What is ‘soft resistance’? In Hong Kong, it depends on whom you ask and what side of the political divide they sit on
- Term first appeared locally in April 2021 in a speech by Luo Huining, then director of Beijing’s liaison office, to mark Hong Kong’s first National Security Education Day
- Phrase has come into vogue in city’s pro-establishment camp in recent months as its use also grew among government officials
Inside Hunter Bookstore, a small double-storey shop in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district, copies of George Orwell’s 1984 are arranged neatly near books recently pulled out from the city’s public libraries, including Louisa Lim’s People’s Republic of Amnesia on the Tiananmen crackdown.
The storefront is largely bare save for the entrance, on which is affixed the Chinese characters “freedom” and a single page of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper Apple Daily, along with a quote – “Living in truth” – from the late Czech president and dissident playwright Vaclav Havel.
The shop’s wares have invited intense scrutiny on its owner, former opposition district councillor Leticia Wong Man-huen.
Pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao ran a commentary last year accusing her bookstore of promoting “black violence”, “anti-China chaos” and “soft resistance”.
The last phrase has come into vogue in the “blue” pro-establishment camp in recent months as its use also grew among government officials.
Like some others, Wong said she had frequent visits from government departments for “routine inspections” or in response to complaints around “sensitive dates”. She soon became used to their calls, she said.
“I truly believe that I am not violating any laws,” Wong said.
“For me, ‘soft resistance’ actually means nothing, it is just a term that the government likes to use to label us as some form of ‘rebelling parties’. It’s something they have created themselves.”
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It has been more than two years since one top Beijing official first mentioned the term “soft resistance” in Hong Kong. But several analysts and commentators whom the Post spoke to held similar conclusions about its meaning. They said it was vaguely defined to cover a broad range of possible activities, lacked any reference to the law and was a phrase rarely used outside China.
“The term could be eternally vague, as it evolves. In short, it refers to people doing things that might not be illegal but covertly attacking the government,” said Lau Siu-kai, a consultant from the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, as he offered a definition.
Scholars told the Post that even though government officials might find it necessary to hit out at anti-China and anti-Hong Kong forces, they should use the term sparingly lest they stifle public debate and engagement and invite self-censorship.
The coming locally drafted national security law – required under Article 23 of the city’s mini-constitution – should also spell out clearly what could constitute crimes among these “soft resistance” ideas, they urged.
How did soft resistance emerge in Hong Kong?
The term first appeared in April 2021 in a speech by the then director of Beijing’s liaison office, Luo Huining, to mark the city’s first National Security Education Day since the Beijing-decreed law came into force in June 2020.
Luo said Hong Kong authorities had to crack down on all “hard resistance” behaviour that threatened national security while also regulating “soft resistance” without elaborating on what the latter term entailed.
Local officials then gradually began adopting the phrase. A look at the government press release archives found that “soft resistance” was mentioned six times in 2021, 10 times in 2022, and 17 times last year.
Between 2021 and 2022, the term was used only by security minister Chris Tang Ping-keung, who said repeatedly some opposition forces were using “soft resistance” methods such as the media, culture and art to promote anti-China and anti-Hong Kong government sentiment as he urged the public to stay alert.
Tang tried to explain the idea during an interview with the Post last year, saying it referred to people who were “trying to resist the overall sovereignty of our country towards Hong Kong” or incite hatred against the government, often under the guise of human rights or the arts.
Tang pointed to the “organ donation saga”, during which authorities recorded an unusual wave of withdrawals from the city’s organ donation register from those who had never joined in a bid to rattle the system, as well as the existence of “yellow” pro-protest shops, as examples.
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They made the swipe amid widespread talk that the poll would have a record-low voter turnout and this was why civil servants were being urged to cast their ballots.
Both the constitutional and civil service ministers denied the souvenir cards had that sinister motive and accused “anti-China” disrupters of using “soft resistance to deliberately smear, defame and spread rumours about the election”. But there was no follow-up action on the commenters.
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Article 23 to cover espionage and prevent “soft resistance”, says Hong Kong security chief
Former director of public prosecutions Grenville Cross said hard resistance was generally more overt and might cover such acts as rioting, firebombing courts, or attacking public officials, while soft resistance could include more low-key activities like “polluting the minds of young people”, disrespecting national and regional symbols or praising those who violated the law.
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Political commentator Lau, also a Chinese University scholar, said soft resistance focused on ideologically driven forms of non-cooperation, resistance, and subversive forces that tried to undermine government policies.
“Such a concept does not exist in Western political science,” he said. “It is an idea created by our Chinese officials.”
Ryan Mitchell, an associate professor of law at Chinese University, said the phrase “soft resistance” has been used in mainland China on issues such as intraparty governance and personnel management, rather than for national security or protest activities.
He said, for example, many official articles often framed the issues surrounding lower-level officials failing to properly implement policies as a case of “soft resistance” based on poor motivation or lack of organising ability.
“Importing a concept from mainland Chinese personnel management and leadership studies into Hong Kong’s common law legal system may not be the best way to establish a coherent approach to national security issues,” Mitchell said.
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Judge Amy Chan Wai-mun said Li’s performance amounted to “soft resistance that instigated social conflicts”, without giving any specific definition of the phrase.
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This creep into the courts and legalese did not go unnoticed. Without a legal definition of “soft resistance”, or even any definition as such, Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun, former HKU law dean, feared “the danger of using an extremely vague phrase that could cover almost anything one wants”.
“What amounts to an offence has to be clearly defined in law, and I think the court should refrain from using such a phrase,” he said.
“If it is an offence, it should be clearly identified and defined. If it is not an offence, the usage of such a phrase would only be open to abuse and cause a chilling effect.”
Perhaps the judge knew what was in store. Tang earlier told the Post that after the imposition by Beijing of the national security law, now into its third year, the Hong Kong government was committed to delivering a local version that would cover ostensible gaps.
The new legislation, referred to as Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, would cover the theft of state secrets and also “plug the loopholes on espionage and foreign interference”, among other yet-to-be identified crimes, Tang said then.
Such a law was needed to also tackle elements of “soft resistance” inside and outside Hong Kong that were still active and widespread, as they continued to make the city vulnerable to foreign meddling and spying, he said.
As soft resistance ultimately was about undermining the country’s sovereignty and foreign spying had the same agenda, they were “interrelated”, he said.
While the Beijing-imposed legislation bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, Article 23 – to be passed into law by this year – will cover the additional offences of treason, theft of state secrets and foreign political bodies engaging in political activities in Hong Kong.
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“If people think upholding national security will affect their freedom, it is also one kind of soft resistance. We are worried about people who make use of some freedom of creativity or speech as a guise to violate national security,” he warned.
“Of course, it is not illegal if you just think about it, but those who put their thoughts forward into actions like leaving commentaries, displaying slogans, that might be deemed problematic.”
Having an effect
Authorities have yet to spell out exactly what crimes will cross the red line of the local-drafted security law, but the repeated reminders of “soft resistance” have had an effect.
In 2022, authorities hit out at a series of children’s books published in the city by five speech therapists that depicted the conflict between “good” sheep and “evil” wolves, which they said was aimed at inciting separatism and hatred towards the mainland. The five were convicted of breaching the colonial-era sedition law.
“We have activated existing legislation … to actively combat ‘soft resistance’,” security minister Tang had said.
Leticia Wong, the bookshop owner, conceded she was self-censoring as she now no longer had books with the “Liberate Hong Kong” slogan – a protest catchphrase during the 2019 anti-government unrest – but said it was explicitly due to the national security law, rather than fears about engaging in “soft resistance”.
“The national security law is a bigger threat. Soft resistance is just a political term so I do not care too much,” she said.
But at least two “yellow” pro-protest shop owners, who declined to be identified, told the Post they might choose to close their stores once Article 23 was enacted, for fear of being arrested.
“We are very worried about Article 23,” said one of them, a bookstore owner. “We don’t know what this ‘soft resistance’ really means, and from what we can learn from officials’ speeches, it seems that it can be very broad.”
He described the national security law as “very daunting”, and said they had already removed books they feared would contravene it, but the lack of a concrete definition for “soft resistance” was further fuelling widespread fear and self-censorship.
To avoid the spread of fear, Lau, the pro-Beijing commentator, suggested the government go more “low profile” and do better intelligence research to target individuals with warnings rather than addressing the public too often.
Andrew Fung Ho-keung, chief executive of the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute, said current laws could already prevent residents from committing national security-related crimes, and he doubted the need to use such an ambiguous term.
“Officials will only confuse people if these words are often used,” the political commentator said.
“The Hong Kong government does not need to follow exactly the style of propaganda that mainland China uses, that’s why we have ‘one country, two systems’.
“It is pretty scary and creates a chilling effect that will eventually limit creativity, as people will be worried about whether something they do will cross the red lines.”
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Echoing Fung, John Burns, emeritus professor at the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong, said the vaguely defined term “has allowed authorities to use it like a hammer to beat down and intimidate individuals and groups that they do not like, or that they perceive might cause trouble”.
“The repeated use of ‘soft resistance’ is not good for Hong Kong society and politics because it can arbitrarily narrow the space for civic activism,” he said.
“If ‘soft resistance’ means inciting sedition or secession, as authorities sometimes say, then prosecute these alleged crimes. Otherwise, focus on persuasion, not intimidation.”
