關於 hong kong heart failure society ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

I sincerely hope I am wrong | Lee Yee

I know very little about American issues. In the past, I even thought that no matter which party wins the presidential election, there would be no significant difference under the Constitution and the existing system. However, it is different this time. This US presidential election not only involves the interests of the Americans but also concerns the future political situation of the world, especially for China and Hong Kong.

The state of society tearing as a result of this presidential election is far beyond any from the past, almost to the point of a civil war. As far as the domestic situation in the US is concerned, it is not a dispute between supporting Trump or supporting Biden, but a fight between support for Trump and opposition to Trump. The topics of discussion are 1) epidemic prevention and control measures, 2) violence and disorder due to the Black Lives Matter protests, and 3) economy. Arguments from both standpoints are too numerous to detail and many are reasonable with solid judgment. It is very difficult to explain clearly in this short article. I will only discuss the history and current situation of Sino-US relations.

The most important timeline in the history of the modern relations between China and the US is after WWII during the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China (CPC). At that time, the 33rd president of the US and leader of the Democratic Party, Harry S. Truman pursued a policy of appeasement to the CPC and actively advocated negotiations between the KMT and the CPC. During the Chinese Civil War, it was apparent that he was pro-communist and made the communist military stronger. The KMT was defeated for internal reasons but the US inclination was key. After the KMT government retreated to Taiwan, in January 1950, President Truman issued a statement that the US would not intervene with the situation in China and declared that the island groups of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and some minor islands were not within the scope of the US military. The US Democratic Party allowed mainland China to fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Later, Chiang Kai-shek commissioned General Ho Shai-lai to Tokyo to meet with Douglas MacArthur, the American general who administered postwar Japan during the Allied occupation and oversaw the occupation, rebuilding and democratization of Japan. The visit aimed to win the support of General MacArthur and was ultimately able to save Taiwan.

Another important page in the history of the Sino-US relations was the diplomatic breakthrough of Republican US President Richard Nixon in 1971. A military conflict broke out in the previous year at the border of China and the then Soviet Union. The Soviet Union intended to deploy nuclear weapons to perform a so-called “surgical removal operation” on China’s nuclear base. However, it was halted when it probed the US for reactions. The US stated that if the Soviet Union employed nuclear weapons, it would undoubtedly challenge the US nuclear balance policy. After that, when the US collaborated with China to strategically deal with the superpower Soviet Union, the US did not abandon Taiwan. Not until 1979 when Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the US and a democrat, established diplomatic relations with the CCP that the US severed ties with Taiwan. The incident triggered a global trend to set up diplomatic relations with the CCP, which enabled the CCP to steady a firm holding in the international community.

The third important aspect in the history of the Sino-US relations was in 2000, under Bill Clinton’s administration, China was given entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization) and granted a most favored nation (MFN) status. Since then, it developed its foothold as an international manufacturer in the global market. Furthermore, its economy took off through intellectual property theft, failure to commit to the promise of its 2001 accession to the WTO and market dominance by means of authoritarian capitalism. As China’s economic development fully penetrates into the Western world, on the one hand, it takes advantage of the multinational companies invested in China to control the capital markets of the US and the West. On the other hand, it invests heavily in its grand propaganda to control overseas Chinese media and even Western mainstream media.

Every election candidate receives donations from multinational companies. Not to mention 90% of the mainstream media in the US are owned or operated by these Democratic Party’s donors. Therefore, they turn a blind eye to the elephant in the room and injudiciously embrace the CCP regime that has infiltrated the American society and continuously infringed on human rights at home. In addition to the interest considerations, the media of course also has the leftist ideology permeated in Western academia and journalism. I will elaborate on this topic at another time.

Finally, there is Trump who is not swayed by the donors of multinational corporations because he himself does not lack money nor is he afraid to offend most of the leftist media. He sometimes speaks without thinking but he never seeks the so-called “political correctness,” and basically does what he says he would. People who stand on the moral high ground with the spirit of great love would shake their heads upon his words and actions. Regardless, only a person like Trump can start to contain the power that infiltrated the US and the Western world, and support the democracy of Taiwan and Hong Kong’s campaign for autonomy.

Currently, anti-China is the general social conscience in the US. Biden’s China policy seems to align with that of Trump’s. Biden even defined the CCP’s handling of Xinjiang as an “ethnic genocide.” However, is there really no difference between the two parties? Recall that when Clinton was running for the presidency, he said that he opposed the Republican government’s annual review of the US MFN status for China. He believed it should not be granted but after he took office, he made China’s MFN status permanent and sent China to the WTO.

As the Democratic Party controls Wall Street and mainstream media, I am not optimistic about Trump in this election. Even so, I really hope from my brain to my heart that I am wrong.

【《金融時報》深度長訪】

今年做過數百外媒訪問，若要說最能反映我思緒和想法的訪問，必然是《金融時報》的這一個，沒有之一。

在排山倒海的訪問裡，這位記者能在短短個半小時裡，刻畫得如此傳神，值得睇。

Joshua Wong plonks himself down on a plastic stool across from me. He is there for barely 10 seconds before he leaps up to greet two former high school classmates in the lunchtime tea house melee. He says hi and bye and then bounds back. Once again I am facing the young man in a black Chinese collared shirt and tan shorts who is proving such a headache for the authorities in Beijing.

So far, it’s been a fairly standard week for Wong. On a break from a globe-trotting, pro-democracy lobbying tour, he was grabbed off the streets of Hong Kong and bundled into a minivan. After being arrested, he appeared on the front pages of the world’s newspapers and was labelled a “traitor” by China’s foreign ministry.

He is very apologetic about being late for lunch.

Little about Wong, the face of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, can be described as ordinary: neither his Nobel Peace Prize nomination, nor his three stints in prison. Five years ago, his face was plastered on the cover of Time magazine; in 2017, he was the subject of a hit Netflix documentary, Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower. And he’s only 23.

We’re sitting inside a Cantonese teahouse in the narrow back streets near Hong Kong’s parliament, where he works for a pro-democracy lawmaker. It’s one of the most socially diverse parts of the city and has been at the heart of five months of unrest, which has turned into a battle for Hong Kong’s future. A few weekends earlier I covered clashes nearby as protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police, who fired back tear gas. Drunk expats looked on, as tourists rushed by dragging suitcases.

The lunch crowd pours into the fast-food joint, milling around as staff set up collapsible tables on the pavement. Construction workers sit side-by-side with men sweating in suits, chopsticks in one hand, phones in the other. I scan the menu: instant noodles with fried egg and luncheon meat, deep fried pork chops, beef brisket with radish. Wong barely glances at it before selecting the hometown fried rice and milk tea, a Hong Kong speciality with British colonial roots, made with black tea and evaporated or condensed milk.

“I always order this,” he beams, “I love this place, it’s the only Cantonese teahouse in the area that does cheap, high-quality milk tea.” I take my cue and settle for the veggie and egg fried rice and a lemon iced tea as the man sitting on the next table reaches over to shake Wong’s hand. Another pats him on the shoulder as he brushes by to pay the bill.

Wong has been a recognisable face in this city since he was 14, when he fought against a proposal from the Hong Kong government to introduce a national education curriculum that would teach that Chinese Communist party rule was “superior” to western-style democracy. The government eventually backed down after more than 100,000 people took to the streets. Two years later, Wong rose to global prominence when he became the poster boy for the Umbrella Movement, in which tens of thousands of students occupied central Hong Kong for 79 days to demand genuine universal suffrage.

That movement ended in failure. Many of its leaders were sent to jail, among them Wong. But the seeds of activism were planted in the generation of Hong Kongers who are now back on the streets, fighting for democracy against the world’s most powerful authoritarian state. The latest turmoil was sparked by a controversial extradition bill but has evolved into demands for true suffrage and a showdown with Beijing over the future of Hong Kong. The unrest in the former British colony, which was handed over to China in 1997, represents the biggest uprising on Chinese soil since the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Beijing. Its climax, of course, was the Tiananmen Square massacre, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed.

“We learnt a lot of lessons from the Umbrella Movement: how to deal with conflict between the more moderate and progressive camps, how to be more organic, how to be less hesitant,” says Wong. “Five years ago the pro-democracy camp was far more cautious about seeking international support because they were afraid of pissing off Beijing.”

Wong doesn’t appear to be afraid of irking China. Over the past few months, he has lobbied on behalf of the Hong Kong protesters to governments around the world. In the US, he testified before Congress and urged lawmakers to pass an act in support of the Hong Kong protesters — subsequently approved by the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support. In Germany, he made headlines when he suggested two baby pandas in the Berlin Zoo be named “Democracy” and “Freedom.” He has been previously barred from entering Malaysia and Thailand due to pressure from Beijing, and a Singaporean social worker was recently convicted and fined for organising an event at which Wong spoke via Skype.

The food arrives almost immediately. I struggle to tell our orders apart. Two mouthfuls into my egg and cabbage fried rice, I regret not ordering the instant noodles with luncheon meat.

In August, a Hong Kong newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist party published a photo of Julie Eadeh, an American diplomat, meeting pro-democracy student leaders including Wong. The headline accused “foreign forces” of igniting a revolution in Hong Kong. “Beijing says I was trained by the CIA and the US marines and I am a CIA agent. [I find it] quite boring because they have made up these kinds of rumours for seven years [now],” he says, ignoring his incessantly pinging phone.

Another thing that bores him? The media. Although Wong’s messaging is always on point, his appraisal of journalists in response to my questions is piercing and cheeky. “In 15-minute interviews I know journalists just need soundbites that I’ve repeated lots of times before. So I’ll say things like ‘I have no hope [as regards] the regime but I have hope towards the people.’ Then the journalists will say ‘oh that’s so impressive!’ And I’ll say ‘yes, I’m a poet.’ ”

And what about this choice of restaurant? “Well, I knew I couldn’t pick a five-star hotel, even though the Financial Times is paying and I know you can afford it,” he says grinning. “It’s better to do this kind of interview in a Hong Kong-style restaurant. This is the place that I conducted my first interview after I left prison.” Wong has spent around 120 days in prison in total, including on charges of unlawful assembly.

“My fellow prisoners would tell me about how they joined the Umbrella Movement and how they agreed with our beliefs. I think prisoners are more aware of the importance of human rights,” he says, adding that even the prison wardens would share with him how they had joined protests.

“Even the triad members in prison support democracy. They complain how the tax on cigarettes is extremely high and the tax on red wine is extremely low; it just shows how the upper-class elite lives here,” he says, as a waiter strains to hear our conversation. Wong was most recently released from jail in June, the day after the largest protests in the history of Hong Kong, when an estimated 2m people — more than a quarter of the territory’s 7.5m population — took to the streets.

Raised in a deeply religious family, he used to travel to mainland China every two years with his family and church literally to spread the gospel. As with many Hong Kong Chinese who trace their roots to the mainland, he doesn’t know where his ancestral village is. His lasting memory of his trips across the border is of dirty toilets, he tells me, mid-bite. He turned to activism when he realised praying didn’t help much.

“The gift from God is to have independence of mind and critical thinking; to have our own will and to make our own personal judgments. I don’t link my religious beliefs with my political judgments. Even Carrie Lam is Catholic,” he trails off, in a reference to Hong Kong’s leader. Lam has the lowest approval rating of any chief executive in the history of the city, thanks to her botched handling of the crisis.

I ask whether Wong’s father, who is also involved in social activism, has been a big influence. Wrong question.

“The western media loves to frame Joshua Wong joining the fight because of reading the books of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King or because of how my parents raised me. In reality, I joined street activism not because of anyone book I read. Why do journalists always assume anyone who strives for a better society has a role model?” He glances down at his pinging phone and draws a breath, before continuing. “Can you really describe my dad as an activist? I support LGBTQ rights,” he says, with a fist pump. His father, Roger Wong, is a well-known anti-gay rights campaigner in Hong Kong.

I notice he has put down his spoon, with half a plate of fried rice untouched. I decide it would be a good idea to redirect our conversation by bonding over phone addictions. Wong, renowned for his laser focus and determination, replies to my emails and messages at all hours and has been described by his friends as “a robot.”

He scrolls through his Gmail, his inbox filled with unread emails, showing me how he categorises interview requests with country tags. His life is almost solely dedicated to activism. “My friends and I used to go to watch movies and play laser tag but now of course we don’t have time to play any more: we face real bullets every weekend.”

The protests — which have seen more than 3,300 people arrested — have been largely leaderless. “Do you ever question your relevance to the movement?” I venture, mid-spoonful of congealed fried rice.

“Never,” he replies with his mouth full. “We have a lot of facilitators in this movement and I’m one of them . . . it’s just like Wikipedia. You don’t know who the contributors are behind a Wikipedia page but you know there’s a lot of collaboration and crowdsourcing. Instead of just having a top-down command, we now have a bottom-up command hub which has allowed the movement to last far longer than Umbrella.

“With greater power comes greater responsibility, so the question is how, through my role, can I express the voices of the frontliners, of the street activism? For example, I defended the action of storming into the Legislative Council on July 1. I know I didn’t storm in myself . . . ” His phone pings twice. Finally he succumbs.

After tapping away for about 30 seconds, Wong launches back into our conversation, sounding genuinely sorry that he wasn’t there on the night when protesters destroyed symbols of the Chinese Communist party and briefly occupied the chamber.

“My job is to be the middleman to express, evaluate and reveal what is going on in the Hong Kong protests when the movement is about being faceless,” he says, adding that his Twitter storm of 29 tweets explaining the July 1 occupation reached at least four million people. I admit that I am overcome with exhaustion just scanning his Twitter account, which has more than 400,000 followers. “Well, that thread was actually written by Jeffrey Ngo from Demosisto,” he say, referring to the political activism group that he heads.

A network of Hong Kong activists studying abroad helps fuel his relentless public persona on social media and in the opinion pages of international newspapers. Within a week of his most recent arrest, he had published op-eds in The Economist, The New York Times, Quartz and the Apple Daily.

I wonder out loud if he ever feels overwhelmed at taking on the Chinese Communist party, a task daunting even for some of the world’s most formidable governments and companies. He peers at me over his wire-framed glasses. “It’s our responsibility; if we don’t do it, who will? At least we are not in Xinjiang or Tibet; we are in Hong Kong,” he says, referring to two regions on Chinese soil on the frontline of Beijing’s drive to develop a high-tech surveillance state. In Xinjiang, at least one million people are being held in internment camps. “Even though we’re directly under the rule of Beijing, we have a layer of protection because we’re recognised as a global city so [Beijing] is more hesitant to act.”

I hear the sound of the wok firing up in the kitchen and ask him the question on everyone’s minds in Hong Kong: what happens next? Like many people who are closely following the extraordinary situation in Hong Kong, he is hesitant to make firm predictions.

“Lots of think-tanks around the world say ‘Oh, we’re China experts. We’re born in western countries but we know how to read Chinese so we’re familiar with Chinese politics.’ They predicted the Communist party would collapse after the Tiananmen Square massacre and they’ve kept predicting this over the past three decades but hey, now it’s 2019 and we’re still under the rule of Beijing, ha ha,” he grins.

While we are prophesying, does Wong ever think he might become chief executive one day? “No local journalist in Hong Kong would really ask this question,” he admonishes. As our lunch has progressed, he has become bolder in dissecting my interview technique. The territory’s chief executive is currently selected by a group of 1,200, mostly Beijing loyalists, and he doubts the Chinese Communist party would ever allow him to run. A few weeks after we meet he announces his candidacy in the upcoming district council elections. He was eventually the only candidate disqualified from running — an order that, after our lunch, he tweeted had come from Beijing and was “clearly politically driven”.

We turn to the more ordinary stuff of 23-year-olds’ lives, as Wong slurps the remainder of his milk tea. “Before being jailed, the thing I was most worried about was that I wouldn’t be able to watch Avengers: Endgame,” he says.

“Luckily, it came out around early May so I watched it two weeks before I was locked up in prison.” He has already quoted Spider-Man twice during our lunch. I am unsurprised when Wong picks him as his favourite character.

“I think he’s more . . . ” He pauses, one of the few times in the interview. “Compared to having an unlimited superpower or unlimited power or unlimited talent just like Superman, I think Spider-Man is more human.” With that, our friendly neighbourhood activist dashes off to his next interview.