For months, protesters, tear gas and riot police have been a regular sight on the streets of Hong Kong. Demonstrations have, at times, numbered over a million. Now, with government officials considering imposing stricter lockdown measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak, Hong Kong’s protest movement faces a new challenge.

It has almost been over a year ago since the protests began, initially in opposition to a law that would have allowed extradition to China. Since then, protesters have widened their demands to include universal suffrage, self-determination and an end to police violence. The pandemic, which reached the city in January, has forced the movement to rethink not only its tactics – which have involved vast public gatherings – but also its priorities.

Hongkongers are better prepared than most for COVID-19. In 2003, the city was a hotspot for a related strain of coronavirus – SARS-CoV. There were over 5,000 cases and 336 deaths from the disease alone in Hong Kong – only China, where the virus originated, suffered worse.

This time, however, Hong Kong’s infection rate has remained among the lowest globally – although fears remain that the outbreak could worsen. While past experience in dealing with an epidemic has played a role, months of community organising could also explain Hongkongers’s readiness in the face of the crisis. With citizens across the world now turning to mutual aid as a way of helping one another during the pandemic, could Hong Kong be a model to emulate?

Medics on strike

The outbreak comes at a time when Hongkongers’ faith in the political system is at rock bottom. The curtailment of civil liberties and police violence against protesters has led many to completely lose trust in the government. The state’s response to the pandemic has done little to help restore it. After the Carrie Lam administration announced an emergency subsidy for the construction sector, thousands of workers in the industry soon discovered that they are ineligible simply for failing to clock in for work properly in the past.

Disillusioned with their politicians, Hongkongers have come to rely on each other. Late last year, the protest movement encouraged workers to form unions in dozens of sectors. Amid the pandemic, the unions have repurposed themselves to pressure the government. When the first death due to COVID-19 was reported in February, medical workers went on strike for the first time in the city’s history to demand better protective equipment and a closure of Hong Kong’s borders to stop the spread of infection.

After supplies of face masks in Hong Kong became scarce, the movement’s diaspora networks helped to arrange supplies from overseas. Activists also set up shop in the working-class districts of Tuen Mun and Tai Kok Tsui to provide face masks and sanitisers for cleaning workers, whose lack of protective supplies have left them at high risk for tear gas and now also COVID-19 exposure.

In more recent months, as conditions worsen in the US, Hong Kongers and Chinese at home and in the diaspora have also worked with activists abroad to provide masks and other resources for medical workers and other at-risk communities from Seattle to New York.

Altruism and opportunism

Hong Kong also teaches us that, especially for communities in need, the instinctual desire for self-sufficiency in the face of government failure can also make people turn inward. Last month, knife-wielding robbers attempted to steal hundreds of toilet paper rolls from a delivery man outside a supermarket in Mong Kok. Some Hong Kong restaurants have also sparked controversy for refusing to serve Mandarin-speaking customers. Both pro-establishment and even some pro-democracy figures have denounced this discriminatory and exclusionary practice.

While activists should be embedded in this profusion of mutual aid initiatives, we must also not adopt depoliticised models that distract from making mass demands on the state, and even reinforce dependence on private-sector charity.