At age 18, Joshua Wong is a remarkable figure in the history of Hong Kong. He is a protest leader with years of experience challenging Chinese government rule. Years of experience? Yes, he got his start as a political activist in middle school.

Wong was arrested last week, then released, for his role as an organizer of Hong Kong’s street protests. The issue is Beijing’s control of local elections. Wong was beaten and groped by police while taken into custody as frustrated authorities cleared crowds from one demonstration site.

Within days, Wong was back on the streets with other student leaders and hundreds of followers, threatening to block Hong Kong government offices from opening. That effort was repulsed.

Wong and two other protesters are days into a hunger strike, but it seems, alas, a desperate move to reignite a movement that stunned China with its ferocity but is losing steam. On Wednesday, three founders of the Occupy Central movement, men long past their student days, quietly surrendered to police and, just as quietly, were released. The authorities weren’t even interested in making arrests.

This kind of conflict doesn’t happen every day in Hong Kong. There is no tradition of democratic activism in the former British colony. China, which has ultimate authority, has little patience for dissent.

By design and necessity, Hong Kong’s focus has always been on business, not the struggle for rights.

Britain introduced local legislative elections in 1985 as it was preparing to cede Hong Kong to China. By the hand-over in 1997, rules were in place to permit, in time, direct election of the chief executive.

The rest of the world was changing, too, with democracy taking hold in places like Indonesia and Taiwan.

China’s not interested, of course. The dispute with the protesters is over an interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law. China will permit direct election of the chief executive in 2017, but candidates have to be vetted by a Beijing-controlled nominating committee. The protesters want Hong Kong voters to freely choose the next leader.

Put this protest movement on the Chinese mainland and it would have been over as soon as it started, but Hong Kong is in a unique situation. It is a global city with limited cultural ties to China and enough political autonomy to give angry citizens a voice. To a point.

When police overreacted to protests in September by using tear gas and pepper spray on students, 100,000 people came out in support of the protests. But by now almost everyone has gone back to work.

And that leaves the students, led by the likes of Joshua Wong.

Wong first came to prominence in 2012 as the skinny, 15-year-old co-founder of a group protesting Beijing’s plan to require the teaching of Chinese patriotism in schools. The curriculum whitewashed history. Wong’s group got 100,000 people into the streets to protest, and, incredibly, won the battle. Now he’s back, again at the front of a group that has brought thousands into the streets.

If this weren’t such serious business, it would be amusing to speculate what China’s leaders think of Wong, who still looks like a middle-schooler and likes to quote Haruki Murakami, the provocative Japanese novelist. Undoubtedly, they are embarrassed and furious. Beijing’s nightmare scenario is that street protests would morph into a broad, populist revolt.

It looks like that won’t happen. Whether it does or not, give a hand to the student leaders who have continued to risk their freedom and safety to defend principles of participatory democracy and free elections.

To quote Murakami on fighting oppression: “If there is a hard, high wall and an egg breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.”

That has taken on dramatic meaning in Hong Kong. An art installation at one protest site depicts a stack of eggs in front of a wall. A Hong Kong pop star released a song this summer called “Egg and Lamb,” which includes the lyric, “never give up/or you’ll bow your head like a white sheep.”

The song was banned in China.

(Editorial, Chicago Tribune)

(Tribune Content Agency)