向着你们，希望你们能取得当年我们没能争取到的自由。
“30 years ago, you supported us”: Hong Kong campus sieges strike a chord with Chinese students
In China, it’s nearly impossible to talk about the events of 30 years ago, when tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and an untold number of student protesters were killed. But the recent turn in protests in Hong Kong, with fierce clashes breaking out between police and university students, has compelled some mainland Chinese students to evoke the bloody crackdown of 1989.
This month Hong Kong saw two prominent schools, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, become fiery battlegrounds. At the latter, where students blocked a vital tunnel link, a police siege has lasted days, with protesters trying to escape via sewers and by shimmying down ropes to avoid violent arrest and beatings.
While these sentiments reflect a minority, they mark an effort to publicly reject the opinions China’s censorship regime has allowed to circulate on social media platforms like Weibo. There, people overwhelmingly echo the hardline stance of the ruling Communist Party, and call for the Hong Kong police to take “forceful” action against “rioters” who are depicted in state-run media as instigated by foreign governments.
Standing—secretly—with Hong Kong
A Hong Kong citizen who moved to the city from the mainland as a child, @midwaydude gained online prominence in China with posts trying to explain Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese to one another. After being barred from Chinese social media platform Weibo, he migrated to Twitter where he uses his account as a safe channel for people in China to voice countercultural views without facing retaliation from Chinese authorities or trolls. He declined to disclose his actual name.
On Nov. 13, a day after police stormed onto the CUHK campus firing tear gas and rubber bullets as protesters responded with bricks and Molotov cocktails, he began a thread of notes he had received via Twitter direct messages from mainland Chinese, now numbering 34 notes. In the messages, many say the sieges brought to mind the democratic student movement that began in April 1989, and ended in bloodshed less than two months later—Beijing has never disclosed how many died, but estimates range from several hundred to several thousand. In Hong Kong, an estimated 1 million marched in support of the students that year.
“Hong Kong people, please forgive that we cannot stand with you openly, but we hope you will understand that we are not your enemies. I wish you could get the freedom that some Chinese students failed to get 30 years ago. May the glory be with Hong Kong!” said one person identifying themselves as a mainland Chinese student overseas.
In another note, a mainland Chinese citizen who claimed to be from the southern city of Guangzhou, described themselves as a “spiritual Hong Konger.” “I have never imagined that I will see June 4 2.0. You are fighting with the whole authoritarian regime, and the only thing I could do is to pray for you quietly,” said the user.
@midwaydude told Quartz he had received more than 100 notes so far, with most of them from people who told him they are students. To his surprise, over half them said they are currently living in the mainland—where it is highly risky to voice support for Hong Kong. Last week, a university opened an inquiry into a law professor in China who faced an online backlash after his remarks from a private messaging group, in which he defended Hong Kong protesters as “just a bunch of kids,” were leaked online. As the protests have endured, reviving the demand for greater democracy that drove the city’s 2014 Umbrella Movement protests, several Chinese nationals who expressed sympathy for Hong Kong on overseas social media have been doxxed by friends and acquaintances posting their personal information online.
