From the November-December 2019 issue of News & Letters
Demonstrations of thousands in Hong Kong led by young people have entered a fifth month. That is despite the authorities, headed by Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam, digging out a law enacted under British colonialism to try to stifle dissent. Without legislative review, Lam used the 1922 Emergency Powers Act to force through a ban on masks in public, in hopes that protesters would give up their campaign for democracy in Hong Kong. Instead, marchers who had never worn masks donned masks in defiance of the law.
Despite the hits that the economy has taken since June, with demonstrations of more than a million people on two occasions, public sentiment is against the undemocratic Hong Kong authorities and its police state tactics that now include two people shot by police. Shoppers in one mall intervened when police charged at protesters there and forced the police to retreat.
China’s ruler Xi Jinping, whose troops have been parading just across the border with Hong Kong, promised “crushed bodies and shattered bones” for opponents of his rule. China used its economic might beyond its borders even to the toy department of life—that is, sports—by demanding that the National Basketball Association remove Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey for tweeting “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.” Since Morey was not fired, TV in China, which represented almost 10% of NBA revenue, has not aired this season’s NBA games. Despite that, Mike Pence accused the NBA of supporting Chinese Communists, forgetting that his boss Donald Trump had on Oct. 1 personally congratulated Xi on the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule.
—Bob McGuire
How did the resistance in Hong Kong arise, and what is the line from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping?
Read: Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and From Marx to Mao by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Includes: Chapter 5 The Thought of Mao Zedong
- Discontinuities and Continuities
- From Contradiction to Contradiction
to Contradiction - Alienation and Revolution