Meet The 17-Year-Old Who Cannot Vote But Is Leading HK's Pro-Democracy Movement

Sporting heavy black glasses and a bowl cut, Joshua Wong Chi-fung doesn’t exactly cut a menacing figure. But his activism against what many in Hong Kong perceive to be the Chinese Communist Party’s encroachment onto their freedoms has already attracted Beijing’s attention.

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Wong is young and energetic; the party is painted as hoary and tired. Wong is lean; the party has glutted itself on the labor of those it claims to represent. And Wong is “bespectacled”—code for intelligent, progressive—whereas party politics have changed little from Chairman Mao’s time. Beyond the fact that he looks like an average teenager campaigning for democracy, what else is known about Joshua Wong? So far, very little.

Wong emerged as a figure in Hong Kong’s activist circles two years ago, when he rallied students against a government plan to introduce “patriotic education” in schools, attacking it as a means of Chinese Communist Party indoctrination. He played a pivotal role in setting off the demonstrations of the past week, leading a surprise charge on a government building that resulted in his arrest and prompted thousands to take to the streets ahead of schedule.

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In September 2012, Wong and Scholarism mobilized more than 120,000 people to demonstrate (paywall) against the education program, including a slew of students who went on hunger strike. Within days, the Hong Kong government scrapped the plan for mandatory implementation.

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Local newspapers with close ties to Beijing have sought to smear him as a tool of the United States. In reality, Wong is troubling confirmation for the authorities that the first generation in Hong Kong to grow up under Chinese rule is by many measures also the one most alienated from Beijing’s influence.

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He was born less than nine months before this former British colony’s handover to China in 1997, and raised here at a time when the party has tried mightily to win over the people and shape them into patriotic Chinese citizens.

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He lives in Hong Kong, an area governed by Britain until 1997, which is now meant to be an autonomous region of China. But critics say the Chinese government is trying to erode the controls agreed when power was transferred, and many like Joshua are protesting against this.

His prominence in the protest movement also embodies a shift in politics here — youth anger amplified over the Internet, beyond the orbit of traditional political parties — that has confounded the local government and infuriated its Communist supervisors in the mainland.

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That shift has made something of a political star of Mr. Wong, who comes across as a hybrid of a solemn politician and a bashful teenage sensation. These days, if he is not surrounded by admiring supporters, he is usually mobbed by television cameras and reporters. Even before the most recent round of protests, strangers would sometimes approach him to shake hands or offer a pat on his shoulders and ask about his exam scores and schoolwork.

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Wong is keenly aware of the influence that he and his classmates wield. As early as July, well before Beijing proposed the election rules that are the target of the current demonstrations, Mr. Wong told The New York Times in an interview, “Electoral reform is a generational war.”

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“Their mentality is very different from the older generation, so I call them mutants, in a good sense, like the X-Men,” he said. “There is always a danger of an even harsher crackdown that will scare the hell out of Hong Kong people. But at the same time, I don’t think these mutant leaders are just daydreamers. They know that they might not get what they want, but most of them are prepared to fight on.”

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Wong has claimed that he is more fervent than many of his older peers in the pro-democracy camp. Wong’s defiant statements on the protests have catapulted him into the media spotlight. He has said he would rather fight “every battle” as “the final battle,” he told CNN. He has no intention of compromising his beliefs to achieve piecemeal reform, either.

“Compromising before you even begin fighting is illogical,” he told HK Magazine. “Grown-ups like to talk about political realities and the broader context. But the broader context is that Beijing won’t give you what you want. If you don’t persist, then it’s only more likely that they won’t listen to you.”

The democracy movement had appeared to be flagging, and students who had been boycotting classes were planning to mark the end of their campaign quietly on Friday night with a showing of video messages of support from Taiwanese activists.

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As the video ended, Wong, speaking on the stage beside the screen, took many in the audience by surprise by urging them to seize “Civic Square,” the name that activists use for a forecourt to the Hong Kong government headquarters. Moments later, about 200 protesters eluded guards and took the square to loud cheers. But Wong was arrested before he made it and was dragged away in handcuffs.

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News and images of Wong’s arrest spread quickly on social media, and the occupation of the forecourt became the nucleus of a protest that attracted tens of thousands of supporters. The police tried to break up the demonstration on Sunday with arrests, pepper spray and tear gas, provoking more public anger and bringing even larger crowds onto the streets, which have been occupied since.

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"Release the students! Students are innocent!" protesters cried out as they were surrounded by riot police on Sunday after occupying one of the city's busiest roads. The students "are now local heroes in the eyes of the protesting public. So if they have to go to jail or suffer some way in promotion or access to studies, it will win them even more support," Suzanne Pepper, an academic at Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies democracy in Hong Kong, said in an emailed response.

"Joshua is brave. He can stand up for what he believes is right," said Jerry Chik, 17, a high-school student in school uniform at a protest Tuesday. "If the arrest is politically driven, it is unacceptable."

"I'm not that smart…I want to do social work," he said in an interview. "How could I leave now in this circumstance. If I leave, [the government] might use the chance to ridicule me."