Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Unions Won’t Call for General Strike
Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Unions Seek Support for General Strike
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong labor unions and students failed to amass enough support to strike against national security laws that China plans for the city, underscoring the struggle to reignite a protest movement that’s lost momentum because of the pandemic and the increasing threat of arrest.
Organizers said 8,943 union members participated in a city-wide poll, falling short of their 60,000 total vote threshold to go ahead with a general strike, even though 95% of participants supported the move. Separately, the Secondary School Students Action Platform affiliated with prominent activist Joshua Wong said it would not initiate a class boycott as they only received 3,393 in-person supporting votes, also falling short of the target of 5,000 in-person votes. A total of 88% of 9,910 high school students who voted in-person or electronically agreed to a walkout.
The referendum represents the latest effort by the pro-democracy camp to gain momentum for a campaign that’s floundered this year. Despite its long odds of success, the event had drawn public condemnation from various mainland and Hong Kong authorities in its run-up, signaling it was being particularly scrutinized by Beijing.
The move comes at a sensitive time. China released Saturday a framework of its proposed national security law for Hong Kong, which has reignited tensions in the city and fueled fears that the Asian financial center’s unique freedoms were being eroded.
It confirmed that the central government will have jurisdiction over an “extremely small” number of national security cases under “specific circumstances,” according to draft language released on Saturday by the official Xinhua News Agency. It added that China will establish a new bureau in Hong Kong to analyze the security situation, collect intelligence and “lawfully handle national security cases.”
The referendum has caught the attention of authorities. Chen Dong, vice director of China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, blasted the student group earlier this week for “entrapping students in the vortex of politics and illegal violence.” Days earlier, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing called out the organizers, including 23-year-old Wong, one of the leaders of the pro-democracy Demosisto political party, for adding to their “list of sins” with the referendum.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government urged the public to stay away from such “meaningless activities.”
The last time there was a mass worker strike in Hong Kong was in February, when thousands of medical workers walked off their jobs for five days over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Other recent calls for a general strike, including one last month to stop the legislature from passing a bill that would criminalize disrespect toward China’s national anthem, have flopped. That’s in contrast to November last year, when protesters disrupted subway lines and blocked a cross-harbor tunnel, while police clashed with university students, prompting the government to close schools and companies to tell employees to work from home.
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