Watch The Backstory | Why Hong Kong’s Protests Exploded | The New Yorker Video

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[Woman] Go, go, go, go, go, go!

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A part of the surreal nature of those protests is that

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sure, you are listening to weapons go off

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and also you’re seeing tear gasoline

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and there are stampedes coming.

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However you additionally search for and there is Louis Vuitton

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and Victoria’s Secret and large advertisements

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and also you assume, I imply, am I in a warfare zone?

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Or am I in a shopping center?

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And generally, it is each.

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The Hong Kong protests have gone on for 5 months now

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and as I spent weeks there

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speaking to numerous members of the inhabitants,

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not simply the protestors,

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I noticed that this story is about

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Hong Kong’s reckoning with its personal id

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and its relationship to the skin world,

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that means China and the West.

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The protests started with an extradition invoice in early June.

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The extradition invoice would enable suspected criminals

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to be extradited to mainland China.

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It invited plenty of anger and suspicion

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as a result of if folks in Hong Kong

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could be taken throughout the border and tried in

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mainland China’s very questionable,

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opaque, doubtful courtroom system,

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then what else will the get together do subsequent?

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The Hong Kong folks really feel like

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mainland China is encroaching upon the freedoms of this metropolis

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that was assured autonomy

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and mainland authorities was actually reneging on its promise.

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[Newsreader] There was a symbolic reducing

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of the Hong Kong and British flags.

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Hong Kong was a British colony for over 100 years.

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In 1997, it was lastly given again to mainland China.

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The one nation, two system coverage stipulates that

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for 50 years after the handover,

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Hong Kong would nonetheless proceed to take pleasure in

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a terrific diploma of autonomy.

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There was real perception that in about 50 years,

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China, having reached financial stability and prosperity,

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would develop towards a Western liberal democracy.

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Within the 20-odd years that we now have left,

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it’s exceedingly unlikely.

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If something, will probably be much more authoritarian regime.

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Beijing’s want to totally possess Hong Kong

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has to do with two issues.

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China’s world picture,

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and it is about its capability

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to carry on to the remainder of its territory.

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Tibet and Xinjiang, areas that could be

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emboldened to interrupt away,

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and Taiwan, which China nonetheless thinks of as a rogue state.

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In Hong Kong, this very cosmopolitan metropolis,

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they rear kids who develop up talking three languages,

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English, Mandarin, Cantonese,

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who’re uncovered to folks from each nation

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who come to do enterprise.

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They’ve a terrific social welfare system,

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cutting-edge hospital services

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and most significantly, an training system

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that also permits them to query the world they dwell in,

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far more so than in China.

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This isn’t solely a metropolis motion,

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it is a motion for each citizen

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that lives in Hong Kong.

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So, Hong Kong id, for a lot of,

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is that this immense sense of delight of their cosmopolitanism,

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their capaciousness of id,

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in a way that they will comprise

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each being culturally Chinese language particular person

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and an individual who holds many liberal Western values.

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♪ The land of the free ♪

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Within the 60s, 70s and 80s,

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many financial refugees from coastal villages in China

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who’re fleeing from the political chaos

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and the dire poverty,

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they termed Hong Kong town of sunshine

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as a result of they may see the glittering skyscrapers.

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Their one purpose is survival

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and the flexibility to discover a job,

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and you’ve got their kids, these younger protestors

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asking their dad and mom,

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you swam right here, you fought for a greater place to dwell

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and also you fought for a possibility

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to make life higher for your self.

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That is what we’re doing.

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This younger man, in his mid-20s,

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he gave his title to me as No Title

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and he talked so much about his relationship together with his father.

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His father tends to be fairly violent,

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so No Title grew up being crushed by an authoritarian determine

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that isn’t so totally different, in his thoughts,

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from what the Communist Occasion is like now.

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He mentioned, After I was 9 or 10,

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it wasn’t that I did not need to battle towards my father,

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I could not, I used to be too bodily small and weak.

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So, he feels this ethical obligation to assist the protest

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and, if want be, die for it.

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The protest has change into one about police brutality

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and common suffrage,

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and for the present Chief Govt,

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the very unpopular Carrie Lam, to step down.

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The violence is actually escalating

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however what’s so tough about these protests is that

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it acquires a momentum of its personal.

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It is virtually like an organism

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over which you have misplaced management.

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I discovered myself questioning what was actually happening.

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I attempted to make sense of the that means of id

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this development of nationalism throughout the metropolis.

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Hong Kong will not be, at this level, a nation

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however as a result of it feels so imperiled,

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so besieged by these exterior forces,

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it desires to carry onto its sense of native Hong Kong id

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As a result of Mandarin is the actual dialect that

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Beijing has tried very laborious to popularize throughout China,

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it is perceived as a approach by which

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Beijing is making an attempt to erase native tradition.

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As a reporter, I used to be carrying my inexperienced neon reporter vest

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and I used to be accompanied by a retired faculty trainer

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and we had been talking in a mishmash of Mandarin and English.

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Upon overhearing the Mandarin I used to be talking,

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I used to be stopped and I used to be requested

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if I used to be certainly a journalist from the West,

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then why did I converse Mandarin,

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why did I look the best way that I did?

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And that was, I believe that was unsettling for me

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as a result of, within the U.S., I am so used to everybody

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accepting a bifurcated id of being Chinese language-American

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and to actually be the item of suspicion

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was alarming for me.

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I am proud to be each Chinese language and American

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however what precisely does that imply?

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And who am I swearing my loyalty to after I say that?

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Or is there any form of loyalty?

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We really feel the necessity to carry out our identities,

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each within the context of a protest on the streets,

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but in addition with the appearance of social media,

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we have to broadcast to the world

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the place we stand politically and socially.

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And our id, via efficiency,

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is one thing that we continuously should affirm and ensure.

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I believe that is a break from the earlier era.

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Hong Kong makes me take into consideration protests

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raging elsewhere on the earth proper now,

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and the way they’re all about principally younger folks

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who really feel the necessity to actively carry out the best way they really feel.

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The sense that in the event that they really feel themselves to be one thing,

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it must be expressed on an open stage.