bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Bron Sibree

Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now
by Joshua Wong, with Jason Y. Ng
Penguin Random House
4/5 stars
It is tempting to devour this eagerly awaited book from Joshua Wong Chi-fung, the 23-year-old pro-demo­cracy activist and outspoken son of Hong Kong, in quick, greedy gulps.
The lucid, no-nonsense prose of Unfree Speech makes it a page-turner. But for all its easy reading – and Wong is quick to credit his translator and co-author, Jason Y. Ng, lawyer, activist, author and former president of PEN Hong Kong, with bringing a “sparkle” to the text – the book inspires sober reflection.
In his eloquent introduction to Unfree Speech, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei writes that Wong, together with his contemporaries, “represents a new generation of rebel […] A generation whose world view is markedly different from that of the established capitalist culture fixated on profit above all else”.

Comprising three “acts”, Unfree Speech includes a first-person account of Wong’s path to activism, as well as the letters he wrote during his two stints in jail in Hong Kong. The book ends with an urgent plea to the free world to stand with Hong Kong and help stop the regression of democratic rights, or the rest of the world may lose their own. “If Hong Kong fails, so goes the world’s first line of defence.”
In his prologue – largely addressed to, an international audience – Wong writes that he hopes readers will get to know “a young man in transition”. This young man was once known by school friends as a dokuo – a Japanese term for a single male who prefers to be left alone with video games and gadgets.
But in chronicling his childhood and evolution into a teenage activist, Wong also reveals a city in transition. And these transitions not only defined Wong’s adolescence, but continue to shape him and have “made me more committed than ever to fight for a better Hong Kong”.
Wong’s decade-long commitment to fight for the free­doms Hong Kong was promised is as mystifying to some as it is inspirational to others. It is why, rightly or wrongly, he is seen as “the face of a resistance movement against the ever-reaching long arm of communist China in Hong Kong”.
Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong society has gone from tight to choking
Activist Joshua Wong
Wong shot to prominence long before his hometown’s current political unrest, but it is the chaotic and violent dimensions of this particular crisis, coupled with China’s growing authoritarianism and assertiveness under Xi Jinping, that has pushed Wong to reach out to a global audience with Unfree Speech. “Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong society,” he notes, “has gone from tight to choking.”
China’s tendency to subject international businesses, governments and individuals to campaigns of “white terror” – the term used to describe Beijing’s use of fear and intimidation to clamp down on free expression – has put paid, Wong argues, to any pretence that the country is on a peaceful rise to superpower status. Instead, it is seeking to impose its own model of both domestic and international order. “Our struggle is your struggle, whether you like it or not,” Wong writes.
Wong was barely 18 during the 2014 “umbrella move­ment” but he was already a household name in Hong Kong for his role in co-founding Scholarism, a student movement that forced the Hong Kong government to halt the intro­duction of a national-education curriculum in 2012. Wong describes this curriculum as “an attempt to shape the first generation of Hongkongers into the Chinese mould”.
But in reprising his role in these events, Wong also shines a light on Hong Kong’s fabled “Lion Rock spirit” and his belief that “every person can make a difference no matter the odds”.

Born on October 13, 1996, nine months before British rule of Hong Kong ended, Wong’s story in many ways typi­fies the rise of what he calls the new Hongkongers, growing up under Chinese rule. This generation was told that “China, our motherland, will always have our best interests at hand under the ‘one country-two systems’ framework”, but is now locked in a struggle with that same motherland to preserve Hong Kong’s unique identity.
Wong states repeatedly in Unfree Speech that he – and many other members of his generation – is not calling for independence, but for the democratisation of Hong Kong.
The son of devout Christians, Wong describes himself as a typical child, apart from his “unusual loquaciousness”. Not even the dyslexia he was diagnosed with aged seven prevented him from calling out injustice and challenging authority at a young age. Attending church with his parents, he would grab the microphone and bombard the pastor with questions, such as, “If God is full of mercy and kindness, why does he let poor people suffer in caged homes in Hong Kong?” and, “We make donations every month; where does the money go?”
The best example of Wong’s animated, curious spirit comes when he describes how, in Primary Two, he befriend­ed another chatty little soul named Joseph. Their ceaseless chatter during class – despite being seven seats apart – prompted their teacher to put them in different classes the next year. Still, the pair remained inseparable and would meet at each other’s homes after school to play video games and trade manga comic books.

Video games were also part of the backdrop to his political coming of age in the summer of 2009. It was then, after reading up on Hong Kong’s “one-of-a-kind political system” and discussing what he had learned, over bubble tea, with 12-year old friend Justin, that his anger and frustration at “our unaccountable govern­ment” boiled over.
When Justin’s parents sent him to school in the United States, Wong befriended Ivan Lam Long-yin – another now-famous poster-boy for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy move­ment – and the pair went on to found Scholarism, in 2011, which they relaunched as a pro-democracy political party, Demosisto, five years later.
Lam is one of many faces, young and old, in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement that Wong introduces in Unfree Speech. The book also includes voices of those who oppose the movement, along with gang members and less-privileged teens he befriends in prison.
Wong effortlessly combines his own story with that of Hong Kong – its political system, social inequities, para­doxes and idiosyncrasies, and the fight to gain concessions from the world’s most powerful autocracy.

The book’s tension and tone echo the “boiling frog” metaphor that many, including Wong, use to describe Hong Kong’s situation since the 1997 hand­over. Like a frog placed in tepid water, which is then slowly brought to the boil, most Hongkongers didn’t notice that Beijing had been chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms for many years, he argues. But the 2015 Hong Kong bookseller disappearances and the disqualification of pro-democracy lawmakers – including Demosisto’s Nathan Law Kwun-chung – in 2017, showed that Beijing had “turned the heat way up and put the lid over the pot”, Wong writes.
Still, he refuses to concede that Hong Kong will become just another mainland city come 2047. And he refuses to believe that nothing can be done as “repression begets defiance and defiance begets more repression”. He firmly places the blame for the current crisis on Hong Kong’s leaders who, acting on behalf of the Communist Party, have repeatedly failed to listen to the public.
Wong’s optimism comes not only from his belief that the city’s pro-democracy movement is part of an inevitable global movement, and that we are all in this together, but also from his “unshakeable faith in the people of Hong Kong”.


Beijing tells new US consul general to Hong Kong to respect city’s rule of law

New US Consul General Julie Eadeh arrives in Hong Kong after Beijing’s approval

Hong Kong to remove at least 5 opposition groups from societies register

US career diplomat Julie Eadeh tipped to be next consul general in Hong Kong

Joshua Wong

In Unfree Speech, Joshua Wong writes, ‘our struggle is your struggle’

Joshua Wong arrives to testify at Capitol Hill, in Washington DC, in September. Photo: AFP

Book cover Unfree Speech- The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now.jpg  [02FEBRUARY2020 BOOKS POST MAGAZINE]

Hong Kong's pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung is released from imprisonment at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre. Joshua Wong has finished a two-month term for contempt of court. 17JUN19 SCMP / Winson Wong

Aerial drone view of anti-government protesters (with laser pointers on) forming a human chain at the top of Lion Rock Hill during the event that the protesters dubbed the "Hong Kong Way". 'Lion Rock Spirit' is local tenacity and perservation during hardship. 23AUG19 SCMP / Winson Wong

(Centre)Wong Chi-fung from Scholarism and Thousands of protesters, parents, and their children gather outside the central government headquarters, Tamar. Protesters urged the government to cancel new additional course, "Moral and National Education" subject, to be introduced for school curriculum, starting from a new school year in primary schools next Monday. 01SEP12

Hong Kong party Demosisto drops support for self-determination after Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow’s election bans

Joshua Wong was rejected by city officials as a district council candidate because of Demosisto’s stance on self-determination for the city. Photo: Winson Wong

Activist Agnes Chow Ting arriving at the High Court in Admiralty. High Court has overturned an election ban on Agnes Chow, who was barred from a Legislative Council by-election (Hong Kong Island) in 2018. 02SEP19 SCMP/ David Wong

Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong banned by Hong Kong court from travelling to London to receive human rights award from British parliament

Speaking against the decision, Joshua Wong says on Facebook it is inappropriate for the court to comment on how politicians should behave. Photo: AP

Democracy activist Joshua Wong slams ‘politically driven decision’ to bar him from running in Hong Kong district council election

Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong on September 28 announces his plan to stand in the 2019 District Council elections. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

2018 Legislative Council By-election counting station at the Jokcey Club Government Secondary School in Kowloon Tong. 11MAR18 SCMP / Felix Wong

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 15, 2017, lawmaker and environment campaigner Eddie Chu poses before an interview with AFP in Hong Kong. - An incumbent pro-democracy legislator in Hong Kong was barred from standing in a local election for his political views, sparking "fury" among the city's opposition camp who warn of ideological control. A group of democratic legislators in a joint press conference on December 3, 2018 accused the government of continually moving the goalposts and destroying the constitutionally protected right to free speech (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP)

Magazines

PostMag

Lifestyle

Arts

Culture

Books


The 23-year-old activist’s much-anticipated first book deftly weaves his own story with that of his hometown
Inspiring sober reflection, he nonetheless places his ‘unshakeable faith in the people of Hong Kong’



The 23-year-old activist’s much-anticipated first book deftly weaves his own story with that of post-handover Hong Kong.


Books and literature

Hong Kong protests

Occupy Central

An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review