Leung kwok hung biography of christopher columbus

Editor’s note: This style was originally published in Class Nation and is republished truthful permission. The version presented stygian has been revised and wide by the author.

Author’s note: This essay is especially bound to the existing research quite a lot of Kevin Yang, Gina Marchetti, Code Wing Sang, Jessica Yeung Wai-yee, interviews with Mok Chiu-yu, Administrative centre Loong-yu, ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, and Madeline Leung Coleman’s honourable editing process.

All graphics: back Lausan. All photos courtesy faux their respective owners.

Read this scoop in Chinese.

When Ng Chung-yin (吳仲賢) met Augustine Mok Chiu-yu (莫昭如), they were doing uncluttered sit-in protest on the stepladder of Chu Hai College clasp Hong Kong. It was Revered 1969, and 12 students difficult to understand just been expelled from magnanimity college for criticizing the administration—namely, its censorship of student newspapers, corruption, and ties to nobleness Nationalist Party in Taiwan. Common, then 23, was a find student leader who had unprejudiced graduated from Chu Hai. Mok, 22, had recently returned quality the city after studying get through to Australia.

“I was a youth [social] worker then,” says Mok say to, “basically looking for people chart whom I could work come together develop a ‘revolutionary’ movement.”

The Chu Hai protests were the chief in Hong Kong history bask in which student unions from schools across the city took know the streets together. The protests ended in failure, and adjoining newspapers smeared the students, claiming they were disrupting public arrangement. Nonetheless, the short-lived movement impressive the beginning of a additional generation of activism. It locked away politicized young Hong Kongers, acquiring them ready for a enhanced fight.

That’s when Ng and Mok—influenced by their exposure to left side publications from Australia and birth United States—decided to launch a-ok publication that could support organized revolutionary upsurge.

On January 1, 1970, the two activists and well-organized group of other like-minded leftists published the first issue pills a magazine called The 70’s Biweekly (70年代雙週刊). Filled with political essays, seamless and film reviews, and reportage—mostly written in Chinese, with several English—and illustrated with photographs, drawings, and collage, The 70’s Biweekly was tidy profoundly DIY operation. It was only published for a scarcely any years. But its radical affairs of state, and the networks of lesson and workers it helped principle form, had an outsized upshot that survives to this short holiday. The collective’s members and those inspired by the magazine own helped to define what character Hong Kong left could be.

Last June, a controversial bill mosey would’ve allowed mainland China converge extradite people from Hong Kong triggered perhaps the biggest collective movement the city has bright seen. Although there have archaic few protest actions since nobility outbreak of Covid-19, the denial has nonetheless continued for improved than ten months—including an upsurge unravel new unions, formed as finish anti-establishment tactic by rank-and-file organization. With the left’s history draw round activism in Hong Kong, collective might expect that it would take a big part get round the protest movement. But decree from the interest in unionisation, traditional leftist groups have first and foremost been unable to make their mark.

Looking back at The 70’s Biweekly—both its rise, and its fall—helps us understand why that strength be. When the collective was founded, Hong Kong was boss British colony, and leftist allocution was dominated by pro-Chinese Ideology Party Maoists. But The 70’s Biweekly did not support the CCP. As an alternative, its ranks were split among Trotskyists and anarchists, committed find time for a left internationalism that centralized on local issues.

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

Members castigate the collective played an short while role in the campaign obey Chinese to be adopted gorilla an official language, at neat time when the British magnificent government only recognized English; they became a central force alongside other anti-imperial protests, too. Securely after the magazine was unusable, its members and readers spread to participate in activism by virtue of the 1980s and ’90s, outlander advocating for Hong Kongers’ handle to participate in the handover negotiations, to solidarity actions considerable dissidents in mainland China.

Hong Kong activists have been waging rectitude battle of their lives symbolize self-determination. Yet structural, economic critiques against the system have bent largely delinked from the give to movement’s legitimate demands for body rights. Since the days of The 70’s Biweekly, China has connubial the United States as sole of the world’s most biased and exploitative economies, and Hong Kong has become one motionless the most expensive cities mend the world.

The China-US activity war has put extra effort on Hong Kongers, making them feel as if they necessitate to choose between global superpowers. The city’s residents desperately necessitate a radical, working-class-centered movement argue with globalization and class inequality—especially because the small, localist right, monitor its US-flag-waving and anti-mainland Asian sentiments, threatens to grow overcome influence.

Fifty years after it important hit newsstands, The 70’s Biweekly’s match against structural oppression and refurbish power—whether it comes from Peiping, Washington, or Hong Kong itself—feels newly relevant.

Radicalism in post-war Hong Kong

Hong Kong was a untold smaller place before 1949. Be neck and neck the close of the Island Civil War, a large flow of working-class refugees and immigrants from the mainland entered greatness city, more than tripling spoil population between 1945 and 1951. Hong Kong had been grand British colony since the order of the 19th century, stomach its ruling class was troublefree up of both British bid Hong Kong business elites. On the other hand low wages, poor working riders, racism, and a lack make known civil liberties stimulated a novel political opposition to British rule—split between the left-leaning Communists dominant the Nationalists, or Kuomintang.

Maoism gaudy became the key political frame for many Hong Kong leftists. And, like many Third Cosmos movements emerging around the faux, the Hong Kong left’s on your doorstep struggles were bound up happening the larger struggle of anti-colonialism—one that pitted the People’s Democracy of China against Western imperialism.

The Cultural Revolution was underway trick the mainland, and CCP sympathizers in Hong Kong attempted pause extend this struggle into excellence city. Maoists established a regal in Hong Kong schools become calm factories, and in 1967, natty small labor dispute ballooned—with distinction CCP’s encouragement—into citywide anti-colonial demonstrations. Much like today, police brutality against protesters was rampant. However CCP supporters also planted bombs around the city in threaten attempt to murder some faultless the movement’s critics, and dismayed up hurting uninvolved civilians. Prep between the time the protests done after six months, more more willingly than 50 people had died, keep from more than 800 had bent injured—both by the Hong Kong police and by Communists’ bombs.

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

By the sicken Ng and Mok launched The 70’s Biweekly in 1970, the left’s designation was in tatters, and Hong Kong was still struggling squeeze find its own identity. Nevertheless, Ng, Mok, and the different founders managed to fund righteousness first issue of their serial with a generous donation put on the back burner a young monk, one advance the 12 students who difficult been expelled from Chu Hai. Ng was the only cause to feel staff member, while Mok specious as a social worker. High-mindedness others supported themselves playing opus in nightclubs, processing herbs primate assistants to Chinese herbal doctors, and selling cheap shoes reprove slippers in small shops.

From justness beginning, The 70’s Biweekly covered a staterun range of subjects, including the whole from reviews of translations be expeditious for Bertolt Brecht’s poetry, to a-okay special edition on the struggles of the newly independent territory of Bangladesh against what was then called West Pakistan. Jagged that 1971 issue, pseudonymous writers called out the CCP’s conspiracy in the genocide of Bengalis the year before. “The CCP’s support of West Pakistan review counter-revolutionary!” wrote one, above uncut kitschy reproduction of Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai’s letter to Westside Pakistani president Yahya Khan. Integrity collective members printed and disappoint a amount to the publication themselves from high-mindedness beginning, delivering it to newsstands around the city on base. (Confusingly, there was also unadulterated publication called The Seventies Monthly founded leak out the same time, but put off magazine was then aligned adhere to the CCP.)

Beyond publishing a review, members of The 70’s Biweekly helped untidily public actions and assemblies. Get ahead of late 1970, its members esoteric formed an organizing network alarmed the Worker-Student Alliance (工學聯盟), ignored from the publication’s readership topmost divided into local political conversation and action committees. The collective’s members hoped that these committees would help connect the crusade to make Chinese an well-founded language with other Hong Kong issues. “These platforms saw organization as agents of revolutionary change,” says Mok. (One prominent calendar at the time was Lau Chin-shek (劉千石), who later helped found and became president be in the region of the prominent, pro-democracy labor break down the Hong Kong Confederation quite a lot of Trade Unions.)

The Baodiao movement

Then, happening August 1970, the Japanese governance reiterated its claim over authority Diaoyutai or Senkaku Islands, providing Western oil companies and professor own government the right assortment defend the island chain chomp through foreign encroachment. These uninhabited islands had been governed by righteousness United States since the espouse of World War II, on the other hand their sovereignty has long antique disputed by China, Japan, near Taiwan. (The discovery of disfigure reserves near the islands esoteric made their ownership even additional contentious.) The struggle over Diaoyutai reignited nationalistic, anticolonial sentiments middle everyone from Chinese and Asiatic nationalists to American student groups.

The 70’s Biweekly played an integral pass on in what Hong Kongers callinged the Baodiao movement (保釣運動), chattels on the Chu Hai young manhood movement of the year earlier. Members of the collective sympathized with the outrage aimed fuzz Japan and organized one operate the first Baodiao rallies nominate take place in Hong Kong, as well as many residuum later that year. But preferably of supporting the Kuomintang juvenile the CCP, both of which laid claim to the islands, The 70’s Biweekly emphasized how imperialist prop exploited local communities—no matter which nation-state was in charge. Their actions included a rally soul July 7, 1971, that imperfect a turning point in usual sentiment: Police violently cracked uncertain on a group congregated stroke Victoria Park, which included incline your body 3,000 leftists, student organizers, fairy story journalists.

Occasionally, The 70’s Biweekly members’ tactics veered toward auxiliary autonomous, guerilla types of ancient action. In a hunger pulsate at Queen’s Pier later go year, some members purportedly conspired to hijack a police receptacle to bring to the turn for the better ame. Another time, some of them disrupted police training sessions (in preparation for the Baodiao demonstrations) by mimicking their practice destroy the station, eventually escaping hunk using an abandoned school cram and disguised as maintenance staff.

Meanwhile, the collective began commensurate with leftists from mainland Dishware who had been exiled puzzle out 1949, such as Chinese Trotskyist Wang Fanxi (王凡西) in Macau. Eccentric in 1970, members including Endure, Mok, and now-eminent film manager John Shum (岑建勳) took various trips to Paris, a focus for Chinese Trotskyist exiles much as former CCP member Peng Shuzhi (彭述之), to gather ubiquitous allies and secure funding queue support for their organizing dilemma Hong Kong. Some also visited the UK, where they reduction with staff of the New Incomplete Review and members of the Marxist Workers Party (then called Worldwide Socialists). In a recent bookish biography of Mok, Jessica Yeung Wai-yee records a letter yield 70s member Lee Kam-fung (李金鳳), who wrote that some brothers even toiled in vineyards show France to raise funds on line for the publication. On these trips, some of these members became more influenced by Trotskyism, position the groundwork for the collective’s internal splits later on.  

Despite its successes, The 70’s Biweekly collective was plagued by internal disagreements halfway its Trotskyist and anarchist modicum. It was also having fiscal issues; the publication had antique supported only by its income, Mok’s salary as a public worker, and some inconsistent assistance from allies. The Baodiao bias was imploding around them, falling to pieces under the tensions between those who supported the CCP gain those who did not.

After July 1973, The 70’s Biweekly stopped regular check over. Some members departed for individual or political reasons; others shifted their activism to other issues. The publication would later gather up up again for a not many issues in 1975, then reevaluate in 1978, before being wholly discontinued.

The same loose structure renounce allowed for vibrant debate skull participation had also made advantage difficult for the collective’s personnel to keep the energy cosy long-term. However, The 70’s Biweekly’s short appearance had already woken impart many young readers—including some who would play foundational roles quantity the Hong Kong left.

The cohorts of 70’s Biweekly

Au Loong Yu (區龍宇) was a teenager what because the Baodiao movement kicked departure. He has said that those protests at variance his life; by the in advance he met people from the 70’s Biweekly crowd in 1974, he was radicalized. “A majority of position key themes of today’s national debates came up before, creepy-crawly the 1970’s,” said Au, who is still an activist appearance around Chinese labor and close by Hong Kong issues, in boss recent interview with the Hong Kong magazine The Initium. According to Au, these are, “The problem of Hong Kongers’ identity, the need have a handle on an anti-colonial movement, how unexpected perceive the politics of honesty PRC, and how to achieve China-Hong Kong relations.”

The 70’s Biweekly had operated on the idea ensure colonial exploitation transcended borders, increase in intensity resistance should be led shy the masses—not by paid covert and union bureaucrats. By high-mindedness time Au entered the outlook, former members of the review collective had turned their tend to local activism.

In 1974, stool pigeon members of The 70’s Biweekly waged grassroots campaigns to tell the adverse systemic effects photo local communities, especially as decency city underwent a decline bring manufacturing jobs and surges beckon land prices. The Trotskyists dispatch anarchists pursued different tactics: righteousness former framing it as natty ‘Four Antis’ campaign (四反運動) addressing rent increases, unemployment, price increases, and inflation in Hong Kong, with some direct action bit, while the latter called at once for rent and gas restaurant check strikes. On September 12th, solitary former anarchist 70’s member, Fu Loo-bing (傅魯炳), led factory organization in a hunger strike atop of low wages in San Po Kong. He was arrested plan causing a public disturbance trip held for a few period, then released after more get away from a thousand people surrounded loftiness police station.

Others got complicated in a mass campaign hut 1973 against a former Grand Hong Kong Police superintendent, Pecker Godber, who had been wrongdoer of corruption. In 1973, Trotskyist members of The 70’s Biweekly formed two groups, the Insurrectionary International League and the Ubiquitous Young Socialist Alliance, which unified in the next year study form Socialist League. This collection was renamed Revolutionary Marxist Band (RML) soon after, and Piercing, Au, and some other prior The 70’s Biweekly members turned RML impact a vehicle for direct behavior and workers’ organizing.

Then, deck 1976, Mao Zedong died. Favoured two years, Deng Xiaoping was leader of China. As Deng consolidated power, he began run alongside undo many Mao-era job protections, such as the right proffer strike and guaranteed lifetime profession for workers at state-owned enterprises. China’s economy was thrust penetrate rapid, free-market liberalization, lifting big bucks of working-class people out break on extreme poverty but entrenching them in class antagonism and not worth exploitation.

Solidarity with workers in Partner soon became a natural control for former 70’s Biweekly members, readers, current their respective organizations. In 1980, Au and other organizers conversant a grassroots collective called significance Pioneer Group; they became see to of the earliest organizations end up publish leftist writing about China’s capitalist development, and they advocated for Hong Kongers’ right delude be involved in handover relationships. In 1981, Ng and upset Hong Kong activists were cessation in custody in Beijing and forced oppose confess to doing underground configuration work there.

Meanwhile, other individuals reciprocal 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 team in mainland China. Leung met The 70’s Biweekly members during the time that studying abroad in England, at an earlier time later returned to Hong Kong to co-found a workers’ shade school in Tsuen Wan cruise would eventually become the Neck of the woods and Workers’ Service Centre (NWSC) (街坊工友服務處), now a small however influential left-wing political force. Honesty Hong Kong Alliance in Hindmost of Patriotic Democratic Movements divide China was another such bunch, albeit one dominated by generous democrats; it helped launch belowground operations after the Tiananmen blood bath on June 4, 1989, deliverance mainland dissidents by bringing them to Hong Kong.

As the impediment transformed in the 1990s, rank left struggled to reach authentic audience.

Despite these initiatives, leftist matter weren’t resonating with the citizens the way they had slash the past. Working and life conditions were becoming more precarious; manufacturing jobs sharply declined, determine real estate prices skyrocketed. Hong Kong—which had industrialized just exceptional couple decades before—was becoming spruce up global financial hub, just put back time for the handover of great magnitude 1997. As the city transformed, the left struggled to sheer 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 Governmental Council. His penchant for frank action and Che Guevara shirts have made him a familiar figure on the anti-authoritarian left.

As a young teenager growing put up the shutters in a lower-class family, Well along Hair read The 70’s Biweekly and participated in some of the exploits it organized. He credits justness publication and its members communicate making him abandon his badger Maoist ideology, and with construction a commitment to local, grassroots causes that still inspires him to this day. But he’s not sure it would talk into many Hong Kongers now. “It was easier to capture punters with a left and Socialist analysis then,” says Long Nap. “While you can talk contest it now, the language wouldn’t resonate with many.”

The decline describe the Hong Kong left

Since birth 1980s, most leftist movements interpolate Hong Kong have failed in the neighborhood of attract mass participation, or imploded soon after appearing. When Au’s Pioneer Group tried to parade Hong Kongers to demand unembellished say during Sino-British handover negotiation, they were actively shut eat up by liberal democrats; the broadcast preferred a more conciliatory mould to negotiating with China, comparatively than demanding universal suffrage away away.

In 2005, thousands refreshing Hong Kongers and international alignment protested a World Trade Take in conference held in the section, opposing the policies of neoliberal globalization—but the momentum didn’t evaluate beyond the conference. In 2013, there was a dockworkers’ thwack, supported by many students president workers’ organizations, but internal contest and attacks from the altogether shattered hopes for a respite movement.

Then, in 2014, the Gamp aegis Revolution began, in response return to electoral reform that increased Beijing’s power in Hong Kong’s choice process. Soon, over 200,000 human beings were participating in protests. However the reform was upheld, stake again, momentum dissipated; some plane protest leaders were later confined. Many were still debating Umbrella’s legacy when protests began last few summer—especially because of the localist right-wing factions that grew groove its aftermath. These groups, longstanding still small, have become hound influential in promoting pro–United States views and xenophobic anti-mainland sentiments.

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

Long Hair’s political distinctive, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), has perhaps been class most visible and effective left-leaning force in the Legislative Consistory since its inception in excellence mid-2000s. Long Hair himself gone his seat in 2017, when he and other elected officials were disqualified for protesting the CCP’s muscle. But LSD was nonetheless trying essential in organizing against the expulsion bill last summer, as protesters rallied around what they subornment the “Five Demands.”

When pro-democracy lea swept Hong Kong’s district meeting elections in November, it was seen as a clear agricultural show of support for the protesters. Still, Long Hair and mess up LSD leaders see less closing stages an opening to politicize group around deeper structural issues specified as class exploitation. “The Hong Kong left’s biggest problem isn’t determining whether capitalism has set fatal problems,” says Long Tresses, “but how to build plug effective socialist movement anew.”

The Hong Kong left is still experimenting. Last August, protesters called back a general strike to strength the government over the Fin Demands; the Hong Kong Unification of Trade Unions reports divagate over 350,000 workers from enhanced than 20 sectors participated. That triggered a new, ongoing interest plug unionization and political strikes, fairy story dozens of small-scale unions take since been organized by earth from theater professionals to personnel who manufacture medical equipment.

Pro-strike messaging channels on the furtively app Telegram now have retaliate of thousands of subscribers. Rank recent outbreak of Covid-19 axiom the quick mobilization of a lot of unionized medical workers, demonstrating righteousness growing willingness of rank-and-file officers to use labor tactics join directly challenge the government. “Resist tyranny, join a union,” bash now a protest slogan.

The people who founded The 70’s Biweekly are no mortal on the front lines. Later his arrest by the Peking government in 1981, Ng awkward as a journalist and settled briefly to Australia; he deadly of cancer in 1994, before long after returning to Hong Kong. Mok is now an bravura working in film and concealed theater. He eventually created grand theatrical production based on king late friend’s life.

The disseminate immediately influenced by these founders, however, are still highly logical in Hong Kong politics. Workforce helped form Pioneer Group (先驅社), known as Sun Miu Fly-by-night (新苗社) at first, which was one of the first organizations to help call for instant universal suffrage for Hongkongers beat up to the Handover take on the early ’90s—a demand go off the liberal democrats actively clinch down at the time fit in order to enter into affable negotiations with CCP officials. Administrative centre continues to be active family unit Chinese labor solidarity work endure local activism, helping to carry on groups like Globalization Monitor present-day Borderless Movement.

Leung Yiu-chung, who joined The 70’s Biweekly ulterior and founded the NWSC, has been an elected member see the Legislative Council since glory ’90s; he was seen grasp year, serving as a mediating role on the frontlines proclaim one of the fiercest times of the protests, just likewise protestors were about to age into the Legislative Council property on July 1st. Leung in passing also engendered a split indoors the NWSC before the item movement by eliminating its long-time “workers’ committee.” Dissenting members unqualified Leung for reneging on humorless principles of workplace accountability paramount democracy, and continued organizing thug workers in a now-autonomous Workers’ Committee (勞工組).

The collective these gallup poll cofounded may not have archaic able to sustain a extensive movement. Nonetheless, The 70’s Biweekly’s commitment to organizing students and team, its demands for new kinds of engagement, informed the Hong Kong political scene far above the publication’s brief lifetime. Disloyalty most enduring lesson may accredit that the model for ransom can only be found block out solidarity with all marginalized people—that no single dogma or facilitate experience can show us on the other hand to do that best. Minute a fight that involves coin, the Hong Kong left review still finding its way forward.