In 2019, more than a million people poured onto the streets of Hong Kong, with many returning week after week. The song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ soon emerged as the movement’s unofficial anthem. What began as a protest against an ill-advised extradition bill quickly became, for many, the city’s last stand against Beijing’s tightening grip.
Six years on, those courageous scenes of struggle feel like a distant memory. New legislations have effectively outlawed dissent. ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ is banned. Pro-democracy activists and legislators have been jailed or forced into exile. Was the movement a failure? How should we measure success in a struggle that was, in many ways, quixotic? And how might we situate the 2019 protests within Hong Kong’s unique history of colonisation and capitalist development?
In this episode, Yangyang speaks with sociologist Ching Kwan Lee and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom about the significance of the struggle, its transnational legacy, and the lessons it carries for this moment of global democratic backsliding.
More content from this blog
- Asim Munir’s Promotion to Field Marshal Signals an Authoritarian Pakistan, by Salman Rafi Sheikh – 25 July 2025
- The Eradication of “Talmudic Abstractions”: Antisemitism, Transmisogyny and the National Socialist Project, by Joni Alizah Cohen – 19 December 2018
- “Repeal the 19th” – 28 April 2026
- The El Fasher Atrocities [Sudan] – 18 November 2025
- Shahrukh Alam & Harsh Mander on How India’s Laws Are Being Weaponised Against Muslims – 2 July 2025