OCTOBER 12, 2015 7:01 AM October 12, 2015 7:01 am
Joshua Wong, the student activist who spearheaded pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong last year.Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Joshua Wong was 17 — not even old enough to vote — when he helped set off major sit-in protests in Hong Kong last September calling for a greater public role in the election of the Chinese territory’s leader.
He celebrated his 18th birthday last October in the middle of a tent city that protesters set up outside government headquarters. The first thing he did as a legal adult, he told reporters, was to register as a voter so he could “kick out” legislators he saw as a hindrance to Hong Kong’s democratic future.
A year later, he has decided that being able to vote might not be enough. Mr. Wong, who turns 19 on Tuesday, is seeking to lower the minimum age for candidates to the Legislative Council to 18, from 21. On Monday, he filed an application for a judicial review of Hong Kong’s election laws. If he succeeds, he says he would consider running in the election next year, when he will be 20.
Mr. Wong said the current age requirement “prevents 18- to 20-year-old youths from having equal rights to vote and to be voted for,” arguing that it violates the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s Constitution, which says residents “shall have the right to vote and the right to stand for election in accordance with law.”
Even the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, sets its minimum age requirement for delegates at 18, he told reporters outside Hong Kong’s High Court on Monday afternoon.
In a statement, Mr. Wong said the Legislative Council failed to represent the voices of the young. By opening the door to young people like himself, he said, he hopes to focus discussion on Hong Kong’s future after 2047.
That is when the 50 years of considerable autonomy that Beijing promised the former British colony when it reverted to Chinese rule under the rubric “one country, two systems” is set to expire. Mr. Wong, who will be 50 then, is advocating “self-determination” and a referendum that would allow Hong Kong residents to decide their own fate after 2047. Options such as a continuation of the “one country, two systems” arrangement or outright independence are likely to be opposed by the Chinese government, which sees safeguarding sovereignty as an imperative.
In January, discussions of “self-determination” in university student publications drew warnings from Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying.
Mr. Wong entered politics in 2011, when he was 14, helping found Scholarism, a student activist group, and organizing protests against the Hong Kong government’s plan to mandate “national education” in schools. He criticized the proposed curriculum, which described the Chinese Communist Party as “progressive, selfless and united” and denigrated multiparty politics. “We don’t want the next generation of Hong Kong people to be brainwashed,” Mr. Wong said.
The plan was halted a year later. Scholarism, which recruits high school and university students as members, has since played pivotal roles in the protests.
