Object Analysis - Hongkongers

RHETORCAL CONTEXT

Since the integration of Hong Kong back to Mainland China in 1997, there have been many protests in the form of small, physical demonstrations in public spaces within Hong Kong. These demonstrations can be separated into three main categories: linguistics, resource allocation, and political. Although the motives and themes for these protests differ, they all share similarities outlined by Perry’s theory of protest rhetoric in China. The term “Confucian moralism,” in the context of protest described by Perry, is best illustrated by protestors in China sacrificing “their very lives for their beliefs” (316). Such demonstration was seen in the Tiananmen protests for democracy of 1989 where ‘by fasting, [protestors] hoped to contrast the moral righteousness of their behavior with that of the corrupt and despotic government against which they protested’ (316). It is by this structure, in which workers and students came together that future protests have been modeled after. “In their style of remonstrance (presenting petitions and banners and demanding dialogue with the authorities), their search of political patrons... and above all their stress on moralism... the students evinced a brand of political behavior and belief replete with the stigmata of the imperial past (324). In other words, there could not have been any other way for the rhetoric of this protest to form. It was inevitable due to the historical context and influence that these three objects were necessary to implement their demonstrations. This outlines the future methods of protest demonstrations following the 1989 events. For example, directly after in 1990, protest over direct elections for the presidency of the Republic of China “borrowed directly form the repertoire of the Tiananmen Uprising: students occupied the central political square in Taipei where they undertook a hunger strike, donned headbands…” (324). This was a demonstration that these methods were to mimicked and utilized in demonstrations to come. According to Perry, the modern protest rhetoric of China is characterized by dramatic expression inspired by 40 years of socialism (326). The 1989 demonstration was characterized as “a morality play done in Beijing opera style” per David Strand (317). As such, the nature of protests following this model are spectacular in appearance: physical presence, signs, slogans, and symbols. This is useful in explaining why demonstrations protecting the Cantonese Language in Hong Kong and Guangzhou have mostly been in-person, physical demonstrations with people gathering in the manner of a spectacle to direct a message.

Although the individual themes of the demonstrations vary, they all lead a common mode of rhetoric the use of physical occupations to petition and demonstrate. In his 2000 edition of Polite Politics, Kwok-leung Ho asserts that political participation in the form of protest in Hong Kong have been organized by three major activities: group meetings, mass meetings, and petitions and demonstrations since before the decolonization period. These methods are used most primarily in the following protest examples and will encompass most of the styles of remonstrance in the modern-day defense of the Hongkonger identity.

As tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the Special Administrative Region grew with increased exposure to one another, linguistic tensions and criticisms developed rapidly after the establishment of Mandarin as the primary lingua franca of China. Mainland China, otherwise known as the People’s Republic of China declared Putonghua, the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, the national language. This affected school, media, and government settings to operate under the common language (Gao). The events of the protests on linguistic rights have been demonstrated in various mediums including backlash to a viral video spreading across the internet. The video captured a native Hongkonger in the MTR train car telling the daughter of a Mainland mother not to eat on the train. Eating on the MTR train system is prohibited (“MTR By-Laws”). The language this man used however, was Cantonese. This was the motivation for professor, talk show host, and academic Kong Qingdong to responded to the video on national Chinese television. His response was that when there is a difference in dialect between two people, both should speak Mandarin; those who refuse are bastards (“Mandarin Chinese Called Cantonese Bastards And Dogs”). This was faced with widespread criticism over the internet and was followed by protesters occupying the streets of Hong Kong.

Peking University’s Professor Kong Qingdong’s assault on Hongkongers calling them “bastards and dogs” resulted in his own public ridicule. Protesters occupied the front of China’s Central Government Liaison Office in Hong Kong’s Western district holding signs and posters. One of the first series of images had the face of Professor Qingdong photoshopped onto the body and figure of a bulldog with the word “Bastard” above the lazy-eyes, droopy cheeked face. Directly next to the printed poster, a protester held an iPhone horizontally with a black background and white Chinese text translated to “If Hongkongese are dogs, then respectful Professor Kong should be euthanized!” (Garrett). The image poses two major purposes. The first is to pose a counterattack against the negative comments of the Professor. Despite the demonstrations being peaceful occupations of public spaces, the crude and animalistic portrayal and death wish of the Professor acts as the aggression in this type of protest. The inherent violence of the image is stemmed from the dehumanization of the figure and speaks to the pathos of the protesters. It brings out the anger and rage of Hongkongers who were reached by the comments and exerts that by placing the Professor in their shoes. Other demonstrators did this as well by displaying toy dogs and rolled up banners used to beat this caricature of Professor Qingdong, literally exerting rage on the professor through this indirect representation.

OBJECT ANALYSIS

 Although the image is negative in its aggressive nature, it inconspicuously calls for unity by relating Mandarin-speaking Mainlanders to Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. What the image used by demonstrators does is it confronts Professor Qingdong out on his own hypocrisy. Professor Qingdong instantly separated himself from people of Hong Kong by degrading their status based on their use of Cantonese. He placed Hongkongers as inferior to him and Mandarin speakers creating an uneven plane between the two groups. By portraying Professor Qingdong as a dog and a bastard in the image, it essentially pulls him back to the level of the Hongkongers. As the statements suggests, if Professor Qingdong accuses Hongkongers of being dogs, then he has inadvertently called himself one as well. The image expresses the rage of the Hongkongers as a primary goal, but secondarily and more importantly expresses the underlying message that Mainlanders and Hongkongers are united as one Chinese people. If one group are dogs and bastards, the other is as well.

Earlier in 2016, it had become apparent that in the upcoming release of Pokémon Sun & Moon, Nintendo was dropping the production of the Cantonese versions of the game. In the past, Nintendo had used Cantonese transliterations for the character names, however, with the upcoming release, it was stated that this would not be the case. The game would now be standardized with Mandarin pronunciations which alters names of characters like Pikachu drastically. The former Cantonese style was pronounced Béikāchīu (比卡超) while the Mandarin sounding as Píkǎqiū (皮卡丘), the difference mainly lying in the ending vowel; the Cantonese sounds a “u” sound while the Mandarin sounds a “yo” sound ("List of Chinese Pokémon Names”). Nintendo’s action caused a demonstration of dozens of protesters appearing in front of the Japanese Consulate in Hong Kong presenting 6,000 signatures against the name changing move (Rath).

In the case of the Pokémon demonstrators, the protest acts as an important emphasis that Cantonese is in fact a cultural artifact of Hong Kong. This protest, like the demonstrations against Professor Qingdong, expressed outrage and aggression against cultural threats that put down the use of Cantonese, but none-the-less remained peaceful in its execution. The rhetoric of this protest demonstration was primarily seen in the physical occupation of public space targeting the Japanese Consulate. This immediately visible act shows that there is indeed a cause worth arguing in something so easily overlooked by many people as blatant fanaticism. The delivery of the 6,000 signatures emphasized this and as part of the rhetoric, was used to amplify the discontent that Cantonese Speakers faced when recognizing the lack of cultural sensitivity in Nintendo’s action.

Alongside cultural oppression, Hong Kong had faced a longstanding issue of resource allocation problems since the integration with Mainland China had occurred. Already, Hong Kong is one of the most dense city districts in the world with little land to create new buildings and a large population of over 7 million (Collins). Thus, immigration and large scale tourism have posed issues to allocating resources including food, water, shelter, and most importantly space. Since the beginning of the millennium, tourism in Hong Kong has soared tremendously. In 2011, the number of Chinese tourists “was the equivalent of four times the entire population of Hong Kong” (Garrett). Although this gave stimulation to the tourism industry which includes revenue made from souvenirs, amusement venue ticket sales, and economic flow, this posed other issues which included pushing the limits of Hong Kong’s infrastructural resources. This gave rise to demonstrations against Mainland drivers and Mainland mothers coming to Hong Kong to give birth to gain their future children the right to reside in the Special Administrative Region (Garrett). These protests were quite similar to the protests over linguistic rights including physical presence in public spaces and the utilization of signs and posters to portray the rhetoric. Both demonstrations arose simultaneously as one grouped movement in Victoria Park in February of 2012.

 In the case of the anti-Mainland driver demonstrations, Hongkongers held signs depicting a car with the Chinese flag attached encircled in a crossed prohibited sign seen on most no smoking posters. The text on the sign contained both Chinese and English, the latter written as “Mainland cars coming. Life at risk!” and “Stop cross-border driving into HK” (Garrett). The first statement mentioning life at risk was deliberate based on an event that occurred October 2011 in a Chinese city involving a toddler who was run over by a Chinese driver “who simply paused, and then continued to drive over her a second time before leaving the scene (Garrett). This poster’s most important artifact is the ethos that is speaks to. According to the intent of the message, the posters portray that allowing “Mainland cars” into the SAR would be an irresponsible and an unethical decision as it could potentially bring dangerous and careless drivers. The dangerous attitude towards Mainland drivers is emphasized by the encroaching tone of the phrase “Mainland cars coming.” The phrase evokes panic by mimicking a sense of invasion likely to be used in a setting of war such as “missiles coming” or “soldiers coming.” The evoked emotions are not completely logical since it would be a fallacy in argument to assume that all Mainland drivers are dangerous, however, this phrase is deliberate and it plays on the pathos, especially fear, of citizens concerned over the safety of children and Hongkongers who are passionate against Mainlanders due to rising tensions between the two systems.

The second of the few variations of the anti-Mainland driver posters shows an image of a crowded Hong Kong street with a wide mass of pedestrians encroaching the boarder of the traffic filled road. Above the image, two arrows face each other in opposite directions towards the middle. In between them a stop sign with a car drawn in the middle. On the left side the sign reads “More cars?” the right, “More space?” (both sides in English below the arrow and in Chinese above it) (Garrett). This poster speaks to the limitations of Hong Kong’s resources in space that more cars would mean a greater need for pedestrian space. This is portrayed as an unachievable feat with the display of the image in the center. The street in the photo is so packed that it is seemingly possible for a pedestrian to be hit from a vehicle in the right-most or left-most lane. As such, this particular poster utilizes logos as the primary driver of its message appealing to the idea that it would be illogical to allow more cars into the SAR due to the state of infrastructural restrains in the current time. Doing so would only exacerbate the current infrastructural issues that haven’t yet been solved with the densely populated city.

A third variation of the anti-Mainland car protest acts a bit as an outlier to the rhetoric theory of Perry. A third display featured an object in place of posters. Hongkongers gathered around an effigy of a mainland car, destroying it by kicking and smashing at it until the object was in pieces in the center of the public square outside the Hong Kong SAR Government and Legislative Council Plaza (Garrett). This demonstration again plays on the ethos and pathos of the citizens and not very much on logos. The demonstration is rage driven showing full-fledged physical aggression against a representation of a Mainland driver and ultimate destruction of the object. The ethos lies in the motive for the display which, again, includes notions of unethicality of allowing Mainland cars into the SAR which may potentially bring harmful and careless drivers alongside. The pathos stems in the enormous stream of angry emotions promoted by building such an object as an effigy. Although the consequences of exerting aggregations against an effigy do not carry the same end result if the object were real, the emotional result behind the physical actions are legitimate. This breaks Perry’s theory of how protests following the 1989 democratic protests operated in that this particular display of events did not include an aspect of moralism. The building of an effigy is largely immoral as it fuels anger and tensions and further aggravates the dissidents who place emotion at the very top of the motivational list. This event, however, is effective in that it shows a degree of severity in the issue to the point that people are truly concerned and that the allocation of resources such as pedestrian walk ways and roads is truly under threat with growing integration.

Occurring during the same time as the Anti-Mainland drivers protests, women including mothers and those expecting occupied hospital grounds in protest of the lack of resources for Hongkongers in local hospitals. According to NTDTV, 4 out of 10 births were from Mainland Chinese Mothers around 2011. This led to a decrease in allocation of hospital beds and a decrease in the healthcare quality. A video shows protesters holding signs in the area, gathered with children and family members. The video also included interviews from mothers who stated that they experienced birth without the aid of medical professionals due to a lack of resources (NTDTV). The rhetoric of this protest is strong in all three: pathos, logos, and ethos. Protestors asserted the logic that Hong Kong is becoming limited in its recourses to provide for native Hongkongers with such a great influx of foreign mothers giving birth in local hospitals. The dense nature of the SAR and lack of new space for new infrastructure places limits on the access to healthcare simply by physical space. In addition to that, the large number of tourists and visitors birthing for the motive of gaining special privileges in the SAR is unethical and immoral. The appearance of pregnant women at the demonstration emphasized the unethicality of this uneven resource issue. Women brought their children to the protest in order to emphasize the pathos aspect of the message that this issue not only effects the women, but the children and consequently the entire family. As moralistic culture holders, Hongkongers hold family values high and the appearance of families in the demonstrations shows that the rhetoric truly appeals to the pathos of the communities of Hong Kong. 

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