From June 2019 into 2020, Hong Kong was rocked by prolonged large-scale protests, which frequently descended into violent and chaotic clashes with police. These protests, and the responses to them, have exacerbated polarization and radicalism in Hong Kong politics. They have had multiple causes and deep roots in many of the developments discussed in the earlier chapters of this book, from diverging visions of Hong Kong's future to an increasingly difficult relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing, all in a context of increasingly polarized and populist global politics and a stark deterioration in US–China relations. In Hong Kong, the protests of 2019 saw consensus around “one country, two systems” fragmented further, and a significant minority express support for more revolutionary agendas, often fueled as much by hatred of Beijing as any positive vision for Hong Kong. The handover settlement has been tested further, possibly to destruction.

The protests came in the context of and partly as a result of growing political dysfunction in Hong Kong, with the legislature barely operating at times since 2016, a poor relationship between the executive and legislature, and increasingly polarized and fragmented politics. Insecurity about Hong Kong's relationship with the mainland added to the mix, as seen in the earlier debates over co-location of Hong Kong and mainland customs and immigration personnel at the high-speed rail terminus in West Kowloon, and the government's marketing of the Greater Bay Area as a foundation for Hong Kong's future economic development. But during this period the international politics of Hong Kong – China's global city – featured to a much greater degree than it did in the Occupy movement of 2014. This was fed by, and in turn fed, the growing strategic rivalry between the United States and China, and Washington's increasingly hostile approach towards China. Hong Kong's challenges during this period were deepened by being in the wrong geostrategic place at the wrong time.

This chapter outlines developments from the summer of 2019, beginning with the controversy over extradition which sparked the initial protests. It then discusses the nature of the protest movement, its goals and approaches, before moving on to consider perspectives from Beijing and the international angles to this highly controversial period.