📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS
📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS
Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy, Hachette Books, 2023. 336 pgs.
Among the Braves is a riveting story that brings together Hong Kong’s socio-political history over the past four decades—starting from when Hong Kong was a safe haven for victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, to the post-Handover movements challenging the misguided extradition law, and finally to the ongoing retroactively applied National Security Law designed to crush all forms of dialogue, dissent, and press freedoms. At the same time, it’s a book full of sadness where the personal stories of ordinary people show the hardships and suffering many have endured merely to express legitimate concerns in a system without effective representation.
Among the Braves takes readers on a journey told through the eyes of Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, a refugee of Mao’s botched post-war policies and famine, who fought for social justice in Hong Kong for generations, to the recent years of young journalists and activists who have taken their grievances to the streets. It’s a people story, with names like Gwyneth Ho, Joshua Wong, Finn Lau, Nathan Law, Brian Leung, Denise Ho, and many others—today, all household names of those that only wanted to make a difference for their fellow Hong Kong citizens.
One can’t read Among the Braves without a feeling of revulsion for those who degraded Hong Kong’s autonomy and independence in a manner so devastating that it shifted the geopolitical landscape. Indeed, history will not be kind to former chief executive Carrie Lam, who single-handedly hollowed out the “One country, two systems” arrangement, by which Beijing pledged to administer Hong Kong for 50 years following the Handover. It’s not so much that Lam is “incredibly self-righteous” or that “[h]er colleagues couldn’t stand her for most of her career”, as Mahtani and McLaughlin write. Rather, it’s the lost opportunities she squandered when she failed to stand up for the autonomy of the city as reflected in the UK-China Joint Declaration, choosing instead to appease the obsessed hardliners in Beijing. Then, when confronted with street protests, Lam chose a path that allowed the city to unravel in short order. Lam’s undoing and legacy will be her own careless, political naïveté.
One feels much anger, too, for the excessive force used by the Hong Kong police culminating in the use of triad thugs who roamed parks and MTR stations with impunity to chase down and beat protesters, including the elderly, pregnant women, children, and those characterised as “wo, lei, fei”—peaceful, rational, and nonviolent protestors. The wanton cruelty of the state is on full display as the police turned the streets into theatres of violence from 12 June 2019 on.
As rage against police brutality escalated leading to a city in open revolt, the growing level of fury did not go unnoticed. By the end of 2019, the pro-Beijing voices had “conveniently ignored the millions of peaceful marches… and broadcast this violence, painting the entire movement as a vicious, xenophobic mob, paid and encouraged by Americans to topple the Communist Party”. Indeed, the excesses of the radical core of the movement was the excuse the embarrassed and cocksure Communist Party hardliners conveniently sought, prompting Beijing to set into motion its own hellish agenda for Hong Kong with the adoption of a law ostensibly designed to protect China’s national security but having far-reaching effects over society.
As with Lam, history will not be kind to the powers that be in Beijing with their ruthless, uncompromising approach and manipulation of the so-called rule of law to crush even a modicum of public dissent. Indeed, Among the Braves is a sad reminder that China’s place in the world as a modern innovative society will always be hindered by the paranoia of those in power and their feckless hostility towards pluralism.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is in freefall as a commercial and financial hub, and there is no one to blame but the overlords who lacked vision and prudence. Sadly, much of Hong Kong’s civil society has disappeared as the ever-changing red lines under the guise of national security made participating in it too risky. And without the stewardship of Hong Kong as a respected global role model (as it had been for decades), there is even less hope for mainland China.
The story in Among the Braves isn’t over yet. The scars are deep, and the healing won’t come easy, if at all. Freedoms have been curtailed and the fear of retroactive prosecution for the millions that took to the streets creates a pall over daily life. There is, indeed, more to the story to come, and no one can predict how or when it will end.
To those Hongkongers with a bounty on their heads, it’s a life of exile and an ongoing anxiety for family and friends that remain behind in a subdued, if not terrified, city. In time, the so-called opposition movement will re-organise and rebuild in preparation for the right moment.
For the foreign business community, Hong Kong’s decline is another reason to look elsewhere for more stable ground. Foreign business now views Hong Kong, lacking a judicial system that is truly independent from the Communist Party and its propaganda machine, as just another Chinese city.
For the people of Taiwan, it’s an icy recap of what they don’t want. Beijing has certainly lost the hearts of the Taiwanese for generations to come (if they ever had them to begin with).
Sadness aside, the grit of people like the jailed journalist Gwyneth Ho is inspiring when she said that “we are not at the very bottom of hell yet… there’s still a long way to go”. Among the Braves thus leaves the reader with a sense of hope and optimism that justice will eventually prevail, especially for those that have not given up the dream of democracy in Hong Kong—the so-called “braves” among us.
How to cite: Zimmerman, James M. “The Story Isn’t Over Yet: Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin’s Among the Braves.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 7 Jan. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/01/07/braves.
James M Zimmerman is the author of The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China. He has lived and worked in Beijing as a writer and lawyer for over 25 years and is a former four-term chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.