Audrey Jiajia Li

Opinion | Hong Kong’s hatred of mainlanders feeds the xenophobic undercurrents of its protests

Resentment of Beijing has spilled over towards mainlanders, Mandarin speakers and mainland-linked businesses. Shops are trashed, people are attacked and xenophobic slurs are becoming common. Hong Kong is succumbing to a wave of hate crime

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Audrey Jiajia Li

Published: 9:00am, 11 Oct 2019Updated: 5:12am, 12 Oct 2019

Late last month, Jiayang Fan, a Chinese-American journalist, was harassed and interrogated by some demonstrators after she spoke Mandarin while covering the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. Derogatory insults and accusations like “yellow thug” and “commie agent” were thrown at her. “My Chinese face is a liability,” she tweeted, “just got asked if I’m from the US and am a reporter why I have Chinese face”.

On September 18, the 88th anniversary of the Japanese invasion of northeastern China, a poster celebrating the event, presumably posted by some protesters, was seen on the “democracy wall” at the University of Hong Kong. “This is the first time I see people fighting for democracy by glorifying second world war axis powers,” a fellow journalist commented on Twitter.

Recently, a mainlander JPMorgan banker was surrounded, told to “go back to the mainland” and punched in the face, his glasses knocked off, all for responding “we are all Chinese” in Mandarin. Also, in mid-August, when protesters occupied the Hong Kong airport, two mainlanders suspected of being undercover agents were infamously humiliated and assaulted.

Incidents such as these shed light on a more complicated, less-covered side of the months-long protests: the deep distrust and even hatred towards mainland Chinese as a whole, while the movement has largely been viewed by the world as just a fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

As Beijing has become increasingly authoritarian, people in Hong Kong sense the threat to their freedoms. Unfortunately, resentment of the government has unjustifiably spilled over to ordinary mainland people, even to individuals for merely being Mandarin-speaking, including people from Singapore, Taiwan and North America.