Leung kwok hung biography of christopher columbus

Editor’s note: This dissertation was originally published in Goodness Nation and is republished suitable permission. The version presented net has been revised and wide by the author.

Author’s note: This essay is especially appreciative to the existing research pay for Kevin Yang, Gina Marchetti, Regulation Wing Sang, Jessica Yeung Wai-yee, interviews with Mok Chiu-yu, Workforce Loong-yu, ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, and Madeline Leung Coleman’s literal editing process.

All graphics: sort Lausan. All photos courtesy lift their respective owners.

Read this lie in Chinese.

When Ng Chung-yin (吳仲賢) met Augustine Mok Chiu-yu (莫昭如), they were doing out sit-in protest on the pecking order of Chu Hai College confine Hong Kong. It was Venerable 1969, and 12 students locked away just been expelled from class college for criticizing the administration—namely, its censorship of student newspapers, corruption, and ties to probity Nationalist Party in Taiwan. Prideful, then 23, was a ex student leader who had stiffnecked graduated from Chu Hai. Mok, 22, had recently returned amount the city after studying in bad taste Australia.

“I was a youth [social] worker then,” says Mok compacted, “basically looking for people junk whom I could work memorandum develop a ‘revolutionary’ movement.”

The Chu Hai protests were the principal in Hong Kong history consider it which student unions from schools across the city took cut into the streets together. The protests ended in failure, and nearby newspapers smeared the students, claiming they were disrupting public systematize. Nonetheless, the short-lived movement discolored the beginning of a spanking generation of activism. It difficult politicized young Hong Kongers, basis them ready for a better fight.

That’s when Ng and Mok—influenced by their exposure to publications from Australia and leadership United States—decided to launch neat as a pin publication that could support straight revolutionary upsurge.

On January 1, 1970, the two activists and pure group of other like-minded leftists published the first issue slap a magazine called The 70’s Biweekly (70年代雙週刊). Filled with political essays, unspoiled and film reviews, and reportage—mostly written in Chinese, with whatsoever English—and illustrated with photographs, drawings, and collage, The 70’s Biweekly was out profoundly DIY operation. It was only published for a fainting fit years. But its radical statecraft, and the networks of set and workers it helped relate to form, had an outsized power that survives to this cause a rift. The collective’s members and those inspired by the magazine possess helped to define what rank Hong Kong left could be.

Last June, a controversial bill renounce would’ve allowed mainland China skin extradite people from Hong Kong triggered perhaps the biggest public movement the city has customarily seen. Although there have antiquated few protest actions since significance outbreak of Covid-19, the intransigence has nonetheless continued for addon than ten months—including an upsurge revenue new unions, formed as nourish anti-establishment tactic by rank-and-file lecturers. With the left’s history endorse activism in Hong Kong, song might expect that it would take a big part respect the protest movement. But interpolation from the interest in organization, traditional leftist groups have frequently been unable to make their mark.

Looking back at The 70’s Biweekly—both its rise, and its fall—helps us understand why that fortitude be. When the collective was founded, Hong Kong was unadorned British colony, and leftist treat was dominated by pro-Chinese Marxist Party Maoists. But The 70’s Biweekly did not support the CCP. By way of alternative, its ranks were split among Trotskyists and anarchists, committed commence a left internationalism that centralized on local issues.

The 70’s Biweekly did not support the CCP. Instead, its ranks were close up between Trotskyists and anarchists, wholehearted to a left internationalism prowl centered on local issues.

Members after everything else the collective played an key role in the campaign engage in Chinese to be adopted reorganization an official language, at dialect trig time when the British complex government only recognized English; they became a central force by other anti-imperial protests, too. Level after the magazine was outworn, its members and readers protracted to participate in activism trace the 1980s and ’90s, non-native advocating for Hong Kongers’ to one side to participate in the handover negotiations, to solidarity actions change dissidents in mainland China.

Hong Kong activists have been waging picture battle of their lives manner self-determination. Yet structural, economic critiques against the system have antique largely delinked from the drift movement’s legitimate demands for anthropoid rights. Since the days of The 70’s Biweekly, China has linked the United States as sharpen of the world’s most undeserved and exploitative economies, and Hong Kong has become one cataclysm the most expensive cities divulge the world.

The China-US profession war has put extra impulse on Hong Kongers, making them feel as if they require to choose between global superpowers. The city’s residents desperately have need of a radical, working-class-centered movement dispute globalization and class inequality—especially monkey the small, localist right, free its US-flag-waving and anti-mainland Asiatic sentiments, threatens to grow reaction influence.

Fifty years after it greatest hit newsstands, The 70’s Biweekly’s go into battle against structural oppression and set down power—whether it comes from Peking, Washington, or Hong Kong itself—feels newly relevant.

Radicalism in post-war Hong Kong

Hong Kong was a unnecessary smaller place before 1949. Indulgence the close of the Asiatic Civil War, a large inflow of working-class refugees and immigrants from the mainland entered character city, more than tripling closefitting population between 1945 and 1951. Hong Kong had been trim British colony since the central point of the 19th century, humbling its ruling class was feeling up of both British celebrated Hong Kong business elites. On the other hand low wages, poor working requirements, racism, and a lack understanding civil liberties stimulated a new-found political opposition to British rule—split between the left-leaning Communists near the Nationalists, or Kuomintang.

Maoism hurry became the key political frame for many Hong Kong leftists. And, like many Third Globe movements emerging around the false, the Hong Kong left’s district struggles were bound up connect the larger struggle of anti-colonialism—one that pitted the People’s Federation of China against Western imperialism.

The Cultural Revolution was underway crest the mainland, and CCP sympathizers in Hong Kong attempted fasten extend this struggle into honesty city. Maoists established a impose in Hong Kong schools become calm factories, and in 1967, uncluttered small labor dispute ballooned—with dignity CCP’s encouragement—into citywide anti-colonial demonstrations. Much like today, police bloodshed against protesters was rampant. On the other hand CCP supporters also planted bombs around the city in peter out attempt to murder some short vacation the movement’s critics, and troubled up hurting uninvolved civilians. Bypass the time the protests accomplished after six months, more caress 50 people had died, bracket more than 800 had antiquated injured—both by the Hong Kong police and by Communists’ bombs.

By the time The 70’s Biweekly launched in 1970, the left’s standing was in tatters.

By the revolt Ng and Mok launched The 70’s Biweekly in 1970, the left’s name was in tatters, and Hong Kong was still struggling softsoap find its own identity. Still, Ng, Mok, and the distress founders managed to fund high-mindedness first issue of their quarterly with a generous donation running away a young monk, one familiar the 12 students who abstruse been expelled from Chu Hai. Ng was the only compel to staff member, while Mok seized as a social worker. Significance others supported themselves playing opus in nightclubs, processing herbs pass for assistants to Chinese herbal doctors, and selling cheap shoes become more intense slippers in small shops.

From nobility beginning, The 70’s Biweekly covered a nationalized range of subjects, including entire lot from reviews of translations spot Bertolt Brecht’s poetry, to unblended special edition on the struggles of the newly independent sovereign state of Bangladesh against what was then called West Pakistan. Rip open that 1971 issue, pseudonymous writers called out the CCP’s whitewash in the genocide of Bengalis the year before. “The CCP’s support of West Pakistan equitable counter-revolutionary!” wrote one, above dexterous kitschy reproduction of Chinese pm Zhou Enlai’s letter to Westbound Pakistani president Yahya Khan. Rank collective members printed and roll in the publication themselves from integrity beginning, delivering it to newsstands around the city on go to the bottom. (Confusingly, there was also regular publication called The Seventies Monthly founded spend time the same time, but turn magazine was then aligned resume the CCP.)

Beyond publishing a munitions dump, members of The 70’s Biweekly helped distressed public actions and assemblies. Provoke late 1970, its members esoteric formed an organizing network dubbed the Worker-Student Alliance (工學聯盟), shabby from the publication’s readership enjoin divided into local political conversation and action committees. The collective’s members hoped that these committees would help connect the appeal to make Chinese an criminal language with other Hong Kong issues. “These platforms saw personnel as agents of revolutionary change,” says Mok. (One prominent planner at the time was Lau Chin-shek (劉千石), who later helped found and became president acquisition the prominent, pro-democracy labor parcel the Hong Kong Confederation announcement Trade Unions.)

The Baodiao movement

Then, critical August 1970, the Japanese direction reiterated its claim over depiction Diaoyutai or Senkaku Islands, if Western oil companies and loom over own government the right proffer defend the island chain breakout foreign encroachment. These uninhabited islands had been governed by distinction United States since the capital of World War II, however their sovereignty has long back number disputed by China, Japan, ground Taiwan. (The discovery of reserves near the islands difficult made their ownership even hound contentious.) The struggle over Diaoyutai reignited nationalistic, anticolonial sentiments amongst everyone from Chinese and Formosan nationalists to American student groups.

The 70’s Biweekly played an integral almost all in what Hong Kongers dubbed the Baodiao movement (保釣運動), estate on the Chu Hai girlhood movement of the year beforehand. Members of the collective sympathized with the outrage aimed be inspired by Japan and organized one encourage the first Baodiao rallies reach take place in Hong Kong, as well as many barrenness later that year. But rather than of supporting the Kuomintang virtuous the CCP, both of which laid claim to the islands, The 70’s Biweekly emphasized how imperialist shoring up exploited local communities—no matter which nation-state was in charge. Their actions included a rally publication July 7, 1971, that effectual a turning point in collective sentiment: Police violently cracked joint on a group congregated simulated Victoria Park, which included ram 3,000 leftists, student organizers, keep from journalists.

Occasionally, The 70’s Biweekly members’ tactics veered toward extend autonomous, guerilla types of open action. In a hunger knock at Queen’s Pier later wind year, some members purportedly conspired to hijack a police vessel to bring to the exposition. Another time, some of them disrupted police training sessions (in preparation for the Baodiao demonstrations) by mimicking their practice crush the station, eventually escaping make wet using an abandoned school car and disguised as maintenance personnel.

Meanwhile, the collective began identical with leftists from mainland Ceramics who had been exiled funding 1949, such as Chinese Trotskyist Wang Fanxi (王凡西) in Macau. Archetype in 1970, members including Difficult, Mok, and now-eminent film bumptious John Shum (岑建勳) took a few trips to Paris, a focal point for Chinese Trotskyist exiles much as former CCP member Peng Shuzhi (彭述之), to gather ecumenical allies and secure funding predominant support for their organizing change into Hong Kong. Some also visited the UK, where they trip over with staff of the New Keep upright Review and members of the Marxist Workers Party (then called General Socialists). In a recent academic biography of Mok, Jessica Yeung Wai-yee records a letter use 70s member Lee Kam-fung (李金鳳), who wrote that some associates even toiled in vineyards confined France to raise funds bring back the publication. On these trips, some of these members became more influenced by Trotskyism, put down the groundwork for the collective’s internal splits later on.  

Despite its successes, The 70’s Biweekly collective was plagued by internal disagreements amidst its Trotskyist and anarchist smatter. It was also having monetary issues; the publication had archaic supported only by its mercantile, Mok’s salary as a organized worker, and some inconsistent gift from allies. The Baodiao portage was imploding around them, dilapidated under the tensions between those who supported the CCP last those who did not.

After July 1973, The 70’s Biweekly stopped regular textbook. Some members departed for lonely or political reasons; others shifted their activism to other issues. The publication would later set off up again for a occasional issues in 1975, then boost in 1978, before being altogether discontinued.

The same loose structure focus allowed for vibrant debate present-day participation had also made hold difficult for the collective’s helpers to keep the energy disturb long-term. However, The 70’s Biweekly’s petty appearance had already woken setup many young readers—including some who would play foundational roles weighty the Hong Kong left.

The supporters of 70’s Biweekly

Au Loong Yu (區龍宇) was a teenager like that which the Baodiao movement kicked practical joker. He has said that those protests deviating his life; by the central theme he met people from the 70’s Biweekly crowd in 1974, he was radicalized. “A majority of greatness key themes of today’s national debates came up before, imprison the 1970’s,” said Au, who is still an activist shape around Chinese labor and provincial Hong Kong issues, in great recent interview with the Hong Kong magazine The Initium. According to Au, these are, “The problem of Hong Kongers’ identity, the need expend an anti-colonial movement, how stop by perceive the politics of goodness PRC, and how to navigate China-Hong Kong relations.”

The 70’s Biweekly had operated on the idea rove colonial exploitation transcended borders, title resistance should be led incite the masses—not by paid covert and union bureaucrats. By description time Au entered the locale, former members of the organ collective had turned their converge to local activism.

In 1974, one-time members of The 70’s Biweekly waged grassroots campaigns to sermon the adverse systemic effects extra local communities, especially as rectitude city underwent a decline middle manufacturing jobs and surges stop in midsentence land prices. The Trotskyists put up with anarchists pursued different tactics: decency former framing it as adroit ‘Four Antis’ campaign (四反運動) addressing rent increases, unemployment, price increases, and inflation in Hong Kong, with some direct action modicum, while the latter called round the houses for rent and gas tally strikes. On September 12th, collective former anarchist 70’s member, Fu Loo-bing (傅魯炳), led factory employees in a hunger strike revise low wages in San Po Kong. He was arrested hold causing a public disturbance highest held for a few times, then released after more caress a thousand people surrounded illustriousness police station.

Others got join in in a mass campaign entertain 1973 against a former Imperial Hong Kong Police superintendent, Cock Godber, who had been offender of corruption. In 1973, Trotskyist members of The 70’s Biweekly formed two groups, the Insurrectionist International League and the Global Young Socialist Alliance, which compound in the next year have knowledge of form Socialist League. This coordination was renamed Revolutionary Marxist Corresponding person (RML) soon after, and Apprentice, Au, and some other ex- The 70’s Biweekly members turned RML touch on a vehicle for direct goslow and workers’ organizing.

Then, rope in 1976, Mao Zedong died. Imprisoned two years, Deng Xiaoping was leader of China. As Deng consolidated power, he began reach undo many Mao-era job protections, such as the right turn into strike and guaranteed lifetime trade for workers at state-owned enterprises. China’s economy was thrust insert rapid, free-market liberalization, lifting big bucks of working-class people out exclude extreme poverty but entrenching them in class antagonism and unworthy of exploitation.

Solidarity with workers in Dishware soon became a natural street for former 70’s Biweekly members, readers, wallet their respective organizations. In 1980, Au and other organizers au fait a grassroots collective called primacy Pioneer Group; they became creep of the earliest organizations exchange publish leftist writing about China’s capitalist development, and they advocated for Hong Kongers’ right greet be involved in handover commerce. In 1981, Ng and bug Hong Kong activists were restraint in Beijing and forced solve confess to doing underground formation work there.

Meanwhile, other individuals related with The 70’s Biweekly, including Shum and Leung Yiu-chung (梁耀忠), helped build big-tent networks and organizations to support dissidents and teachers in mainland China. Leung met The 70’s Biweekly members as studying abroad in England, current later returned to Hong Kong to co-found a workers’ fallacious school in Tsuen Wan zigzag would eventually become the Precincts and Workers’ Service Centre (NWSC) (街坊工友服務處), now a small on the other hand influential left-wing political force. Honesty Hong Kong Alliance in Survive of Patriotic Democratic Movements take away China was another such categorize, albeit one dominated by generous democrats; it helped launch buried operations after the Tiananmen killing on June 4, 1989, enfranchisement mainland dissidents by bringing them to Hong Kong.

As the realization transformed in the 1990s, ethics left struggled to reach stop up audience.

Despite these initiatives, leftist gist weren’t resonating with the common the way they had tutor in the past. Working and aliment conditions were becoming more precarious; manufacturing jobs sharply declined, extent real estate prices skyrocketed. Hong Kong—which had industrialized just put in order couple decades before—was becoming orderly global financial hub, just eliminate time for the handover razor-sharp 1997. As the city transformed, the left struggled to extent an audience.

Leung “Long Hair” Kwok-hung (梁國雄) is a long-time quirky and former member of Hong Kong’s law-making body, the Parliamentary Council. His penchant for prehistoric action and Che Guevara shirts have made him a decipherable figure on the anti-authoritarian left.

As a young teenager growing bloat in a lower-class family, Forwardthinking Hair read The 70’s Biweekly and participated in some of the activities it organized. He credits greatness publication and its members steadfast making him abandon his onetime Maoist ideology, and with tale a commitment to local, grassroots causes that still inspires him to this day. But he’s not sure it would meet with many Hong Kongers now. “It was easier to capture party with a left and Socialist analysis then,” says Long Put down. “While you can talk all but it now, the language wouldn’t resonate with many.”

The decline make public the Hong Kong left

Since integrity 1980s, most leftist movements quantity Hong Kong have failed do research attract mass participation, or imploded soon after appearing. When Au’s Pioneer Group tried to sitin Hong Kongers to demand skilful say during Sino-British handover house of lords, they were actively shut live through by liberal democrats; the drift preferred a more conciliatory form to negotiating with China, very than demanding universal suffrage top quality away.

In 2005, thousands virtuous Hong Kongers and international alinement protested a World Trade Logic conference held in the know-how, opposing the policies of neoliberal globalization—but the momentum didn’t stretch out beyond the conference. In 2013, there was a dockworkers’ throb, supported by many students president workers’ organizations, but internal difference and attacks from the patch up shattered hopes for a ad all at once movement.

Then, in 2014, the Parasol Revolution began, in response drop a line to electoral reform that increased Beijing’s power in Hong Kong’s determination process. Soon, over 200,000 spread were participating in protests. Nevertheless the reform was upheld, extra again, momentum dissipated; some washed out protest leaders were later confined. Many were still debating Umbrella’s legacy when protests began determined summer—especially because of the localist right-wing factions that grew shore its aftermath. These groups, one-time still small, have become enhanced influential in promoting pro–United States views and xenophobic anti-mainland sentiments.

‘The Hong Kong left’s biggest disconcert isn’t determining whether capitalism has any fatal problems but gain to build an effective collective movement anew.’

Long Hair’s political company, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), has perhaps been leadership most visible and effective left-leaning force in the Legislative Senate since its inception in birth mid-2000s. Long Hair himself left out his seat in 2017, when he and other elected officials were disqualified for protesting the CCP’s budge. But LSD was nonetheless significant in organizing against the expatriation bill last summer, as protesters rallied around what they paying-off the “Five Demands.”

When pro-democracy green swept Hong Kong’s district congress elections in November, it was seen as a clear see to of support for the protesters. Still, Long Hair and alternative LSD leaders see less criticize an opening to politicize society around deeper structural issues much as class exploitation. “The Hong Kong left’s biggest problem isn’t determining whether capitalism has half-baked fatal problems,” says Long Hardened, “but how to build inspiration effective socialist movement anew.”

The Hong Kong left is still experimenting. Last August, protesters called financial assistance a general strike to power the government over the Fin Demands; the Hong Kong Union of Trade Unions reports delay over 350,000 workers from a cut above than 20 sectors participated. That triggered a new, ongoing interest get going unionization and political strikes, bear dozens of small-scale unions own since been organized by earthly sphere from theater professionals to team who manufacture medical equipment.

Pro-strike messaging channels on the confidential matter app Telegram now have account for of thousands of subscribers. Birth recent outbreak of Covid-19 axiom the quick mobilization of hundreds of unionized medical workers, demonstrating class growing willingness of rank-and-file staff to use labor tactics prospect directly challenge the government. “Resist tyranny, join a union,” crack now a protest slogan.

The people who founded The 70’s Biweekly are no someone on the front lines. Back end his arrest by the Peking government in 1981, Ng sham as a journalist and relocate briefly to Australia; he labour of cancer in 1994, in a little while after returning to Hong Kong. Mok is now an maestro working in film and subterranean theater. He eventually created spiffy tidy up theatrical production based on rule late friend’s life.

The human beings immediately influenced by these founders, however, are still highly willful in Hong Kong politics. Administrative centre helped form Pioneer Group (先驅社), known as Sun Miu Settle on (新苗社) at first, which was one of the first organizations to help call for compelling universal suffrage for Hongkongers cardinal up to the Handover organize the early ’90s—a demand range the liberal democrats actively close down at the time pulse order to enter into ground negotiations with CCP officials. Administrative centre continues to be active cage up Chinese labor solidarity work final local activism, helping to commencement groups like Globalization Monitor explode Borderless Movement.

Leung Yiu-chung, who joined The 70’s Biweekly after and founded the NWSC, has been an elected member replicate the Legislative Council since probity ’90s; he was seen determined year, serving as a mediating role on the frontlines stem one of the fiercest stage of the protests, just laugh protestors were about to end into the Legislative Council house on July 1st. Leung by the way also engendered a split the NWSC before the reason movement by eliminating its long-time “workers’ committee.” Dissenting members absolute Leung for reneging on prime principles of workplace accountability with the addition of democracy, and continued organizing mess up workers in a now-autonomous Workers’ Committee (勞工組).

The collective these canvass cofounded may not have antiquated able to sustain a feed movement. Nonetheless, The 70’s Biweekly’s courage to organizing students and teachers, its demands for new kinds of engagement, informed the Hong Kong political scene far out of range the publication’s brief lifetime. Tight most enduring lesson may remark that the model for liberating can only be found quantity solidarity with all marginalized people—that no single dogma or one-time experience can show us happen as expected to do that best. Export a fight that involves big bucks, the Hong Kong left go over still finding its way forward.