claimed the takedown was a mistake. But it also mentioned that it had received a takedown demand from the HK police, warning that the charter was “likely to constitute offences endangering national security.” The police threatened Wix employees with prosecution and possible imprisonment. It was the first known case of HK police demanding under the authority of the CCP’s national security law that a web host based abroad remove content.
Charter 21 is articulate, fundamental, commonsensical and visionary. Seeking unity, it aims for the lowest common denominator. Unity was the great accomplishment of the 2019 protests. For the first time since the Umbrella Movement, everyone from across the pro-democracy spectrum, whether young or old, radical or moderate, came together and fully supported one another. It is a precious strength and a necessary foundation for political development in the diaspora, the only place where any kind of political development can occur, given the oppression in HK. And its values, principles and goals are broad enough that they can be embraced by just about anyone in the movement without sounding like a watered-down, uninspiring compromise.
I was excited by its publication. Finally, I thought, we’re ready to move forward. Ever since going into exile, I’d been wondering when the political discussion would get going again. As I saw it, the period after the Umbrella Movement in 2014 was, for all of the disagreement, disarray and bickering in the pro-democracy movement, a time of intellectual ferment—indeed, the ferment and turmoil were inter-related. After the Communist Party released its “reform” plan for HK in August 2014, it became crystal clear even to those most hopeful/deluded, that the CCP would never allow anything remotely resembling genuine universal suffrage. It was as if that confirmation released an intellectual energy that had been pent up for years. Suddenly there were all kinds of new ideas, proposals and roadmaps in the air, first and foremost, independence and self-determination. After some of the people who espoused those ideas got elected to the Legislative Council in late 2019, the regime became alarmed and began the counter-offensive, disqualifying the newly elected Legislative Councillors and launching a propaganda campaign characterizing the new ideas as not only unacceptable and illegal but downright treasonous. As HK people tended to do whenever under attack by the regime, they lay low. The public debate all but ceased: 2017 to 2019 was a fallow period. Once the 2019 protests exploded, I imagined that at some point after they eventually subsided, they would unlock another phase in the search for solutions; we’d pick up where we’d left off. But we hadn’t, and I wondered if Charter 21 might be the start of that. Now that it was out, what would be the next step?
The next step was…nothing. Nothing happened afterwards. I’d considered Charter 21 a momentous not to mention a constructive, creative act. Surely it was the beginning of something, some process or other? One of the initiators later told me that agreement was reached between the eight initiators on the condition that no action would ensue. But if that was the case, what exactly was the purpose of the charter? Just to stand on its own? It seemed a wasted opportunity.
I wondered about what was starting to seem to me a reluctance in the diaspora to discuss political matters. We told the world we wanted freedom and democracy. As messaging, it was ok; indeed, it was wise—the objectives were so vague as to be easy for just about any politician from a Western, democratic country to support. But was it sufficient to simply tell ourselves we want freedom and democracy, and leave it at that? Didn’t we have to start sorting those terms out? What exactly did they mean in the HK context? How might they possibly be achieved given the current situation? What implications did they have for what our political agenda should be and how we needed to develop and organize politically? If we refrained from addressing these questions, was that not tacit admission that attainment of our goals seemed such a long way off that it wasn’t realistic even to consider them? Or perhaps even worse, a dereliction of duty as people of the diaspora who had the freedom to discuss such issues, a freedom that had vanished in HK?
We had to guard against just-treading-water syndrome, falling into the passive habit of waiting for the stars to align, which could be fatalistic and leave us feeling powerless. And the best way to do that was to keep moving forward, however tentatively, awkwardly, erringly. But was there too much at stake to risk getting it wrong? I felt a hole at the center of our politics, of our existence in exile; it felt like a responsibility we were at the point of neglecting.
Whenever I asked others about this—which I did quite frequently and widely—I sensed hesitation, caution, reluctance, avoidance, perhaps also lack of interest, disengagement, and, in some cases, a lack of understanding of what I was talking about. Why did these issues, which I thought so pressing, not resonate? Some possible reasons: The many who had recently left HK were busy dealing with the challenging and time-consuming challenge of settling into a new home. Some were confronting trauma or other psychological difficulties. For some, the situation just seemed too new and confusing, and it was best to wait until things settled down a bit before surveying the lay of the land. Some were afraid. Many were waiting for others to lead, and since the more prominent exiles weren’t leading, nothing was happening. It may have also been that there was not a high level of political understanding, something that, if true, genuinely surprised me. If nothing else, I thought, the last few years in HK had been a political education. I was confused; I suspected there was something I was not understanding about all this—that a matter I considered quite pressing was not in the forefront of others’ thinking.
Then again, there weren’t too many examples of politically successful diasporas that we could look to for models and inspiration.
Hong Kongers took the squabbling and in-fighting of the anti-CCP Chinese diaspora as a cautionary tale. The lesson learned was: treasure unity, remain united. But one couldn’t be so fearful of division as to avoid any touchy topic; surely we could preserve unity while also managing differences and conflicts? Indeed, that was arguably the definition of democracy. Were we so lacking in confidence in our ability to hold it together that we figured it was best just to avoid the issue? Were we so afraid of disagreement?
I thought of more urgent diasporas, such as the Belarusian and Venezuelan. Both saw possibility for imminent change in their countries and were accordingly gearing up so as to be prepared. I admired their front-footedness and the organizational drive that accompanied it. I feared we would go the way of the many diasporas that ended up directionless, in exile for decades with no end in sight.
The few who pressed the issue were mostly younger people who had recently left HK. They wanted to “do something” and the time was now. But because they weren’t prominent, they hadn’t much influence in the diaspora; plus, their ways of going about things didn’t exactly always inspire confidence in their initiatives. On the other hand, the prominent people who initiated the charter dropped it there and went their own ways. Political organization and development got lost in the middle.
Already in December 2020, several months before Charter 21, a group based in the UK launched a consultation for a proposed “shadow parliament.” They encouraged respondents to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that focused on the minutiae of how such a parliament should be constituted, entirely leaping over the more basic question of whether or not there should be something of the sort to begin with. That was the question that had to be confronted: Did people think developing some kind of formal, representative self-government was the way to go? Why was it necessary? What should it do? Instead, most of the questions on the survey had to do with things like voter eligibility, arrangements for elections, and the structure of the institution. The consultation was open for feedback for three months, until the end of March 2021. In the autumn, a report was posted. The results were somewhat inconclusive, and it was unclear whether the people behind the consultation intended to move forward toward realizing the idea, and if so, how. My impression was that most people were decidedly ambivalent, and as it turned out, nothing came of it.
Like the charter, the shadow parliament was still-born.
Some time later in 2021, another group proposed a government-in-exile. This group was entirely anonymous. Neither I nor anyone else I knew had any idea who they were. I understood the need for vigilance and security, but it seemed to me that it was hard to conduct a credible democratic exercise in anonymity. The anonymity that had served us well during the protests wasn’t very sustainable in other contexts. Without anyone standing up for what they were doing, how did they expect others to have any faith in it? On the group’s behalf, another group not composed of Hong Kongers conducted a survey. They eventually published results showing that an astoundingly high percentage of respondents were in favor of the government-in-exile, and on those grounds, the group announced that its next step was to petition the UK government to allow them to set up the government-in-exile there. I contacted them and said I suspected the respondents to the survey were rather self-selecting and this probably accounted for the sort of results one usually saw in “elections” for president in totalitarian countries. Even if one assumed that the results of the survey were representative, it seemed like quite a leap to decide that the next step was to petition a foreign government. Should it not instead be to consult Hong Kongers to figure out how to go about setting up such a body? After that, I never heard anything more about the government-in-exile proposal.
As noted, those coming up with these ideas hardly did their cause any favors. Indeed, what became most apparent were the deficits in knowledge and skills of democratic praxis. People often disagreed with me when I said this, but I believed that Hong Kongers, having never lived in a democratic society, were not necessarily imbued with democratic ethos and couldn’t avail themselves of a deep reservoir of democratic culture and tradition. We were starting from scratch. We would have to progress together, figuring things out along the way. Yes, people had to step forward to lead, but they couldn’t get far ahead of everyone else. This would indeed be a learning process. I looked at this period of the diaspora, with the imposition of authoritarian rule in HK and more than 200,000 HKers emigrating, as an opportunity to focus on democratizing ourselves, living and learning and practicing democracy.
The government-in-exile idea obviously echoed the Tibetan government-in-exile, which in its various forms has functioned for decades. When the Dalai Lama went into exile in 1959, followed by tens of thousands of Tibetans, there was initially only one institution in exile, the Dalai Lama himself. But before long, other institutions grew up, including monasteries that were meant to be new incarnations of ones that existed under CCP control in Tibet and had the same name, and schools to educate exiled Tibetan children in their own language, culture and religion as well as to give them a modern education. In the first decades in exile, there were few if any democratic institutions to speak of, but the Dalai Lama eventually saw the need for such, among other reasons so that there would an entity to perpetuate the Tibetan cause after his death. Tibetans were far too reliant on him. Indeed, he basically had to push democracy on his somewhat reluctant people (reminding of a similar situation in Bhutan, another Himalayan Buddhist polity, where it was the king who had to foist democracy on his subjects who had never asked for it). Eventually, an elected parliament and Sikyong (formerly Kalön Tripa)—akin to a president—were created. The Tibetan government-in-exile administers a bureaucracy that largely operates schools in the exile community in India as well as Tibetan communities and cultural institutions and has a presence and influence throughout the diaspora worldwide. The Sikyong acts as the representative of the government-in-exile around the world, much as a president does. There are some 150,000 Tibetans worldwide (outside of Tibet), and all those 18 or older are eligible to vote.
When Tibetans first started coming out of Tibet after the Chinese occupation and the Dalai Lama’s exile, they were very poor, under-educated and from one of the most isolated places on earth. Still, they eventually managed to create a flourishing diaspora with its center in India, crucially due to the hospitality of the Indian government. HK people, by contrast, are relatively well-to-do, certainly compared to Tibetans and a great many other refugees and diaspora communities. They also have better English and more exposure to the rest of the world than Tibetans had. They do not have the strong religious and cultural institutions of the Tibetans, nor do they have any experience running their own government, whereas the Tibetans had a tradition of self-rule, albeit entirely undemocratic, going back centuries. It was not democratic, but among Tibetan elites, there was much greater experience in government than among HKers, who have always been ruled by others, first by the British and now by the Communist Party. HKers have been fighting for democracy in HK for upwards of two decades, whereas it was really only after the calamity of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 that something of a national identity began to develop among Tibetans. Crucially, the Tibetans have a universally revered and trusted figure like the Dalai Lama to look to for not only spiritual guidance but political leadership. HKers have no figure of comparable stature, although many well-known and respected pro-democracy leaders have gone into exile. The Tibetan government-in-exile grew out of particular circumstances, including the figure of the Dalai Lama, the need to administer Tibetan institutions, and to take care of and provide services to Tibetan people, and the hospitality of the Indian government which gave Tibetans certain places in the country where Tibetan-majority communities grew up. These are all circumstances which do not pertain to HKers. All of which begs the question, what, practically, would a government-in-exile do; what would it govern?
It’s not just questions of political organization and development in the near term that need to be addressed but also more abstract and distant ones involving our ultimate political objectives. If we say we want a free and democratic HK based on self-determination, then what would a constitution for such a place look like? Could we not set up a committee to study other constitutions and make recommendations? Through such processes, would we not be clarifying our political values and perhaps coming up on ideas for ways forward?
Whether a government-in-exile or shadow parliament or some other democratically elected representative body is needed in the diaspora is a question to which I have no answer and no definite opinion apart from believing that it is something we need to address. It’s discouraging that we aren’t.
Further reading on the topic: “What the Hong Kong diaspora can learn from the Tibetan experience: Using the fate of exile to lay foundations for the future” and “Envisioning a future for Hong Kong: A common project for the diaspora.”