Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella Movement

Abstract

On September 28, 2014, protesters in Hong Kong launched the largest protest in the city’s history – later named the Umbrella Movement or Umbrella Revolution. The protests and occupation of streets and public space took place in multiple locations throughout the city, drawing more than 100,000 demonstrators at any one time. The longest occupation in Causeway Bay lasted for 79 days. While the movement was unprecedented in its scale in Hong Kong, using direct action to reclaim public space is not new to the city. Precedents date back to the 97-day occupation of Queen’s Pier in 2007, which led to other Reclaim the Public Space movements in the city. This chapter explains the transformation of movement implications, scale, and form by drawing on our viewpoint as activists who have participated in both movements.1 Occupy Queen's Pier emerged as a movement in 2007 to preserve the historical Queen’s Pier from demolition. Young activists challenged the colonial port city imagination of Hong Kong as “borrowed place, borrowed time” (Hughes 1976), a transient space of capital and opportunism. More than just protecting the historic site, the movement strived to gain agency in the development and planning of the city that has long been denied to the locals. The movement was especially meaningful for those who chose to stay in Hong Kong despite the handover to China in 1997, particularly working-class residents incapable or unwilling of emigrating. For them, the Queen’s Pier was the only remaining accessible harbor-front public space in the central business district. Occupy Queen's Pier was therefore a movement to “reclaim our city” against bulldozer style neoliberal development.