From the 1967 Riots to the YEC in Hong Kong

This research is retrospective and speculative; it is interested in how informal economies of political movements engage with the public realm and shape cities.  When the Yellow Economic Circle (YEC), an informal economy that comprised of pro-democratic enterprises, was being developed as continuation of the networked 2019 anti-ELAB protests in Hong Kong, columnist Chip Tsao argued that political consumption within an economic infrastructure is not new to the City.  He further iterated that the “red pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) economic circle”, mobilised in the 1967 Leftist riots to oppose the British colonial government, is the perfect example to prove the YEC’s potential.

Considering the 1967 riots and YEC as critical junctures in Hong Kong’s urban history and possible futures, this research consists of two parts – the study of (1) North Point, one of the former 1967 riots strongholds and highly-charged protest grounds in 2019 where pro-establishment residents often clashed with the pro-democratic protesters; and (2) the YEC network.  The first part predominantly scrutinises the pro-CCP infrastructure in North Point – its relationship with migrant history and integration into education, housing, commerce, and industries in the neighbourhood – to examine the influences of the 1967 riots on the contemporary.  Similarly as a resistive force, the second part of the paper reconstructs the story of the YEC network, illustrating how the pro-democratic businesses associated with the network infiltrate the spaces within the city. Built upon the innovative mobilisation tactics used to organise the crowd in the 2019 protests, the YEC offers insight into how digital platforms affect our ways of partaking in the physical infrastructure of political activism.

Street occupation has never been the only form of protesting.  This research sheds light on how opposition, specifically (informal) economies driven by political activism as products of large-scale protests, conditions a new form of guerrilla urbanism.