Why Overseas Mainland Chinese Go Against Hong Kong Protests

Reported by Bella Huang

Edited by Katherine Li

London, UK – A 34-year-old Chinese mainlander, who obtained his master’s degree in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, has worked in Hong Kong for 4 years and is now working for an incubator in Stockholm, Sweden.

Bae Bai, who can be seen as a representative of overseas mainland Chinese, doesn’t agree with what is going on in Hong Kong, at least not fully. Bae refuses to disclose his Chinese full name because he used to be bullied and attacked on Facebook due to his pro-China comments online.

On September 9, Bae joined one of the two protests at Stockholm City Hall. The dueling protests were carried out from 17:00 to 18:00 and from 18:00 to 19:00 respectively. The former was organized by Hong Kong people, supporting the heated social movement in this Asia’s world city, while the latter was organized by mainland Chinese people, with “love Hong Kong, support China” as their slogan.

“The Hong Kong protest is about asking for democracy on the surface but is actually advocating Hong Kong to be an independent sovereign state,” said Bae, “When we arrived, we saw not only Hong Kong people, but also flags standing for the secession of Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan.”

In the portrayal of mainland Chinese media, the on-going civil unrest of Hong Kong is fundamentally an effort to gain independence. When describing the arrest of local activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, the official state-run press agency Xinhua wrote that the “leaders of ‘pro-Hong Kong-independence’ organization were arrested.”

Despite being physically away from China, mainland media are still a major news sources for the overseas Chinese. According to Columbia Journalism Review, WeChat, the main social media mobile application for Chinese, hit 1 billion users earlier this year and over half of its active users use it to get news, while content published on this platform is heavily censored by the government.

Besides media propaganda, throughout China’s education system, students are taught that any attempt to split the country is intolerable and that they should be committed to safeguarding the country’s sovereignty and security. Therefore, the demand of Hong Kong independence is often seen as the major drive of the outcry from mainland Chinese.

“I know that acquiring independence is not specified in the Five Demands, but then why during their protests, they raise the British flag and pro-independence flag of Taiwan and Tibet?” asked Bae.

Dr. Kwon Kyung Rok, a visiting fellow in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong, agrees that the issue of independence is crucial to understanding the tension between the two warring sides.

“At this point, the question then is whether this demand (gaining independence) is legitimate in terms of Hong Kong’s history in relation to mainland China and British rule,” said Dr. Kwon.

Bae said that around 100 people joined the protest in Stockholm. They sang the national anthem, chanted “we love Hong Kong, we love China”, and called for an end to violence in Hong Kong.

“The major difference between these two protests is that we love not only Hong Kong, but also China,” Bae said.

According to the latest poll published by the University of Hong Kong in June, only 10.8% of Hong Kong people identify themselves as Chinese, marking the lowest in 22 years. In contrast, 52.8% see themselves as “Hongkonger”, the highest percentage on record.

Violence has also been a controversial topic throughout the protests. Bae referred to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest, during which students from all parts of China turned out en masse in Beijing for democracy and freedom of speech. As the protest grew larger, the government deployed army troops to restore order, resulting in an estimated death toll from several hundred to more than 1,000.

This tragedy still haunts Hong Kong citizens and some fear that it would reoccur to put an end to the current turmoil.

“Although Hong Kong people like to talk about this incident to ‘remind’ mainlanders, these violent, social-order-disrupting protests let us understand the importance and effectiveness of ending violence with violence,” said Bae.

Besides violence from protestors, Bae disagrees with the denouncement of the Hong Kong police, who have been scrutinised and put under intense pressure throughout the protest. Police are accused of using excessive force against protestors, attacking journalists and having sexually assaulted female arrestees.

“When you see the protestors throwing gasoline bombs at the police and beating them, wouldn’t you think that what the police did can be justified? The police force is the domestic-security apparatus. This is their job.” said Bae.

Before the Stockholm protest, in mid-August, Chinese diasporas organized “support China, love Hong Kong” protests in foreign countries such as Australia. Among videos showing intense confrontations between Hong Kong and mainland protestors, several quickly went viral amongst overseas Chinese students. At the University of South Australia campus in Adelaide, after Hong Kong students shouted, “Hong Kong stay strong,” Chinese students contended with “CNMB”, an abbreviation of an indecent Chinese phrase.

Some students find these videos deeply disturbing.

“This is way too radical. We Chinese could have voiced ourselves more peacefully and politely,” said Hu Aiyang, a master student studying mechanical engineering at Wollongong University in Sydney.

However, Bae argues that “it might be impolite to shout swear words in public, but it doesn’t make much sense that people criticize it so harshly. If you look at the Hong Kong protests, people also curse the police and pro-government protestors loudly on the street.”

Bae said that currently the western world still has strong prejudices against China and their media reports are often biased. For instance, western media focus more on pro-democracy demands rather than the violence taking place during the protests.

Many overseas Chinese feel that they could relate to Bae. Their experiences of living abroad had deepened their distrust towards western media.

“Do you really think western countries have freedom of speech?” asked James Wu, a 32-year-old retailer of digital products in Ireland, who went to the pro-China protest there in August and complained that western media have many biases against China.

Having left his country for Stockholm in 2017 because his girlfriend hasn’t obtained a working visa, Bae vows that “once possible”, they will definitely return to China.

“It’s impossible to eliminate these stereotypes,” he said, “The reason why we are still trying to protest is not because we can completely change the whole situation, but because we want to raise our voices and to make at least a little difference.”