For someone who isn’t even considered a legal adult yet, Joshua Wong is already taking on the government with his tens of thousands of protesters in the streets of Hong Kong. He may not be old enough to vote in China, but he has emerged as the biggest face of the pro-democracy protests that have been occurring since mid-September.
Over the last two years, Wong has developed a pro-democracy youth movement in Hong Kong, according to CNN News. His goal is to pressure China into “giving Hong Kong full universal suffrage.”
He is impatient to win, as he told CNN, “I don’t think our battle is going to be very long. If you have the mentality that striving for democracy is a long, drawn-out war and you take it slowly, you will never achieve it.”
It’s hard to doubt him and his movement since he already has such a successful track record for himself. When he was just 15 years old, he was disgusted with the pro-communist “National and Moral Education” into the public schools, according to BBC News.
Within weeks and help from a few of his friends, he organized a student protest group called “Scholarism.” In September 2012, Scholarism had 120,000 protesters rallied up, which also included 13 hunger strikers, all of them occupying the government headquarters, according to BBC News.
At that moment, Wong realized that Hong Kong’s youth had power in politics. According to CNN, he said, “Five years ago, it was inconceivable that Hong Kong students would care about politics at all. But there was an awakening when the national education issue happened. We all started to care about politics.”
He was asked by BBC News what the biggest threats to the city and country where he stated the declining freedom of the press. News outlets reporting in Hong Kong are starting to become like “every other city under Chinese central administration,” with a forced bias. Wong began to set his sights on universal suffrage and since then, the group has become the most vocal group in the city.
In June, Scholarism drafted a plan to reform the election system of Hong Kong, which one one-third of the votes of the unofficial city-wide referendum. In July, the group held a mass sit-in, where the vice president warned them to not disturb the “stability” of the city. At the end of the night, 511 people were arrested, according to BBC News.
This week, students will be walking out of the school in the middle of their classes to send a message to Beijing for pro-democracy.
“The student strike has received widespread support. College administrators and faculty have pledged leniency on students who skip classes,” an anonymous teacher from one of the teacher’s unions said to CNN. According to reports, the union has declared support for Wong and his movement, starting a campaign that says, “Don’t let striking students stand alone,” in their petition.
