On the 17th of August, 2019, the staff of ‘Fight Back!’, a socialist “newspaper that exists to build the people’s struggle” and is produced, in part, by the Marxist ‘Freedom Road Socialist Organisation’ (Fight Back!, 2019), published an article, titled ‘The Hong Kong protests are an attack on socialism’ (Fight Back!, 2019). In the article, Fight Back! claims that the protests in Hong Kong are “absolutely not driven by or in the interests of the working class,” and are, instead, “a reactionary movement” that “serve the interests of finance capital” (2019). To support this claim, Fight Back! uses evidence in a misleading manner. Although I have a variety of reasons to doubt that the protests are reactionary or an attack on socialism, and this article will not be written in a purely objective manner, I will not attempt to explain my own perspective on the Hong Kong protests in any extensive detail within this article, but, because I have seen Fight Back!’s article cited frequently by opponents of the protests, I will attempt to explain why I believe that the evidence used by Fight Back! is misleading in order to combat the spread of potentially harmful misinformation that could be used to unfairly disparage the protests.
Firstly, in its analysis of the “class character of the Hong Kong protests”, Fight Back!, in an attempt to prove the lack or minimal nature of a working class presence in the protests, notes that “one of the largest labor organization[s] in the area”, representing “460,000 workers”, the ‘Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions’ (HKFTU), has “come out strongly against these protests”, with “251 affiliated unions” having “actively campaigned against the protesters’ calls for a ‘general strike’.” (2019). Such an attempt ignores the fact that the workers of Hong Kong, like the workers in any locality, are not a homogenous entity and, whilst a large portion of workers may oppose the protests, a significant portion of workers may support them. As acknowledged by Fight Back!, the ‘Hong Kong Confederation of Workers’ (HKCTU), another large, labour organisation, which represents “roughly 160,000 workers”, called for workers to “support the August 5 general strike” (2019). Fight Back! attempts to downplay both the efforts of the HKCTU and the general strike by stating that the HKCTU “reported mobilizing just 35,000 members (25%)” (2019), but the general strike was much larger than this statistic would indicate as, according to Carol Ng, the chairwoman of the HKCTU, the organization estimates that “350,000 people took part in the general strike, with “around 290,000” of these people actively attending “rallies at different venues” (RTHK, 2019.). I do not dispute that a very large portion, which may, possibly, form a majority, of the workers in Hong Kong oppose the protests, but it cannot be correctly claimed that there is not a significant working-class presence that supports, and participates in, the protests.
In addition, the HKFTU may not be the best representative of the working class in Hong Kong as the smaller HKCTU has been reported as “gaining a foothold in industries that used to be traditional strongholds” of the HKFTU after the HKCTU, in 2007, “stepped in and supported the workers” after the HKFTU “failed” to represent the interests of “bar-benders in construction sites”, who had been on a “historic 36-day strike” (Cheng, 2015.). According to Albert Cheng, historically “[o]ne of the key jobs for the Communist Party’s Hong Kong and Macau work committee was to steer the [HK]FTU”, leading to the organisation being strongly “pro-Beijing”, with Stanley Ng Chau-pei, the chairman of the HKFTU in 2015, proposing that the “mainland should impose its own national security laws on Hong Kong” (2015). This could possibly suggest, but should not be taken as proof, that the opposition of the HKFTU to the protests may not be a result of the opinion of its represented workers, but, instead, a result of the opinion of its ‘pro-Beijing’ leadership. Furthermore, the refusal of the HKFTU to support the general strike could potentially be a result of the fact that the organisation has traditionally “refrained from resorting to militant tactics” and has, instead, “acted primarily as a go-between for the workers and their bosses”, resulting in the organisation lacking the relevant experience, and the willingness of its leadership, to participate in a general strike (Cheng, 2015). I have not sought to disparage the HKFTU in this paragraph, which could be interpreted by some as a criticism of the organisation, or, more falsely, as an attempt to prove that the working class support for the Hong Kong protests is unanimous or not strongly challenged; I have sought only to further demonstrate that it would be incorrect to postulate that the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions should be perceived as representing the entirety of Hong Kong’s workers.
Fight Back! then states the results of a survey by the ‘Chinese University School of Journalism and Communications’, which found that “more than half” of the “6600 protest participants”, who were surveyed, identified as “middle-class”, with “75%” of the participants having received “some college education” (2019). Fight Back! states these results to (unsuccessfully) prove that the movement of protests is reactionary and “serves the interest of finance capital” (2019), but this ignores the possibility that these protesters may be identifying their ‘class’ incorrectly as the result of the ill-defined nature of the term, ‘middle-class’; ‘China Daily’, in an article about the confusing nature of the term, reported that “definitions of the term middle-class vary from place to place, with conflicting and complementary realities” with the government of Hong Kong having “no definition of the term” (2013). The potential for misidentification of one’s own class in Hong Kong can be demonstrated by the fact that, according to Dr. Paul Yip Siu-fai, a “statistician” and “senior lecturer at the University of Hong Kong”, “there is hardly a middle class in the city at all”, a claim that is evidenced by the fact that “only about 10% of the 2.4 million households” earn a monthly income of at least “HK$55,000”, which could permit them to be “classified as middle-class” (Carvalho, 2019) yet the “middle-classes are considered the majority group” (China Daily, 2013). Dr. Yip’s stated income of HK$55,000 may be, not incorrectly, considered by some people as too high to serve as the best representation of a middle-class income because, according to China Daily, the results of a 2011 census would indicate that the median household income in Hong Kong was “HK$20,200” per month (2013), but others could justifiably believe that HK$55,000 is not too large, and perhaps even too small, to be considered as a middle-class household income as the average household in Hong Kong consists of “3.2 persons” (Carvalho, 2019) and a worker, who earns “between HK$20,000 and HK$50,000 each month”, “belongs to the middle-income group” (China Daily, 2013); 3.2 multiplied by HK$20,000 is equal to HK$64,000, which is greater than HK$50,000. Yet using information from a more recent census that was conducted in 2016, which indicated that the “median individual income of Hong Kong” was “HK$15,500 per month” (Wong, 2017), would, again, result in another, different figure that could be used as part of a definition of a middle-class household income; 3.2 multiplied by HK$15,500 is equal to HK$49,600. These differences in what could, or should, be considered as middle-class incomes serves to further provide evidence for the potential confusion as to whether or not one should consider oneself as middle-class, leading to misidentification.
I would like to clarify now that I do not deny that a large portion of the protesters may be middle-class, or possess certain privileges, such as higher incomes that are unattainable to a large number of workers, but I believe it is important to remain aware that self-reported status can often be unreliable, especially when there is a large amount of confusion about what possessing such status actually entails; even without such confusion, the results of the survey may still be somewhat unreliable as the surveyed respondents may have falsely claimed to belong to the middle-class, which could be considered as a socially desirable class to belong to, as the result of a ‘social desirability bias’ (Wikipedia, 2019). In my opinion, whether or not the protesters belong to the middle-class is not important as belonging to that class does not neccessarily indicate that their movement is “reactionary”, or that they “serve the interests of finance capital”, as claimed by Fight Back! (2019). I would argue that all workers, including those in relatively privileged positions to other workers, as the result of “having to work for a living” but “having no real control over that work or other major decisions that effect them” (The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective, 2009), share common, revolutionary interests against those, including ‘finance capitalists’, who possess a disproportionate amount of social, economic and political power as the result of their exploitation of the workers; because of the shared interests of workers, and the shared interests of those who exploit workers, I would agree with The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective’s division of society into two classes, the “Working class”, which consists of the workers, and the “Ruling class”, which consists of those who exploit them and are extremely influential in society as the result of profiting from such exploitation (2009); in this division of society, what is “usually considered as “middle class”” is not a seperate class, and, instead, “usually refers to working class people with decent jobs, homes, etc.” (The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective, 2009). I believe that the classes within this division are better defined than the ‘middle-class’ that Fight Back! uses to justify its opposition to the protests in Hong Kong. The division of society into two classes is not “intended to suggest that members of a class have identical interests” (The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective, 2009), or to deny that people within the working class may hold beliefs and perform actions, which conflict with the shared interests of the working class, and can, therefore, be considered as ‘reactionary’, but, if we accept it, or reject the concept of an inherently reactionary middle-class for other reasons, we would require a sufficient amount of evidence, including documented actions and stated or revealed beliefs, to prove that the protesters, and their movement, in Hong Kong are reactionary.
There are certainly reactionary elements within the protests, as indicated by the use of flags to celebrate the United States of America, the United Kingdom and its colonial rule of Hong Kong, the calls for imperialistic foreign intervention by some protesters, and the nationalist rhetoric of the ‘localists’, but, unless these reactionary elements compose the majority of, or have the strongest degree of control over, the protests in Hong Kong, it would be incorrect to state that the movement itself is reactionary, especially if the other protesters reject the reactionary elements. Fight Back! does attempt to provide evidence that the protests are controlled by reactionary elements by stating that an activist in the protests, Lam Chi Leung, “openly acknowledges” that “the far-right localist groups have the greatest influence over the movement” (2019), but this evidence is insufficient and somewhat anecdotal as the observations and opinions of a single activist cannot be taken as objective evidence of the reactionary nature of the entire movement. In addition, the anecdotal evidence provided by Fight Back! conflicts with other sources of anecdotal evidence as an Anarchist collective in Hong Kong claims, in an interview about the protests in Hong Kong, that, instead of there being a controlling ‘far-right’ influence, “there is no guiding narrative” for the movement, which “nobody is authorized to speak on behalf of” (CrimethInc, 2019).
There may be more objective evidence to counter Fight Back!’s attempt to prove that the movement is under localist control; the same survey, which Fight Back! used to claim that the protesters are middle-class, found that only “28.5 per cent” of protesters “identified as localists”, compared to “38 per cent”, who identified as “pan-democrats”, as well as an additional “6.9 per cent”, who identified as “radical democrats” (Lok-kei, 2019). This would indicate that, whilst being a significant element in the protests, the localists certainly do not have a majority amongst the protesters and are unlikely to control the other, numerically superior factions in the protests (As an interesting side-note, the survey found that 0.2% of the protesters identified as “pro-establishment”; would Fight Back! claim that these protesters and their contributions to the movement are ‘reactionary’? (Lok-kei, 2019) ).
We should be aware that a lot of misinformation about the protests in Hong Kong is being disseminated, accidentally, erraneously and deliberately, especially by the mainstream media. This misinformation is used to shape our perceptions of the protests, and who is supporting them; the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and China all could benefit from a misbelief that the Hong Kong protests were supportive of the former two nations, which would gain legitimacy from the apparent support whilst China became able to dismiss any criticisms of its government by blaming them on intervention by the foreign powers. An example of misinformation is potential misreporting about both the prevalence of protesters using the flags of the United Kingdom and United States of America; whilst some protesters do use such flags in support of these imperialist nations, “3,500” people, in a vote on a “popular forum”, opposed the use of the flag, compared to only “250” who approved of its use, and some protesters “confronted an elderly man who is a regular at protests waving a colonial flag. They snatched his flag and took it away.” (Adkin and Blundy, 2019). According to Kayla Wong and Emily Lo, “the topic of the choice of flag” has “sparked much debate on the LIHKG Forum”, with quotes from those in oppostion to the use of the colonial flag including “Waving the Union flag would only trigger negative feelings and might even divide people. Even I, as a young person, hate it.” and “By supporting the Union flag, your focus is wrong. Secondly, I don’t believe it accurately reflects the political stance of most protesters.” (2019).
To briefly conclude, I believe that Fight Back! has, whether intentionally or unintentionally, misused information to portray the protests in Hong Kong as reactionary, and, by doing so, defend China against the opposition and criticisms that the protests, and their supporters, generate. As I stated in the opening paragraph of this article, I shall not attempt to explain my own opinions of the protests in great detail, and I will also refrain from extensively detailing my own opinions of the Chinese government, but I believe it is important to counter the misinformation that is being spread about the protests by foreign sources, and, whilst opposing reactionary forces and influences, to support any progressive elements within Hong Kong. I have seen Fight Back!’s article cited by many who oppose the protests, and I hope that my article may help them to become aware of the flaws of the former article, and to, thereby, develop a better informed perspective. In regards to the other people who have read this article, I hope that it helps develop their perspective as well, and both clarifies and accentuates the need to be mindful of the deliberate and unintentional misinformation that is often spread about large demonstrations of popular dissent, especially when such demonstrations are occurring in another country.
You have my gratitude for taking the time to read this article, and you would receive my further gratitude for any criticisms or feedback that you provide in regards to it!
Sources and Resources:
Sources are listed in order of reference.
Fight Back!. (2019). Where We Stand. [online] Fight Back! News. Available at: http://www.fightbacknews.org/where-we-stand [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Fight Back!. (2019). The Hong Kong protests are an attack on socialism. [online] Fight Back! News. Available at: http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/8/17/hong-kong-protests-are-attack-socialism [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
RTHK. (2019). Another general strike possible, says organiser. [online] rthk.hk. Available at: https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1472997-20190806.htm? [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Albert Cheng. (2015). Hong Kong’s biggest trade union is failing workers by giving up on working hours legislation. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1754294/hong-kongs-biggest-trade-union-failing-workers-giving [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
China Daily. (2013). Middle Class Myth. [online] China Daily Asia. Available at: http://epaper.chinadailyasia.com/focus-hk/article-211.html [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Raquel Carvalho. (2019). HK’s middle class vanishing act. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/article/981552/hks-middle-class-vanishing-act [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Anthony Wong. (2017). Where do you stand on Hong Kong’s pay scale? [online] HumanResources. Available at: https://www.humanresourcesonline.net/where-do-you-stand-on-hong-kongs-pay-scale/ [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Wikipedia. (2019). Social desirability bias. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective. (2009) An Anarchist FAQ (03/17). [pdf] The Anarchist Library. Available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-03-17 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
CrimethInc. (2019). Hong Kong: Anarchists in the Resistance to the Extradition Bill. [online] CrimethInc. Accessed at: https://crimethinc.com/2019/06/22/hong-kong-anarchists-in-the-resistance-to-the-extradition-bill-an-interview [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Sum Lok-kei. (2019). Young, educated and middle class: first field study of Hong Kong protesters reveals demographic trends. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3022345/young-educated-and-middle-class-first-field-study-hong-kong [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Ross Adkin and Rachel Blundy. (2019). Flag wavers divide opinions at protests. [online] The Standard. Available at: http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=210294&sid=5 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
Kayla Wong and Emily Lo. (2019). Hong Kong protesters waving UK’s Union Jack flag, explained. [online] Mothership. Available at: https://mothership.sg/2019/08/hong-kong-protests-united-kingdom-british-union-flag/ [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019]
