By Emily Lau



Note: An outspoken and popular politician, the writer represents Hong Kong's Democratic Party.

HONG KONG – The turbulent political and economic environment worldwide is bound to create huge challenges. We must prepare for a most eventful year.

In late 2011, TIME magazine chose “the Protester” as its person of the year. I think it's a brilliant choice. Given the tumultuous developments in much of the world, protesters will continue to dominate international news and make history.

As TIME says, no one could have known that when a fruit-seller set himself on fire in a small town in Tunisia on December 17, 2010, he would spark protests that would topple dictators in his own country, Egypt and Libya while rattling regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Few people would have forecast that a spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest against income inequality and Russians to confront a corrupt autocracy.

Nearer home, angry demonstrators in two villages in neighboring Guangdong Province also captured world headlines. Wukan is a tiny place that has reinvented itself as an autonomous zone after fury erupted over illegal land sales by village officials and the death of a village advocate in police custody. The villagers chased out Communist Party officials, repelled a riot-police assault and barricaded roads. Local police stations stood empty, as did the Communist Party committee headquarters. The protest lasted several months, sustained by the villagers' exceptional unity and their interactions with journalists from foreign and Hong Kong news organizations.

The presence of foreign journalists in Wukan and other protest hot-spots helps to restrain the authorities from sending in security forces to crack down. A city party official said that if foreign journalists can be trusted, then pigs could climb trees. Such a stupid remark shocked the nation and was considered a big loss-of-face for the party.

Pressure of news reports from Wukan helped to spur provincial party secretary Wang Yang to send senior officials to negotiate. It remains to be seen if the protesters' demands will be met, but definitely they scored a handsome victory.

At an internal meeting, deputy provincial party secretary Zhu Mingguo told officials that the problems of ordinary people aren't trivial and that many mass incidents arise from simple reasons. While saying that public awareness of democracy, equality and rights constantly strengthens, he also blamed officials for selling two-thirds of the land in Wukan without adequate compensation to the villagers.

Just 145 kilometres away, tension also escalated in Haimen, where people expressed concerns about pollution from a planned coal-fired power plant. Demonstrations began in December when thousands tried to block the Shenzhen-Shantou highway to demand the project be scrapped. Police fired tear gas. Some protesters were arrested and detained. Elderly villagers knelt with burning joss sticks at a police barricade to plead for their relatives' release.

The protesters opposed building a second power plant because an existing one secretly has emitted poisonous gas at night, and the villagers could smell it even after tightly closing their windows. They denied being rioters, saying they had no choice but to fight for their right to breathe.

As in Wukan, the authorities had to send officials to negotiate. The blocked highway reopened, and the authorities promised that the power plant would be built only if it wins public support.

In many places worldwide, people said they'd had enough. So they dissented, demanded and didn't despair, even when the answers came in clouds of tear gas or hails of bullets.

Protesters embody the idea that individual actions can bring collective and colossal change. Although understood differently in different places, the notion of democracy forms part of many protests. It means that the people rule – if not by ballot boxes, they'll rule in the streets.

After Hong Kong's change of sovereignty in 1997, then-chief executive C.H. Tung called Hong Kong a city of protests since so many demonstrations happened every day. He should have asked himself why. Demonstrations continue to multiply. At last count, there are about 20 protests per day.

Popular travel guide Lonely Planet has ranked Hong Kong eighth among the top cities to visit in 2012, saying that apart from exotic attractions like the Star Ferry, Chinese fortune telling and walled villages, the protests form a spectacle. It refers to Hong Kong as China's “most liberated city” and predicts an exciting year with a push for more democracy.

Such a forecast is true. Exciting and vibrant Hong Kong has people who cherish freedoms and respect the rule of law. As we struggle for democracy and human rights, the streets will fill with protesters from all walks of life and many countries.

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