Thread by @alanwongw

I’m in Central, Hong Kong, near the site of the recent protests against the China extradition bill. I want to show you a few things that might give us hints about where the protests are coming from. Follow this thread for a quick walking tour!

Let’s start from perhaps Hong Kong’s most famous building, the Bank of China tower. It's designed by the late Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei.

Pei died last month at the age of 102. He left us with countless modernist masterpieces, but you should remember him for more than architecture. inkstonenews.com/arts/im-pei-di…

The last phase of the construction of Pei's Bank of China tower coincided with one of the most consequential events in China’s political history: the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Photos via @lera_engineers, structural engineer for the building. lera.com/bank-of-china-…

A little more than 30 years ago today in Beijing, about 1,200 miles north from here, young protesters occupied Tiananmen Square to demand accountability and democracy.

Pei's tower was six months from completion then. It was commissioned and owned by the Chinese state. It was then the tallest building in the world outside New York and Chicago.

By building it, China was showing the world the early progress of its economic reforms and a glimpse of a rising power.

But for Pei, the stakes were high for a different reason at first.

When he was designing the tower, an absolutely jaw-dropping HSBC building opened a stone's throw away from Pei's site. He was under pressure to beat it.

Photo: Wikipedia user -Wpcpey

The HSBC building was then the most expensive building ever in the city, funded, designed and engineered by the Brits. (And it was the first building in Hong Kong to be fully air-conditioned!)

Pei had a fraction of the budget, and a less than ideal site. But he had managed to come up with a truly innovative design that stood up to the HSBC building.

Here’s a photo I took from the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests

But everything changed after the night of June 3, when Chinese troops opened fire on civilians in Beijing, killing hundreds of protesters.

In the days after the crackdown in Beijing, the construction crew of the tower hung a giant banner from the top floor of the building that called for justice for the slain protesters.

Some Hong Kong residents lined up to take their money out of Bank of China in protest (there was also fear, too, of turmoil in China). Pei had been quiet for days, but he eventually spoke up.

He wrote a column in The New York Times published that month titled “China Won’t Ever Be the Same.” He recalled his excitement to return to his birth place, China, to work on the tower and hopes for the future of the country.

"We wanted to believe that a more open and modern China was possible.

Today, these dreams are dashed by the horrible events at Tiananmen Square. We were shocked beyond measure. The revulsion soon turned to anger, then sadness, for it was all so unnecessary."

He ended the piece by saying:

"I cannot accept the thought that all the blood was shed in vain that Saturday night, June 3, 1989, at Tiananmen Square."

On the eve of the killings in Hong Kong, about a million people took to the streets to demonstrate solidarity with the Beijing protesters.

Photo taken on May 28, 1989 via @HKAA1989

The next time we saw that many people on the street was last Sunday, when march organizers said 1.03 million people joined to protest the extradition bill. (More on the bill here:

https://twitter.com/alanwongw/status/1138670660329254912

)

Photo of the June 9 march by SCMP/Sam Tsang

The 1989 crackdown changed China, and in Hong Kong it caused a political awakening.

Part of that was out of fear. Just a few years ago, London had signed a deal to hand over Hong Kong to Beijing. The killings struck fear into Hong Kongers of what the future could hold for them under Communist Party rule, even though Beijing promised them considerable autonomy.

But the awakening gave birth to a wave of advocacy for democracy that remains alive to this day. The largest pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong today were formed in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown.

This building in front of me used to house Hong Kong’s legislature. In 1991, the city had its first-ever elections to pick 18 lawmakers through popular vote. (The rest of the 60 seats were not directly elected.)

The pro-democracy coalition was formed only a year ago, but they won by a landslide – 17 of the 18 directly elected seats. *All* pro-Beijing candidates were defeated.

This amounted to a Hong Kong referendum on the Tiananmen crackdown with a total repudiation of Beijing's policy, late Hong Kong historian Ming K. Chan noted.

The pro-democracy parties from the 1991 elections are still the biggest pro-democracy group in Hong Kong's legislature today.

But more importantly, people who were part of that generation have since trained a new generation of people who are leading the democracy movement today, even though they don't follow the same playbook.

These are people who organized the recent marches and protests against a bill that would allow the local government to send people in Hong Kong to face trial or go to jail in mainland China.

The building is now home to Hong Kong’s highest court. And it’s a symbol of what makes Hong Kong unique: the court is completely independent. Unlike in mainland China, Hong Kong judges don’t answer to the executive branch of the government or one party.

That’s partly why Hong Kong’s protesters and pro-democracy leaders fear that Beijing would use the extradition law to punish political opponents in Hong Kong on shaky grounds.

On top of that, democracy advocates today, as those in Hong Kong 30 years ago were, remain skeptical of a government that would crush dissent with tanks and troops. This wound has never healed.

Every year on June 4, thousands of people would gather to mourn those killed in the Tiananmen Square crackdown and demand an end to one-party rule. inkstonenews.com/china/tiananme…

While Beijing has held up the country's economic success in the years since Tiananmen to justify the killings, it's important to remember the many ways history comes back to haunt you. inkstonenews.com/politics/tiana…

Did the protesters in Beijing die in vain? We might eventually find out in Hong Kong.

If you like this thread, check out our newsletter! inks.tn/china-translat… It's our full-time job to make sense of China (and have a bit of fun). Or at least we try to; we certainly don't have all the answers. Thank you for following along this far.