Reclaiming public space movement in Hong Kong : from Occupy Queen's Pier to the Umbrella Movement

This chapter explains the transformation of movement implications, scale, and form by drawing on the viewpoint as activists who have participated in both movements. Occupy Queen's Pier emerged as a movement in 2007 to preserve the historical Queen's Pier from demolition. Young activists challenged the colonial port city imagination of Hong Kong as "borrowed place, borrowed time", a transient space of capital and opportunism. The scale and scope of Reclaim the Public Space movement exploded exponentially in the Umbrella Movement of 2014. A survey of Umbrella Movement occupiers shows that besides true universal suffrage, their second most important concern is Hong Kong–China relations. Mainlandization is obvious also in the government's failed attempt to implement the National Education Guide. Reclaiming public space is thus critical to protecting the space for continuous struggle against the neoliberal and authoritarian regime.