“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 “Political development.”
6. Perfect anarchy
While diaspora HKers may be avoiding taking up the responsibility of political development (see the previous installment), it’s not as if they aren’t doing anything. Just the opposite: everywhere you turn, people are taking new initiatives, starting new groups. It’s anarchy in the best sense. No one is waiting for anyone to do anything; whoever gets an idea does it themselves—a spirit that grew out of the 2019 protests. While maybe not being so politically sharp, Hong Kongers in the diaspora are showing remarkable spirit, energy, resourcefulness and resilience. What will work? Who knows? Just throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.
To begin with, there are all the local groups. Some predate 2019; some were set up in 2019 in response to the protests; and some others, especially in the UK, have just gotten started as a result of the post-2019 exodus. In all, there are dozens of these groups around the world, with the largest numbers in the UK, the US, Australia and Canada, and still others in Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Norway, Estonia, New Zealand and some other places I’m probably forgetting. In the UK, besides London and Manchester, groups have set up in Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in even smaller towns like Exeter, Durham, Reading, Guildford, Aberdeen, Kingston and Nottingham. These local groups are best known for their protests on important anniversary dates like June 4, June 12, July 1, July 21, August 31 and October 1. But they are involved in lots of other activities as well, some more cultural, some more political: starting community centers, helping new arrivals with job-training and house-hunting, campaigning against sister-city relations between their new hometowns and their Chinese counterparts.
Indeed, as the 2019 protests drift further into the past, many of these groups are focusing more on cultural activities and community building. While I myself don’t find these efforts so interesting, they’re very important in terms of creating and reinforcing our sense of togetherness, bringing people in, making them feel welcome, giving them a sense of belonging, and putting down roots in a new place. Mid-autumn festival celebrations, mahjong tournaments and the like all have a role to play, and in cities where these activities are especially successful or where there is high demand, the seeds of community centers have started to sprout. Even in a country like the US, which has received far fewer new arrivals from HK than the UK or even Australia and Canada, community centers are opening, in the Bay Area, Austin, DC, Los Angeles, and Dallas, with others planned.
For a while, new groups were springing up all over in the UK. Nathan Law leant his hand to starting Umbrella Community, which was to focus mostly on cultural initiatives. There is also Hong Kongers in Britain, which focuses on helping newly arrived HKers to get settled and community building, as well as many smaller groups started by new arrivals who want to put their energy toward doing whatever they can to “build the Hong Kong nation.”
Some organizations have been set up specifically to aid newly arrived HKers, and especially young people persecuted in HK for their participation in the protests who have few means or connections in their countries of refuge. Haven Assistance was an early global effort lead by prominent figures, Brian Leung, Ray Wong, Simon Cheng and Lam Wing Kee. In Canada, there are Hong Kong Toronto Parent Group, Vancouver Parent Group, and Soteria International. In the US, Walk with Hong Kong, based in the Bay Area, does similar work. Baggio Leung’s Hong Kong Liberation Coalition, which he set up after he himself arrived in the US from HK, also looks after new arrivals. The ones I’ve met were all young men. They don’t have very good English, and, once arrived in the US—some of them after very arduous journeys by boat first to Taiwan and being smuggled across the US-Mexico border—, experience dizzying disorientation. They remind me of the Lost Boys of Sudan, replete with extraordinary stories; in fact, that’s how I refer to them: “I wonder how the lost boys are doing.”
Hong Kongers in Britain, which has received some funding from the UK government as part of the BNO visa scheme to help HKers settle in their new country, carries out or sponsors an extensive array of events and services under the umbrella heading of Project Haven. Just to take some recent examples: sharing sessions on renting and buying property, insights into education in Cardiff, tai chi chuan classes, a mental health team which anyone can contact, Mid-Autumn Festival activities, understanding pharmacy in the UK, introduction to forklift warehouse work, healthy walking day, fishing with locals, religious retreats.
The Hong Kong Professionals Network is another outgrowth of the 2019 protests. It was started by a couple of business people in the DC area who thought this was the best way they could contribute to the cause. The idea behind it was that in many parts of the world (it started in the US but has expanded to the UK, Canada and Australia), a substantial number of pro-democracy Hong Kongers have lived for some time and now find themselves in influential positions in business and society. HKPN, while explicitly pro-democracy, doesn’t emphasize political work, but other kinds that can help to strengthen the movement. It describes itself as “the first pro-democracy global yellow economic network,” explicitly inspired by the yellow economic circle efforts in HK that grew up around the protests, with businesses all over the city declaring themselves yellow and people exhorted to patronize yellow businesses and boycott those that supported the regime. Now this practice is being adopted in the rest of the world. The network seeks to help newly arrived HKers adapt. It has career training and capacity building videos and workshops, a job referral program, a mentorship program, and scholarships. It has thousands of members who stay in touch through active Telegram groups, and sub-groups divided by profession (tech, finance, health care, law, science, architecture, etc) and others divided by hobby (sports, cars, etc). It has also been in the forefront of spearheading the development of community centers in areas with a high concentration of HKers.
A couple of Hong Kongers have recently set up Free World Investment, which they consider to be part of the internationalization of the yellow economic circle. The fund screens out companies that have significant investment in authoritarian economies (read: China). The field of whatever you want to call it—ethical investing, socially responsible investing, green investing, ESG investing—has been growing for decades, but as of yet, there are no widely available investment mechanisms to exclude business in China and other authoritarian countries or international businesses with significant presence in these places, and this is meant to be a start.
Some new diaspora media groups have begun, such as Chaser News, Commons, Green Bean, The Points, and Photon. Together, they already have hundreds of thousands of followers/subscribers/viewers. This has largely been motivated by recognition of the need to at least start to fill the void left by the crackdown on independent news media in HK, with the forced closures of the “big 3,” Apple Daily, Stand News and Citizen News occurring between June 2020 and January 2021. These small new media orgs cover a mixture of news and stories in HK and the diaspora. In 2022, the Association of Overseas Hong Kong Media Professionals was set up to uphold press freedom and “help our members rebuild their lives in their new locations.” There are a fair few HK journalists now in exile and looking for a new gig. There was a period of crisis after the big 3 closed when there were significant areas not receiving adequate media attention. Some already-existing persistent small media groups in HK stepped up their efforts, some new shoestring operations started, and together with the diaspora media groups, it’s amazing that now, one can be quite well informed of what is happening both in HK and the diaspora. This should be considered a significant accomplishment, and we owe gratitude to these remarkable journalists and their backers.
Other new NGOs like Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor and Hong Kong Rule of Law Monitor and, most recently, Hong Kong Centre for Human Rights have been founded by recent exiles from HK and focus on tracking the crackdown in HK on trade unionists and the swift deterioration of rule of law.
Film festivals showing protest films and other films banned in HK have been held in the UK, Paris and Brisbane. Many, mostly local, groups collaborated to organize nationwide screenings of films such as “Revolution of Our Times” and “May You Stay Forever Young” in the US, UK, Canada, Taiwan and Australia. Film appears to be one of the most compelling HK media and there is a largish crop of film-makers interested in bringing to the screen some of the most urgent stories of the day. At the same time, there is a crackdown on film in HK as on other forms of expression, and various measures have been taken to prevent films focusing on the protests and other political issues from being shown. By 2023, the largest HK film festival, in the UK, has expanded considerably, with 27 features, documentaries and shorts in seven cities over a two-week period.
A new group, Bonham Tree Aid, was started to help protesters on trial and in prison as well as their families, after the crackdown in Hong Kong forced protester aid groups like first Spark Alliance, then 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, and and then Wall-fare to close. Bonham Tree Aid operates on a much smaller scale and can’t possibly replace those, but it is doing what it can. By 2023, amazingly, it was helping 240 families of political prisoners.
Many others share lists of Patreon accounts of both well-known and unknown political prisoners, encouraging HKers in the diaspora to donate to them. Especially with the crackdown on groups in HK aiding protesters, many families of political prisoners face financial hardships due to loss of income from their loved ones in prison or difficulties covering legal fees. This sharing of information is done in a low-key way to avoid the attention of HK authorities, as some fear that at any time, due to its arbitrary nature, the national security law could be invoked and those we help will be accused of “collusion with foreign forces” simply for having received donations from abroad. Among some, a kind of tithing practice has grown up, whereby they commit to donating a percentage of their income to “hands and feet” (手足, a term referring to fellow protesters in 2019 and now to anyone involved in the struggle) in need in HK.
New links have been forged with Tibetan, Uighur and Taiwanese groups especially, as well as with other diasporas fighting oppression at home. In many cities, anti-CCP protests are co-organized by local groups from the different communities. They worked together on the campaign against the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and managed to bring a lot of critical attention to it, to the point where one wondered whether, in the future, groups like the IOC and FIFA would think twice about choosing authoritarian countries as hosts. A key image encapsulating these alliances was the arrest of two women, a Tibetan and Hong Konger, at the Acropolis in Athens for hanging their flags—the colorful snow lions of Tibet, the pirate-flag-like black-and-white Liberate HK—in protest against the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony attended byy CCP authorities in Greece that same week. Hong Kong groups also participate in the Milk Tea Alliance, which includes Burma, Thailand, and Taiwan, and took part in the big protests when the junta overthrew the elected government in Burma. Just through my own HK work, I’ve come into contact with dissidents from, besides the countries already mentioned, Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, China, Iran and Nicaragua. All understand we’re essentially in the same boat, and all perceive the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism similarly.
Cantonese schools are starting in many places, most with a focus on helping diaspora children stay in touch with the language and learn their culture. A bit more ambitious initiative is the Institute of Chinese and Cantonese, whose slogan is “write traditional, speak Cantonese.” Former leader of Demosistō in HK, Isaac Cheng, has organized numerous knowledgeable members of the HK diaspora to produce a series of materials and pamphlets to educate children about Hong Kong history.
There are more Hong Kongers than ever in think tanks and academia. Some HK academics are promoting a relatively new field of study, Hong Kong Studies, that shows promise of expanding and perhaps helping to make HK a legitimate area of study and inquiry in its own right and not just a periphery of China Studies. The University of California launched a Global Hong Kong Studies project. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University runs the Hong Kong Research Hub. The UK-based Hong Kong Studies Association is made up of scholars working on HK. The field has its own journal called, appropriately enough, Hong Kong Studies. Professors at universities like British Columbia in Canada, St Andrews in Scotland, and the University of London are leading the way. In early 2023, the first Hong Kong Studies Hub was launched at the University of Surrey. Student groups have been formed on many university campuses, especially in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
From late 2021 through 2022, a slew of new books about HK were published, by the likes of Nathan Law, Kevin Carrico, Karen Cheung, Mark Clifford, Louisa Lim, Ho-fung Hung and CK Lee. While some of those books target an academic readership, others are published by trade publishers for a general audience. This is remarkable; it is hard to think of any other period in which so many books about HK were published in English. A new quarterly, Flow HK (如水), published in Taiwan, is the intellectual journal of the diaspora and features writing of mostly a political and philosophical bent. In 2021, the UK’s National Poetry Competition winner was 19-year-old Eric Yip, writing a poem with the lines, “Nobody wants to listen / to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.” Maybe someone does. I have modest hopes for something like a new era of Hong Kong literature, though the way most people look at me when I say that gives me the impression that they think I’m a bit deluded. After all, even post-2019, not that many HKers read, and whenever people refer to what they feel best captures the thoughts, experience and feelings of the new era, they mention films rather than books. There don’t seem to be many new developments in writing or publishing in Cantonese or in Chinese in HK. The relatively small market coupled with the massive increase in censorship makes new initiatives prohibitively risky, both economically and politically (though films that face similar constraints and can’t be making much money are getting made). Can the diaspora support a literature in Cantonese or in HK Chinese or in English? Will the diaspora be more literary than people in HK?
There are various groups focused squarely on promoting HK art and culture, such as Lion Rock Cafe in New York City, and other groups whose focus is broader but organize exhibitions of HK art.
Pastors exiled from HK have set up new churches catering for HK Christians in Taiwan and England; other, existing churches reach out to newly arrived HKers. If you live in a city with a sizable HK community, the nearest Cantonese-language service probably isn’t far away.
And of course, there are numerous mostly political groups monitoring the situation in Hong Kong and lobbying governments in the US, the UK, the EU, Canada and Australia, some of which are quite high-powered and able to claim substantial accomplishments in the form of legislation and influence on government policy. In North America, the UK, the European Parliament and many EU countries, Australia, Japan and Taiwan, there is strong cross-party support in the political system for the HK freedom struggle that hopefully proves stable and long-lasting.
To give a sense of how this all—the formation of local groups, the political work, the lobbying—fits together in a national context, look at the 47 signatories of a recent joint letter calling on the US President to extend his Deferred Enforced Departure order for HKers (and keep in mind the US is a country with far fewer recent arrivals than the UK, Canada or Australia): Arizona for Hong Kong; Arizona State University Hong Kong Student Association; Campaign for Hong Kong; Chicago Solidarity With Hong Kong; Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation; Cornell Society for the Promotion of East Asian Liberty; DC4HK - Washingtonians Supporting Hong Kong; Fight for Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong; Florida for Hong Kong; Hong Kong Affairs Association of Berkeley; Hong Kong Business Hub, USA; Hong Kong Collaborative Academic Network; Hong Kong Democracy and Human Rights Association at the University of Washington; Hong Kong Democracy Council; Hong Kong Forum, Los Angeles; Hong Kong Human Rights Concern Group at the University of Michigan; Hong Kong Liberation Coalition; Hong Kong Professional Network; Hong Kong Public Affairs and Services at the University of California, Davis; Hong Kong Rule of Law Monitor; Hong Kong Social Action Movements in Boston; Hong Kong Student Advocacy Group at New York University; Hong Kong Watch; Hong Kongers in San Diego; Hong Kongers in San Francisco Bay Area; KONGcentric; LA Hong Kongers; LA Yellow Circle; Lamp of Liberty; Lion Rock Café; LV4HK - Las Vegas Stands with Hong Kong; Northern California Hong Kong Club; NY4HK - New Yorkers Supporting Hong Kong; Penn State Students for Hong Kong; Philly4HK; Revolution of Our Times LA; SD4HK - San Diegans Supporting Hong Kong; SEArious for HKG; Southern California Hong Kong Mothers’ Club; Students for Hong Kong; TX4HK - Texans Supporting Hong Kong; University of Arizona Hong Kong Student Association; University of California, San Diego Hong Kong Cultural Society; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Stands With Hong Kong; US Hongkongers Club; Walk With Hong Kong Humanitarian Foundation; We the Hongkongers. Plus, the letter was endorsed by 14 allies: Campaign for Uyghurs, China Aid Association, China Against the Death Penalty, Citizen Power Initiatives for China, Dialogue China, Georgetown Center for Asian Law, Human Rights in China, Humanitarian China, Institute for China’s Democratic Transition, International Campaign for Tibet, International Tibet Network Secretariat, Students for a Free Tibet, Uyghur American Association, and Uyghur Human Rights Project.
The local groups have also embarked on constructive collaborations on a variety of issues, including not only the film festivals and the campaign to get their new hometowns to end sister-city relations with their Chinese counterparts mentioned above but also a campaign to get institutions in their new countries to end relations with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, the authoritarian government’s main representative and propaganda arm abroad, and even to close down the HKETO altogether. This lead in 2022 to the introduction in Congress of a new bill, the HKETO Certification Act.
Together, all of the above constitutes a veritable reconstruction of a new civil society in exile after its decimation in HK, where, especially since the imposition of the national security law, more than 80 organizations have been forced to close, including media, trade unions, student unions, and NGOs, among them some of the oldest, biggest and most influential in the city. Of course, this diaspora civil society is tiny in comparison both to what has been destroyed in HK and to the host countries in which it operates, and it is dispersed across four continents. Still, in the space of four short years, and with little capital or other material resources, it’s pretty impressive.
The diaspora is flourishing, especially considering that the number of HKers worldwide outside of HK amounts to a few hundred thousand. Hong Kongers punch above their weight in terms of political influence. But all of this puts the dimensions of the struggle faced in perspective. Many have recognized the fragility of many initiatives and question how sustainable they are. Potential burnout is a cause for concern. In many places, it’s become harder to get people to turn out for protests. All of which is to say, we are just getting started. It’s terra incognita, literally. We’re making it up as we go along. The future is uncertain. No one can know what it might hold. In HK’s immediate future, there appears little but cause for despair, and no breakthrough is imminent; indeed, currently, it’s nearly impossible to imagine how it might even occur. Still we forge ahead.