“Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong” is the first comprehensive account of the Umbrella Movement.
Umbrella examines in detail the 2014 campaign for genuine universal suffrage, situating it within the contexts of the history of the HK pro-democracy movement, HK’s relationship with China, recent developments in nonviolent resistance struggles globally, and democratization theory.
The occupations of three hubs of HK lasted 79 days, the longest continuous mass demonstrations to occur in any major world city in modern history. What triggered them? Why did they last so long? What were they fighting for? What did they achieve?
The tale is divided into five parts: 1) how the occupations began; 2) their immediate and historical backgrounds; 3) the occupations themselves; 4) the period after the occupations and up to the defeat of the fake universal suffrage plan of the Chinese and HK governments in June 2015; and 5) an assessment of the movement, an overview of the many rapidly occurring developments in its wake, and a discussion of the outlook for democracy and self-determination in Hong Kong.
Told from a pro-democracy perspective, in solidarity with the millions of Hong Kong people who have fought for their civil and political rights down through the years, Umbrella also looks critically at the limitations, weaknesses and errors of the movement while portraying the Chinese Communist Party as implacably hostile to popular sovereignty and the HK government and elites as its accomplices. The global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism will determine the direction of the world over the coming decades. Hong Kong is part of that struggle.
Information on how to order coming soon.
Kong Tsung-gan is a writer, educator and activist who participated in the Umbrella Movement. He is based in Hong Kong and has lived and worked in China, amongst Tibetans in India, and in a dozen other places in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Umbrella combines his knowledge of Hong Kong with his global perspective.
Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong, Pema Press, 664 pages, paperback ISBN: 978–0–9972385–3–2, ebook ISBN: 978–0–9972385–4–9; US price: $19.99 (paperback), $9.99 (ebook); in HK: $200 donation to one of four non-profit pro-democracy groups