Hong Kong activist-in-exile Terrence Law speaks with TaiwanPlus about how Hong Kong's society has changed in the 27 years since its handover from the U.K. to China.
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00:00Can you describe what kind of activities would happen on the anniversary of the handover in Hong Kong?
00:05Usually after the handover in 1997, we would get a rally, a demonstration on the Hong Kong island.
00:13Actually, after I was 12 years old, my parents always took me into the rally every year.
00:22However, this kind of rally already disappeared because of the NSL and the highly oppression by the Hong Kong government.
00:29I would say after the National Security Law and Article 23, local Hong Kongers already feel like they feel some kind of nostalgia, actually.
00:40Like their Hong Kong experience before 2019 is already gone.
00:46Now, you were born after the handover happened, so you've always been living under Chinese Hong Kong.
00:52Now, have you noticed any generational differences when you speak with older people?
00:57The generation gap is bigger than all of us imagined.
01:02Usually, the elder generation, the elderly, usually they still believe in the one country, two systems.
01:10But the younger generation, especially our generation, or we call it a localist generation, we usually don't believe in the one country, two systems anymore.
01:22I think all of us noticed that the promises given by the Chinese government are already broken.
01:28They originally promised us that the one country, two systems can let Hong Kongers through Hong Kong.
01:33However, we cannot elect our own president or legislator, and we have no more freedom of speech, freedom of rallies, etc.
01:43Due to the repression and the oppression, the whole civil society is already dead.
01:48You said that Hong Kong civil society is dead, so does it exist anywhere else outside of Hong Kong?
01:54Even though the local, original, local civil society of Hong Kong is dead, but it's also alive in a subtle way.
02:03The political industry is dead, for sure, but the cultural industry is still alive and getting more and more and developing very well.
02:13It would become a very important base of the future democratic movement of Hong Kong.
02:20And of course, the exile or diaspora democratic movement is still going on, for example, myself as an example.