Umbrella Revolution

I’m lucky that I was able to travel to China twice while one of my dearest friends was living there during her ex-pat assignment. While I never  made it to Hong Kong (we chose to go to Cambodia instead on that trip) I was there for National Holiday Week, or as I like to call it Yea! Communism Week. National Holiday Week is essentially China’s version of our Independence Day and begins tomorrow Oct. 1. During the week that I was there we spent a few days in Beijing and it was truly magical to be in the country’s capital during these celebrations. I have never seen that many people in one place in my entire life.

I had one of the best meals of my life in the old American Embassy just off of Tiananmen Square. I climbed the Great Wall of China, visited the Emperor’s Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. We, of course, visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Before we left our van to tour Tiananmen Square, our guide Jerry cautioned us to be careful what we said when we were out on the square. He told us that a lot of the people on the square may look like street sweepers but were in fact undercover police looking for signs of unrest. Most people in China, if they don’t have access to Western new sources and internet, have no idea that Tiananmen Square was once the site of a democratic revolution. Those same people have no idea that another call for democracy is happening in Hong Kong today – anytime news reports are shown from Hong Kong on stations such as the BBC or CNN the screen goes to black on mainland China.

The Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong is in response to Beijing wanting to vet political candidates who will run for office in Hong Kong in 2017. Since Hong Kong was returned by the British to China in 1997 the country has essentially claimed to be one state, two governments. Mainland Chinese must get exit visas to visit Hong Kong for fear that they won’t return to the more restrictive mainland. The Hong Kong government functions with more autonomy than mainland China and has more freedoms for its people. It would have been impossible to take people who had lived under British rule and place them under Communist rule.

The people of Hong Kong see Beijing’s move to vet their political candidates as being in direct violation of the joint agreement. If Beijing is allowed to interfere with those elections they will surely manage to remove political candidates who have more democratic leanings.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Hong Kong this week as millions of Chinese will be off work for National Holiday Week. I hope the police continue to use restraint and allow these people to protest peacefully for their rights and that Hong Kong does not become another Tiananmen Square.