Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 12 May
6:15 PM - 6:55 PM
Location
wheelercentre.com
Joshua Wong was still a teenager when he rose to international prominence as a leader in Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, protesting increased Chinese Communist Party intervention in the city’s electoral system.
A lot has happened since. Wong has served two prison terms and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He's co-founded a new political party, Demosistō, and written a book, Unfree Speech. All the while, the protest movement in Hong Kong has simmered on, boiling over last year into extraordinary mass protests and brutal police confrontations.
With Sally Warhaft, Wong will discuss the evolution of Hong Kong’s democracy movement and the impact of COVID-19. Assembly restrictions enforced due to the pandemic have hampered demonstrations and possibly cleared the path for more authoritarian rule in the city. In mid-April, more than a dozen high-profile pro-democracy activists were arrested.
How does Wong expect these arrests to impact Hong Kong's legislative elections in September? What effect might a weakened United States and an emboldened China have on the One Country, Two Systems principle that grants Hong Kong special autonomy?
Wong will reflect on these questions and more on Tuesday 12 May.
Watch the stream below.
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Featuring
Joshua Wong
Joshua Wong is a Hong Kong student activist and politician born in 1996. He serves as secretary-general of pro-democracy party Demosisto, which promotes democracy and progressive values through street activism and international advocacy. He has been named by TIME, Fortune, Prospect and Forbes as one of the world’s most influential leaders. In 2018 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the Umbrella Movement.
Joshua came onto the political scene in 2011 aged 14, when he founded Scholarism and successfully protested against the enforcement of brainwashing patriotic education. He has been arrested by the Chinese state numerous times for his protesting and activism and has served over 100 days in jail. He has been the subject of the Netflix original documentary Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower and his first book Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now was released in 2019 and has been published in multiple languages.
Sally Warhaft
Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne broadcaster, anthropologist and writer. She is the host of The Fifth Estate, the Wheeler Centre’s live series focusing on journalism, politics, media, and international relations, and The Leap Year ...