1. Introduction The Spirit of July 1 Link Continues
On July 1, 1997, the colonial history of Hong Kong ended after 156 years, and the community became part of China again. In 1995, several Catholic and Protestant groups in Hong Kong organized the first July 1 prayer service to pray for the future of Hong Kong. This service engendered the idea of creating July 1 Link to connect the faith communities of Hong Kong with its civil society and with people of faith and members of civil society overseas. To achieve these aims, newsletters were produced, and workshops and forums were organized. In addition, an international conference was held in June 1997 to put the 1997 issue on the international agenda and to build a network of support with the international community.
It is in the spirit of July 1 Link in the 1990s that these liturgical resources are prepared for Hong Kong Sunday in 2023. They may also be used for prayer services or Bible studies, etc.
2. Historical Overview
1984 Joint Declaration between the British and Chinese governments
This international treaty created the relationship for Hong Kong with mainland China for 50 years based on the “one country, two systems” framework. It promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy with Hong Kong having its own political, economic, educational and legal systems.
1989 Tiananmen massacre
Hundreds, if not thousands, of students, workers and ordinary citizens were killed by Chinese troops on June 4 after nearly two months of protests led by students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and other major cities. Among the demands of the protesters were calls for democracy, an end to corruption and lower inflation.
In response, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was founded in May 1989 during the protests in China. Between 1990 and 2020 when it was forced to disband, the Hong Kong Alliance held marches prior to June 4 every year calling for justice for the victims killed in Tiananmen Square and annual candlelight vigils on June 4 to commemorate the victims that were killed. The Tiananmen massacre raised the fears of people in Hong Kong about their future, leading to a wave of emigration.
1997 Handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China
Britain transferred the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on July 1 after the expiration of a 99-year
lease between the two countries. The first chief executive (governor) of Hong Kong, Tung Cheehwa, was chosen by predominantly pro-China figures in Hong Kong a practice that continues to the present day.
2003 Article 23 and protest organized by Civil Human Rights Front
The Hong Kong government introduced legislation to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution. Article 23 prohibits acts of treason, secession, sedition and subversion against the Chinese government, safeguards the theft of state secrets, prohibits ties between foreign political organizations and Hong Kong political bodies and bans foreign political organizations from conducting political activities in Hong Kong.
The Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), a coalition of more than 50 organizations, was formed and organized a march against the Article 23 legislation on July 1 with more than 500,000 people participating. Because of the huge turnout, a major political party and ally of the government withdrew its support for the bill, and the government suspended it. Although the legislation is still suspended, the current Hong Kong government expects to enact it in 2023 or 2024.
CHRF organized demonstrations for democracy on July 1 every year between 2003 and 2019.
2012 Scholarism and anti-national education protests
The Hong Kong government proposed changing the course Moral and Civic Education to Moral and
National Education for all elementary school students beginning in 2012 and for all high school students the following year.
High school students formed the group Scholarism with Joshua Wong as its convenor to oppose this proposed curriculum change. Parents also formed their own group to support them. With other organizations, Scholarism organized a march against the proposal in July with more than 90,000 people participating. On Aug. 30, Scholarism’s members launched an occupation of the government headquarters, and a rolling hunger strike began. During the occupation, a demonstration outside the government headquarters on Sept. 7 drew up to 120,000 supporters of the students. The next day the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, announced that the proposal would be withdrawn.
2014 Occupy Central and the Umbrella Movement
Professors Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Chan Kin-man and the Rev. Chu Yiu-ming launched Occupy Central with Love and Peace for citizens to engage in non-violent civil disobedience by occupying the central business district of Hong Kong if proposals for genuine democracy based on universal suffrage were not forthcoming by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.
When the Chinese government announced that any candidate for chief executive “has to be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong” a decision supported by the Hong Kong government the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism began protesting and
occupying the area outside the Hong Kong government headquarters in Admiralty. Tensions escalated between the students and the police, forcing the leaders of Occupy Central to declare the beginning of their civil disobedience action. When the police used tear gas to disperse the protesters the first time that the police had fired tear gas at Hong Kong people since the 1967 riots more and more people came out to support the students, thus beginning the occupation of several major districts of Hong Kong from late September to midDecember for 79 days that became known as the Umbrella Movement as protesters used umbrellas to protect themselves from the police’s pepper spray.
2016 Fishball Revolution and ‘Localism’
The 2016 protest began as a seemingly innocuous rally to protect illegal hawkers from health inspectors on the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, but it quickly morphed into an outpouring of anger against authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing. It was later dubbed the “Fishball Revolution” after one of the city’s best-loved street snacks.
Among those supporting the vendors were so-called localist groups, small political parties and groups that favor greater autonomy for Hong Kong. Edward Leung was a prominent leader for Hong Kong Indigenous who first used “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” as a campaign slogan for a 2016 Legislative Council election in 2016. He was later banned from running in the election due to his past advocacy for independence from China. He was jailed in 2018 for his role in an
overnight protest in 2016 that turned violent, injuring about 130 people, when masked activists threw bricks and burned trash cans to vent anger at what they saw as China’s encroachment on the former British colony’s culture and autonomy. He was released on January 18, 2022.
Fellow group members Ray Wong and Alan Li were also charged with rioting in the 2016 protest. The pair later skipped bail and were granted asylum in Germany in May 2018.
The brief “Fishball Revolution” had an influence, however, on Hong Kong’s larger pro-democracy movement, especially among the youth, who began to more and more embrace an identity as Hong Kongers that was distinct from an identity as Chinese. Localism, and even independence, were important currents of the movement that was to come three years later in 2019.
2019 Anti-extradition law protests
Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced an extradition law that could have resulted in Hong Kong people being extradited to mainland China and its opaque judicial system, alarming local people and sparking protests between June and January 2020 when the outbreak of COVID-19 prohibited people from gathering.
Even though up to two million people more than a quarter of the city’s population joined one march, the government refused to withdraw the bill. This failure to respond to the will of the people, this institutional violence, increasingly became physical
violence as the police took stronger measures to react to the demonstrations by using batons to beat people, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons.
The demands of the protesters thus grew from a withdrawal of the extradition bill to retracting the characterization of the protests as “riots,” the release of arrested protesters, the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the use of force by the police and, lastly, the resignation of Carrie Lam and the introduction of universal suffrage for all elections in Hong Kong.
2020–2023 National Security Law and trial of 47 prodemocracy activists
The Chinese government imposed the national security law, or NSL, on Hong Kong, bypassing the city’s legislature, on June 30, 2020. The law outlaws acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign organizations with the maximum punishment being life imprisonment. The NSL overrides all legislation in Hong Kong, and the chief executive appoints a group of judges to hear NSL cases. Moreover, the law applies to people overseas as well as people in Hong Kong.
In March 2021, 47 former legislators, district councilors and activists from the pro-democracy camp were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under the NSL for organizing or taking part in an unofficial primary election in July 2020. The pro-democracy camp sought to win a majority of seats in the legislature in order to vote down the
government’s budget, which could eventually force the chief executive to resign under provisions of the Basic Law.
3. Hong Kong People’s Resistance and Struggles
In the mass movements highlighted above from 2003 to 2014, there were visible leaders and publicly announced marches or demonstrations. The movement in 2019 though was much different: it was a leaderless movement with protesters, especially young people, organizing demonstrations through various social media platforms. One of the movement’s principles was “be like water” a phrase popularized by the philosophy of Hong Kong martial arts icon Bruce Lee. This principle was reflected in the way that protests would erupt in one district of Hong Kong, quickly end and then resurface in another district faraway from the first demonstration.
There were other differences between the 2019 movement and its predecessors. The earlier movements in Hong Kong were always peaceful. This pattern was also true at the beginning of the 2019 movement with marches of one million people followed a week later by two million participants without any arrests or confrontations with the police. As the government continued to ignore the demands of the protesters and as the police increasingly responded with more aggressive tactics though, the reaction of some of the protesters shifted from peaceful and non-violent actions to, in their minds, valiant clashes on the streets with the police.
This transformation of tactics by the protesters was clearly visible when hundreds of protesters smashed their way into the Legislative Council (Legco) chamber and briefly occupied it after the annual July 1 march. One graffiti message scrawled on the walls of Legco encapsulated this new thinking: “You [Carrie Lam] taught us that peaceful protests don’t work.”
Instead of fracturing the movement, however, and losing public support, people showed a great deal of tolerance toward
different means of achieving “Five demands, not one less” a popular slogan of the movement. Indeed, there became an unwritten pact among the protesters that anyone was free to participate in the movement in any way that they felt comfortable but not to question the actions of others. This understanding was much different than the 2014 Umbrella Movement when there were disagreements among the younger and older generation of organizers over tactics.
The 2019 movement was also distinct in that it crossed a number of boundaries with cross-generational, cross-ethnic and cross-class solidarity. While the youth were the most visible members of the movement, older generations played a supportive role by transporting stranded protesters, negotiating with the police to reduce tensions and offering pastoral counseling and support near the frontlines. Moreover, South Asian residents who were born in Hong Kong participated in the movement as both frontline protesters and supporters. Meanwhile, the wide disparity in the city’s wealth was displayed during the protests with tycoons, like newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, marching with grassroots workers, such as restaurant staff temporarily leaving their workplaces to join the demonstrations.
Like the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the creativity of Hong Kong’s people was exhibited during the 2019 movement as artwork was posted on the Lennon Walls scattered throughout various districts in the city. One notable artistic contribution to the movement was the work of an anonymous Hong Kong composer who wrote “Glory to Hong Kong” that became the anthem of the protest movement and, indeed, the city as a whole. Thousands of people gathered from time to time at various levels of the atriums of shopping malls, for instance, and sang the song. It connected people in the community in a spirit of oneness with a common purpose and a common identity.
This connection was also present in various acts of kindness during the movement. People opened their homes to hide protesters running away from the police, churches provided a place to rest for the protestors, protesters refused to abandon each other in tense times. Strangers were no longer strangers: they were all Hong Kongers.
As the months of marches, rallies and other activities filled the streets of Hong Kong, this sense of a Hong Kong identity became more deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the protesters, especially among the youth, that was reflected in such slogans as “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and “Free Hong Kong.” There were more and more calls for Hong Kong self-determination and even independence. While these attitudes were in society after the 2014 Umbrella Movement, more and more people began to embrace them in 2019; more and more there was a focus exclusively on democratic change in Hong Kong, not mainland China as older activists had done.
Lastly, there was greater lobbying by Hong Kong politicians and activists overseas to support the movement in 2019. These local to international links resulted in the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed almost unanimously with bipartisan support by the U.S. Congress in November 2019. The law requires the U.S. government to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials deemed responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong and for the U.S. government to undertake an annual review of the political relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China to determine whether Hong Kong should retain its unique trade status with the United States. In addition, members of the Hong Kong diaspora, such as overseas students, organized rallies in other countries to support those protesting in Hong Kong. This
international solidarity by both governments and civil society abroad was important to the people of Hong Kong in their struggle between David and Goliath.
However, in the wake of the enactment of the national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong in 2020 by the Chinese government and the arrest of the Hong Kong 47 described above as well as others, such as activists and journalists, a cloud of “white terror” presently hangs over the city. This fear is caused by the ambiguous red lines of the NSL in which what one says or does may be deemed a threat to national security by the authorities.
Moreover, the rule of law the institution in Hong Kong that most notably differentiated the city from mainland China, that was the bedrock of “one country, two systems” has been eroded under the weight of the NSL. People are no longer confident that justice is blind, that the courts are independent, that justice will be rendered in especially NSL cases. For Hong Kongers, “one country, two systems” feels more and more like “one country, one system.”
4. Call to Worship
LITURGIST
In silence, let us seek God’s presence. (silence)
In silence, let us face the darkness in ourselves, in our churches, in our community and the community of Hong Kong and in our country. (silence)
In this act of silent remembrance, let us resolve that never again shall we remain silent in the face of darkness. (silence)
CONGREGATION
O God of Love, bless us with courage and commitment to face the darkness with light and with love.
O God of Hope, may we find hope to overcome the struggles in our lives and in our world through our faith in You.
O God of Justice, may our trust in You bring us peace for this journey for justice. Amen.
5. Confession of Sin and Absolution
CONGREGATION
God of light and darkness, you have searched us out and known us, and all that we are is open to you. We confess that we have sinned: we have used our power to dominate and our weakness to manipulate; we have evaded responsibility and failed to confront evil; we have denied dignity to ourselves and our neighbors and have fallen into despair.
God of justice and peace, on this Hong Kong Sunday, we acknowledge our lack of knowledge about the injustice that our sisters and brothers in Hong Kong experience. We acknowledge our silence and our oversight toward care and service to the people in that community.
God of mercy, hear our prayers.
LITURGIST
May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all the saints, whatever good you do and suffering you endure, heal your sins, strengthen you in all goodness and reward you with eternal life. Be at peace.
Hong Kong Sunday 2023
6. Suggested Scripture Readings
Psalm 137 Lament over the Destruction of Jerusalem (NRSVUE)
1 By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there we hung up our harps.
3 For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!”
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
