Hong Kong’s restless youth look to the future for change, rather than seeking to destroy the colonial past
Andrew Collinson says those involved in mass protests such as the Occupy movement are firmly focused on moving forwards, instead of campaigning to remove statues of those blamed for past wrongs, as student movements in other cities have done
Dour-faced and clutching an ornate sceptre, Hong Kong’s former imperial Queen sits impervious to the elements in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay. In the Zoological and Botanical Gardens in Admiralty, King George VI stands proud, while Sir Thomas Jackson – one of the original architects behind Hong Kong’s banking system – casts a lengthy shadow in Statue Square. Aside from a few mutterings about replacing the last remaining colonial-era postboxes bearing the crown insignia, few of the wilder ideas to decolonise Hong Kong – including a proposal to replace British street names with the names of lauded Chinese figures – have come to pass. But with a fervent anti-colonialist zeal having swept through university campuses in South Africa, the US and England’s Oxford University, is it inevitable that a campaign to remove Hong Kong’s colonial statues will erupt?
History partly explains why: the last time historic statues were moved or altered in significant numbers was during the Japanese occupation. Queen Victoria was transported to Japan, but was returned and restored in 1952. Others, including governor William Des Voeux, were less fortunate, disappearing entirely and not replaced. Antipathy towards the darkest chapter in Hong Kong’s history shapes today’s ambivalence to changing the status quo.
But there’s a further reason why the statues are still standing: Hong Kong’s forward-looking and politically mature millennials. Mature isn’t a word typically bandied around when discussing Hong Kong’s teens and young adults, but consider the Occupy protesters: whether you agreed with their objectives or not, they shared a goal to change the legislative direction of Hong Kong. They were not interested in looking backwards or squabbling over the appropriateness of colonial relics in public places. Their focus was explicitly on the future, not the past.
READ MORE: Hong Kong’s young: Let’s start being serious – not vacuous – about the future
