CHAPTER 2. Disruptive activism in Hong Kong This chapter accounts for a subject analysis of how disruptive design has been utilised by Hong Kong youths to navigate sociopolitical change. It provides political context to the city’s colonial history and how such complications have led to the recent protests throughout the last decade. Primary research is then introduced that establish psychological links between disruptive mindsets and youth activists. Finally, through the research of digital safari, various tactics and methods used in the movement argue how they have been disruptive, with reference to the forms mentioned in Chapter One.
2.1 Political landscape of Hong Kong and youth movement Generation Z youths of Hong Kong, roughly born between 1997 to 2012 (Kasasa, 2020), are known to have played major roles in movements such as Umbrella Revolution in 2014 and the mega-scale protests in 2019. Hong Kong, home to many others like myself, holds a uniquely special place in my heart. For the rest, it is an international hub, the world’s freest economy (Index of Economic Freedom of The Heritage Foundation, 2019) and also where the highest life expectancies have been recorded (CNN Health, 2018). Despite the stellar rankings, Hong Kong is sealed to a sociopolitical fate to ratify in 2047. Its position as a Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), one that falls directly under the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is a result of a convoluted colonial past. After 156 years of British governance, HKSAR’s colonial rule came to an end with an agreement to remain independent for 50 years, known as ‘One Country, Two Systems’. On that account, HKSAR is said to ‘enjoy a high-degree of autonomy’. This maintains a completely separate political and economic system from the PRC: one of which leaves HKSAR wholly capitalist, independently judiciary, and democratic to an apparent extent. As laid out in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration (Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, 2005), HKSAR has encouraged the practice of freedom of speech, political criticism and rights to assembly — liberties not simultaneously enjoyed in the PRC, where its socialist politics have remain fairly unchanged despite exponential GDP growth in the last decade.
Fig 11. 2 million protesters show solidarity for movement against PRC interference (Tsang, 2019) 18
