Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink

by Jeffrey Wasserstrom Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

Overview

What can the massive protests that have roiled Hong Kong and the harsh repressive moves made against activists tell us about where this special metropolis is heading? And about how a resurgent China under strongman rule is challenging and reshaping the international order? Jeffrey Wasserstrom draws on his many visits to the city and his background as a specialist in the history of protests against authoritarianism to make a powerful and sobering case for the near inevitability of China's imposing its model on Hong Kong.

Vigil*tells a tale of two interrelated processes. The first involves a stop and go, but never reversing, set of moves by China's Communist Party to minimize the many things that once made Hong Kong unlike the cities neighboring it just across the border on the mainland. The result of this has been that, since the 1997 Handover from Great Britain to China, more and more of the once clear-cut contrasts between Hong Kong and nearby urban centers such as Canton and Shenzhen-differences that decades ago were as stark as those between East Berlin and West Berlin-are lessening or going away completely.

The second process involves bold efforts by residents of Hong Kong to push back against this erosion of differences. The key actors are people who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a city they love-a freer press, more judicial independence, a system of rule of law rather than rule by law-against moves to diminish them made by Beijing and its local proxies. The result has been one of the great David versus Goliath stories of our time, pitting creative and determined activists, joined on the streets in recent years by ever larger numbers of Hong Kong residents, against a Chinese Communist Party whose global clout keeps growing and whose current leader, Xi Jinping, has grand ambitions for bringing all parts of the People's Republic of China under tighter forms of control.

The result is a tale of heroism but also tragedy. Even against-all-odds longshot victories-and there have been some-can only slow a process that has led, in essence, to Hong Kong's people becoming subjects of first the great imperial power of the nineteenth century and now the most important rising imperial power of the current era.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Vigil was published before the national security law was introduced, but Jeffrey Wasserstrom seems to have prophesied the impending disaster. His title refers both to the candlelight vigil held every June 4 for the victims of the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square and to the act of watching over a dying patient—the patient, in this case, being Hong Kong.... An excellent primer on what is happening in Hong Kong.” —Barbara Demick, The New York Review of Books

“It will take many years to write a full sociological and historical account of the 2019 protest movement. In the meantime, we can turn to historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s Vigil, a short but brilliant first draft of that study.” —Rana Mitter, Project Syndicate

“A strong, economical account of what the city has gone through—and where it may be headed.” —Nat Brown, National Review

“Brief and efficiently readable.... Mr. Wasserstrom offers a vivid narrative of Hong Kong ‘on the brink.’ He is perhaps strongest when he puts the protests in historical context. Beyond making the standard comparisons to Tibet and the struggles of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, he hears in Hong Kong’s current conflict echoes of events in China over the past century. He reminds us, for instance, that Shanghai, after falling in 1949 to Mao’s revolutionary forces, ‘was an example of a Golden Goose that the Communists killed no long after taking control of it.’ For those who believe that Hong Kong's status today as China's premier financial hub will shield the city from Beijing’s wrath, this is sobering.” —Adrian Ho, The Wall Street Journal

“Vigil is a great, snappy introduction to how Hong Kong got where it is today. Whereas many Sinologists focus on the exceptional qualities of Xi Jinping’s China, Wassserstrom, a historian, looks at Hong Kong’s troubles through a comparative lens. He reaches back into China’s past, as well as looking around the world, to help the reader make sense of events in Hong Kong....a useful guide to the broader forces pulling Hong Kong apart.” —Ben Bland, author of Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China's Shadow

“In this slim volume, rich in the sort of anecdotes and personal observations that lend it the feel of a report from the ground, Wasserstrom brings us into the world of Hong Kong’s activists while explaining the current and historical context underlying their cause. It is no easy feat to convey a sense for the diffuse nature of the movement, but he succeeds. And he describes the ways that distinctions are increasingly blurring between the territory and the mainland, a blurring he sees increasing on every trip he makes back to the territory.” —Christine Gross-Loh, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Many scholars shy away from writing about the movements in Hong Kong, as their careers depend on access to mainland China, whose government opposes the protests. Wasserstrom bravely but respectfully enters the fray, illuminating the human dimension of an evolving East-West drama in clear, direct, accessible prose.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“A passionate, important study of the current affairs of a volatile region.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“What Wasserstrom and good rapid-response books provide is context: what led to this? How did we get here? And, for the percipient commentator, what happens next?... Whatever happens next, Vigil will stand as a key explanatory text.” —Paul French, Mekong Review

“Jeff Wasserstrom’s Vigil takes the reader off the streets of the ‘city of protest,’ Hong Kong, and puts the former colony’s upheavals into the broad sweep of modern Chinese history. His short book acts as a subtle, creative and beguiling companion to the day-to-day reporting of the harsh street battles protesting Beijing’s suffocation of the city’s freedoms.” —Richard McGregor, author of The Party and Xi Jinping: The Backlash

“A remarkable, and remarkably succinct, analysis of the ongoing crisis in Hong Kong. This is essential reading for understanding China’s foreign policy, the legacies of empire and above all the extraordinary politics, society and culture of contemporary Hong Kong.” —Julia Lovell, Professor of modern China at Birkbeck, University of London and author of Maoism: A Global History

“Jeffrey Wasserstrom has long been a master of unearthing shared resonances in the human experience across ages and in different societies. With Vigil, he has not only produced a surefooted guide to the turmoil shaking Hong Kong, but a richly insightful look at how recent events there fit into the broader sweep of history.” —Howard W. French, author of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power

“This is an essential primer to understand the factors driving the most serious challenge to Beijing since the 1989 protest movement. Written clearly and concisely, it offers a handy background briefing to Hong Kong’s political crisis.” —Louisa Lim, author of The People's Republic of Amnesia and Tiananmen Revisited

“A concise yet pertinent analysis of why and how Hong Kong exploded into months of escalating protests in 2019. Wasserstrom combines the deep knowledge of a historian and the captivating voice of literary writing. The result is an account that weaves together objective historical parallels and subjective sentiments that have driven Hong Kong’s various waves of protest.” —Victoria Tin-bor Hui, University of Notre Dame

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172427701
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Series:	Columbia Global Reports
Edition description:	Unabridged

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