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people holding yellow umbrellas on  Tsim Sha Tsui Pier  in  Hong Kong
Protesters near the Tsim Sha Tsui pier on Sunday remember, celebrate and in many cases mourn the movement that shook Hong Kong. Photograph: Lam Yik Fei/Getty
Protesters near the Tsim Sha Tsui pier on Sunday remember, celebrate and in many cases mourn the movement that shook Hong Kong. Photograph: Lam Yik Fei/Getty

One year on, Hong Kong democracy activists ask what protest achieved

This article is more than 8 years old

Debate is raging about impact of umbrella movement as protesters return to streets on anniversary of occupation of financial district

Howard Kong’s drone swept into the darkness over Hong Kong, the images on his monitor revealing a vision from Beijing’s nightmares.

Below, thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators swarmed on to the streets, clutching banners, blocking traffic and facing off with police.

It was the night of 28 September 2014 and the umbrella movement protests – an occupation of Hong Kong’s financial centre that would last 79 days and draw more than 100,000 people on to the streets – had begun.

“It was so impressive. There were people everywhere,” recalled Kong, a 29-year-old photographer from the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily who used his £700 aerial drone to capture some of the most spectacular pictures of the protests. “My first thought was: the people of Hong Kong have united. My second was: the government is screwed.”

Fast forward one year and the crowds and the Glastonbury-esque tent city they built have gone, evicted last December during a police operation involving hundreds of officers.

At 5.58pm on Monday – the exact time that a volley of police tear gas is credited with kicking off the occupation – activists will return to the site of the main protest camp in Admiralty to remember, to celebrate and in many cases to mourn a movement that shook Hong Kong.

Protesters at Admiralty district in Hong Kong on Sunday. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty

“It was a miraculous place,” said Alex Chow, one of the movement’s key leaders, who lived at the Harcourt Road camp for more than two months. “Through their imaginations Hong Kong people turned it into a utopian community. I definitely miss it.”

As Hong Kong marks the first anniversary of the umbrella movement – so called because of the objects protesters used to fend off police tear gas and pepper spray – debate is raging about its impact. Can the protests, which tried, ultimately without success, to wrestle genuine universal suffrage from Beijing, be called a failure? Where does Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement go now? And could such protests happen again?

Suzanne Pepper, a Hong Kong-based writer whose blog chronicles politics in the former British colony, said it was too early to judge the movement’s long-term political impact.

That would only start to become clear after next year’s legislative council election, where pro-Beijing candidates are hoping to win the four extra seats that would allow Beijing to revive the controversial political reform package that sparked last year’s protests and was rejected by pro-democracy lawmakers in June.

But by focusing protesters’ attention on 2047 – the year the “one country, two systems” model introduced following Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997 ends – the protests had already achieved one major victory, Pepper added.

Many young people now understood that Beijing was “trying to ease Hong Kong into a one country, one system format” under which the former colony’s much cherished freedoms would be lost, Pepper argued.

“[Before] people were just arguing about political reform from once cycle to the next and they weren’t asking: ‘Where is this taking us?’ Now, increasingly … they are saying: ‘Wait a minute. 2047 is not that far away. We have got to begin planning what we are going to do.’”

Chow, the head of the Hong Kong Federation of Students until April, admitted acrimonious divisions had opened up between groups with different views on how last year’s protests should have been conducted. “People do feel frustrated and anxious,” he said, adding that society was not emotionally prepared for another “large scale action”.

An editorial in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Saturday claimed the city had yet to move out of the movement’s “shadow”.

“The Occupy protests did not achieve their aim – our society has become more polarised and our relations with Beijing are just as strained, if not more [than before],” it said.

Still, over a late-night hot chocolate on his university campus, Chow, a 25-year-old comparative literature student who hopes to study in the UK after graduation, claimed that the demonstrations had forever changed his hometown. “Before the umbrella movement, Hong Kong was a dead city effectively … but after they threw the tear gas you could see the atmosphere changed,” he said. “People became highly motivated.

“This kind of spirit is very precious and it is something that we have to cherish and to sustain.”

That view is widespread among those who were on the frontlines of the umbrella protests. “It wasn’t a waste of time,” said Kong, the Apple Daily drone photographer. “Each year on 1 July we have a big [pro-democracy] demonstration but after the rally people go home. This time the people confronted the government – it was an historic moment.”

Sampson Wong, a 30-year-old liberal arts lecturer who also took part in the movement, urged Hong Kong not to forget what he sees as a turning point in its history. On Saturday, he opened two small art exhibitions which use objects rescued from the protest camps to celebrate the umbrella movement and reignite debate over Hong Kong’s fight for democracy.

“Lots of people say it was a complete failure. We are trying to suggest otherwise,” said Wong, during a tour of the “umbrella archive” where items on display include construction helmets worn by demonstrators and a portrait of a protester wearing protective goggles that bears the phrase: “Fight until the very end!”

Wong admitted that the demonstrations – which had demanded the removal of Hong Kong’s unpopular leader CY Leung and the introduction of truly democratic elections for his successor – had failed to achieve their two main objectives. “[But] you cannot judge a social movement from its apparent goals,” he added. “We see it as a process of empowerment. In those terms it was a total success.”

Orville Schell, a China expert from the Asia Society in New York, said Beijing’s refusal to budge in the face of last year’s massive mobilisation was “a perfect expression” of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s authoritarian style of governance.

“You don’t yield. You don’t seek common ground. You don’t give concessions to calm things down. You just remain forceful and unyielding,” Schell said. “And in a certain sense he did succeed.”

But by being so uncompromising some believe Beijing only inflamed the protests, spawning even greater opposition to its rule.

“You have to give Beijing credit for this awakening,” said Pepper. “Beijing – by being so strict – [helped] people finally understand that this is never going to be universal suffrage the way we wanted it.”

Martin Lee, one of the founders of Hong Kong’s Democratic party, said: “Some of the student leaders were very disappointed that they achieved nothing – I think differently.”

“I’m confident that democracy will come to Hong Kong not too far away and when that comes about and people look back I’m sure this umbrella movement will be considered to be the most important milestone in our getting democracy. There is no doubt about it in my mind.”

Schell said that for China’s Communist party rulers Hong Kong was “a bit like having a spastic arm”. “They just can’t control it. At a nice polite party it just suddenly goes up and knocks the drink tray over.”

He added: “We don’t know what the future will holdBut history does pronounce rather loudly and clearly that issues that aren’t resolved tend to incubate and recur.”

On the eve of the umbrella movement’s one-year anniversary virtually all trace of the giant Admiralty camp has been removed.

Lennon Wall, a garish collage of Post-it notes on a staircase beside Admiralty’s tent city, has been stripped bare, its multi-coloured pro-democracy messages replaced with signs that read: “Post no bill” and “No graffiti”.

Christian group meeting at ‘Lennon Wall’ in September 2015, cleared of its thousands of pro-democracy message posted by protesters. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

A cardboard cutout of Xi Jinping wearing a clown’s wig and holding a yellow umbrella – once a place of pilgrimage for selfie-taking protesters – has vanished.

Over the road, outside government headquarters, a green and orange tent now stands as a lonely reminder of the momentous occupation. Beside it, on the pavement, the owner has used yellow masking tape and tiny rubber ducks to spell out a message to Beijing. “Be back soon,” it says.

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