Inside the Hong Kong protesters’ anarchic campaign against China

The 25-year-old activist has been a constant presence at the often violent protests that have rocked Hong Kong this summer, rallying comrades, building barricades and rushing from district to district in a frantic game of cat-and-mouse with police.

Ah Lung, who would only identify himself by his nickname, which means "dragon" in Cantonese, is representative of a growing number of discontented young Hongkongers who are fueling a protest movement that, unlike its predecessors, is taking aim directly at Beijing.

It is a movement without clearly discernible leaders or structure, making it difficult for the authorities to effectively target — and increasingly hard for the protesters themselves to manage.

While it has the support of established pro-democracy groups, the amorphous movement is fueled by activists like Ah Lung – young Hongkongers who operate independently or in small groups and adapt their tactics on the run.

"We're not so organized," Ah Lung said. "Every day changes, and we see what the police and the government do, then we take action."

"My dream is to revive Hong Kong, to bring a revolution in our time," Ah Lung said. "This is the meaning of my life now."

Through interviews with dozens of protesters like Ah Lung and reporting from dozens of protests, Reuters has pieced together a picture of how this movement functions and the mindset driving it.

'Free Hong Kong'

The protests, which started as a peaceful rebuke of the Hong Kong government back in April, have evolved into a direct challenge to Communist Party rule over this former British colony.

With slogans such as "Free Hong Kong" and "Hong Kong is not China," Ah Lung and his fellow protesters have made clear they reject a future in which Hong Kong is inexorably absorbed into the mainland giant, eventually becoming just another Chinese city.

Protesters are provocatively calling the demonstrations an "era of revolution," a formulation that has infuriated a ruling Chinese Communist Party determined to crush any challenge to its monopoly on power.

Scenes once unthinkable in Hong Kong are now commonplace: The city's international airport being shut down this week after a prolonged occupation by protesters; a Chinese official publicly suggesting that aspects of some of the protests were terrorism; the legislature stormed and ransacked by protesters; police officers repeatedly baton-charging crowds of protesters and unleashing torrents of tear gas in famed shopping districts.

Also read: As Hong Kong braces for protests, Chinese paramilitary holds drills across border

On Tuesday, protesters who managed to shut down the airport also attacked a Chinese man for being a suspected undercover agent. He was identified as a reporter for the Global Times, a tabloid controlled by Beijing, highlighting how activists are making the Chinese government the target of their protests.

It also brought another issue into focus: the risks of waging a leaderless rebellion. Demonstrators later apologized for the disruptions at the airport, apparently concerned that their chaotic protests might alienate broader sections of the Hong Kong public who had been supporting them.

"The movement has a large degree of self-restraint and solidarity, but of course that's very conditional," said Samson Yuen, a political scientist at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who has conducted surveys of protesters to understand their motives and support base.

"If certain actions spin out of control, if say someone dies from it, then that might be a game-changer."

One-Country, Two Systems

Under the "one-country, two-systems" formula, China promised Hong Kong it would enjoy autonomy for 50 years after its handover from Britain in 1997.

"In 2047, if it returns to China, real Hong Kongers will leave and emigrate from Hong Kong," said Ah Lung, speaking in a small apartment in the Sham Shui Po neighborhood as he prepared for a night of protests that quickly descended into violence.

"By then, it won't be Hong Kong anymore, but Xiang Gang," he said, referring to the name commonly used on the mainland for Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has said that protesters' calls for a revolution to "liberate" Hong Kong are illegal acts that challenge the authority of the central government in Beijing.

In response to questions from Reuters about the protests, a spokesman for Lam referred to her promise to address income disparities in the city once the violence subsides.

Also read: Hong Kong protesters offer apologies, China doubles down after airport clash 

Leaderless Movement

The protesters' mantra – "Be water!" – epitomizes the movement's tactics. A phrase borrowed from the Hong Kong movie star Bruce Lee, who used it to describe his kung fu philosophy, it is a call for flexibility and creativity, moving forward to press an advantage and pulling back when a strategic retreat is needed.

Its latest manifestation is the series of wildcat protests that have spread across the city in recent weeks. When the police turn up in numbers at one protest, the activists often engage them, tying down officers before melting away and reappearing to stage a fresh protest in another area.

Pro-democracy protests that paralyzed much of downtown Hong Kong in 2014 involved blocking several key roads for more than two months. The more fluid tactics now being deployed by protesters often masked to avoid surveillance and dressed in black, present a greater challenge for the police. Frontline officers speak of exhaustion, saying they never know where the activists will strike next.

Protesters say their movement is leaderless. In some ways, that's a reaction to the 2014 demonstrations in which many of the leaders were arrested and given prison terms.

Unlike those protests, when leaders like Joshua Wong became globally recognized names, frontline activists like Ah Lung are deliberately staying under the radar, using pseudonyms and appearing at protests with their faces obscured by masks and sunglasses.

The leaderless nature of the protest movement is made possible, to a large extent, by social media.

Protesters take their cues from more than 100 groups on the instant messaging app Telegram, dozens of Instagram sites and online forums like LIHKG. The groups are used to post everything from news on upcoming protests to tips on dousing tear gas canisters fired by the police to the identities of suspected undercover police and the access codes to buildings in Hong Kong where protesters can hide.

The front lines

A feature of the protests in recent weeks has been the sight of ordinary activists like Ah Lung, the shipping clerk, rallying other protesters.

In Sham Shui Po on Sunday, Ah Lung joined other masked "frontliners" as the protest began. Some used wrenches to loosen bolts on roadside fences, which were then shaken loose, bound with nylon ties, and formed into makeshift barricades against the police.

Ah Lung, brandishing a Star Wars lightsaber he had bought at a toy shop, called out instructions on where to position the barricades. As they worked, other masked protesters used hand-held telescopes to track police movements.

The improvised, bottom-up nature of the protest movement is further evident in the scores of medics, some of the medical staff from local hospitals, who say they have turned up unprompted at protest sites to treat the wounded and administer saline solution to tear gas victims.

While the protest movement may not have clearly identifiable leaders, it does have the backing of prominent pro-democracy activists and groups who have organized some of the demonstrations. In the past, they have led smaller, more orderly demonstrations that were not aimed so pointedly at the leadership in Beijing.

Reuters reporting shows there is a high degree of coordination among a small circle of these activists, many of whom participated in the 2014 protests that were sparked by Beijing's refusal to grant Hong Kong universal suffrage.

Frustrations boil over 

The protests erupted in late April over a bill proposed by Lam that would have allowed the extradition of defendants from Hong Kong to mainland China. Unlike the demand for universal suffrage, which fueled the 2014 protests, the extradition bill was seen as a specific, tangible threat by many Hong Kongers, galvanizing hundreds of thousands of people.

Facing huge protests, Lam announced on June 15 that she was freezing the bill.

That wasn't enough for many Hong Kong residents, many of whom flooded onto the streets in one of the largest protest marches ever seen in the city, largely organized by a coalition of civil society groups. The march brought together a diverse cross-section of Hong Kong society, including members of the city's politically conservative middle class.

A major turning point in the protests was an assault on July 21 on Beijing's Central Government Liaison Office – the most prominent symbol of China's authority in Hong Kong.

Black-clad activists arrived at dusk at the glass-steel skyscraper that bears the red state seal of China above its entrance. As the crowd quickly swelled to thousands, some protesters hurled eggs at the building. Others used spray paint to scrawl the words "Revolution of Our Time" on the walls.

Some tried to neutralize surveillance cameras by targeting them with laser pointers. To roars of approval, protesters then lobbed black paint at the state seal of China.

Nick Tsang, a protester clad in a black balaclava and black clothes, was in a crowd that began congregating in a Hong Kong park on the afternoon of July 28.

Tsang checked out a Telegram group to see where other protesters were going. One group of protesters splintered off and headed to the city's police headquarters, while another group branched out in the direction of the Causeway Bay shopping district. Later on, some backtracked towards the Liaison Office. Tsang followed them.

Following several hours of heated clashes in the streets around the Liaison Office, a rearguard of protesters, including Tsang, found themselves surrounded by police. With tear gas swirling, they made a run for the Hong Kong subway system and escaped onto a train.

"We can't retreat or the authoritarianism will worsen," said Tsang, referring to the Chinese government.

"This is not about me. This is for Hong Kong, my home city."