I was on Worldview on WBEZ 91.5 FM in Chicago yet again for an interview about the ongoing Hong Kong protests, after the Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s announcement that she is planning to withdraw the controversial extradition bill. This is my second recent interview this month with them; I was on last week as well to speak about the mass arrests of leaders in a ‘leaderless protest.’
I was pleased with how this interview went, though the truth of the matter is that Mondays are my most serious workday, and my greatest hope when I arrived to speak with Jerome McDonnell was that I would at least be coherent. The questions were, as usual, very good, covering a range of topics from the appeals to the American government for support, Joshua Wong’s visit to Germany, the drama around the announcement about the bill’s imminent withdrawal in Legislative Council, and the possible futures of the protests. Jerome’s questions even got me to pull back deep into the heart of the research that consumed me from my undergraduate days and has percolated into the graduate work that fuels my career: the identity politics of the ‘Hong Kong person’ from the 1970s to the present. We also got to speak about protest music; my only regret is that I did not mention the new song being sung as an anthem titled ‘Glory to Hong Kong.’
I see these interviews as the community engagement portion of my scholarly work. As I told Jerome, the task of scholarship is to describe, not prescribe, so all that I am doing here is to see, to sort, and to say what I see and am sorting. It is an offering, then, for ongoing conversation on these momentous events in Hong Kong. I am thankful to Jerome and the team at Worldview, especially the producer Julian Hayda, for bringing me in yet again, and I hope that I was coherent enough in my description of the problems and prospects at hand to encourage further discussion among the publics who listened and will listen to this segment.
Justin K.H. Tse 