I could not help but feel a bit depressed as belatedly checking out Netflix documentary film “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower”, which closely follows Joshua Wong and what he actively led along with many young people in Hong Kong during 2012-2016, When the documentary came out in 2017, there were still some hope and optimism for these admirable civil activists in Hong Kong, but, as many of you know too well, things only got worse and worse for them during next several years, and Wong is currently imprisoned just because he dared to stand up against the Chinese government for freedom and democracy during that time.

Everything began from when Wong and his several schoolmates started a little protest against the new education policy imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese government in 2012. After getting Hong Kong back from UK in 1997, the Chinese government promised to maintain the status quo for Hong Kong and its citizens via “One Country, Two Systems principle”. but, not so surprisingly, it gradually worked on having Hong Kong and its citizens under total control during next 15 years, and that new education policy was one of the first aggressive steps toward that.

At first, Wong and his colleagues did not draw much attention, but then many members of his generation soon came to pay more attention to his political protest, shortly after when he threw hard questions to one of the leading local politicians in Hong Kong. As they became more aware of how the situation was serious for themselves and their future, many other young students came out on streets for more protests, and Wong and his fellow protesters surely attracted lots of attention when they occupied the public square in front of the Hong Kong government building.

The Hong Kong government, which has been constantly influenced by the Chinese government, simply disregarded Wong and his fellow protesters during first several days, and even Wong and other protesters became doubtful about whether they could actually succeed, especially when their schools were about to begin a new semester. However, they later received an unexpectedly big support from numerous citizens in the city, and the Chinese government stepped back a bit in the end.

Wong and his colleagues were certainly proud of how they tried hard and then eventually won their battle, but, as they worried from the beginning, their victory turned out to be the beginning of their longtime resistance against the Chinese government. When Xi Jinping became its new leader in 2013, the Chinese government began to strike back at Hong Kong and its citizens with a lot more aggression, and many of its citizens became much more alarmed than before. After a prominent college professor named Benny Tai subsequently wrote a column about the necessity of the civil disobedience against the Chinese government, lots of citizens came out on streets, and Wong and his several colleagues willingly became the central figures of the following historical civil movement, which was later called the “Umbrella Revolution” for a rather simple reason.

However, this time, the Chinese government was not so willing to step back at all, and it was quite ready to crush those dissenting citizens via the Hong Kong government, which had already become its political puppet step by step. Not long after Wong did a significant act of defiance in front of hundreds of protesters, lots of policemen quickly arrived to suppress them all, and Wong and many other protesters were certainly rattled by the very aggressive tactics of the Hong Kong Police.

Although they initially did not easily step back at all as getting more attention from the world outside, Wong and other protesters kept getting cornered in one way or another by their powerful opponent. As days went by without much progress, they naturally got more exhausted, and their civil movement accordingly came to lose momentum. That was exactly what the Chinese government expected from the beginning, and it certainly did not waste any time when Wong and several other key figures were arrested later.

At the end of the documentary, we see Wong and his colleagues trying to keep fighting with new political goals for them. They all look optimistic about their ongoing struggle against the Chinese government, and this part was supposed to give some hope and consolation for us, but what happened to them during next several years was not so hopeful to say the least. For example, Wang was subsequently sentenced to several months of imprisonment, and then his incarceration period became longer and longer as he got punished again and again by the Chinese government.

While lots of things happened in Hong Kong after it came out, “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower”, directed by Joe Piscatella, remains fairly fresh as a vivid chronicle of the civil protests in Hong Kong during the 2010s, and Wong and his colleagues came to us as plain but undeniably brave human beings to admire. Like Greta Thunberg, they simply demanded more changes for their and next generations in the future, and they certainly reminded me that, despite my growing doubt and skepticism on the humanity, it is still worthwhile for me and others to keep fighting for a better world. After all, we all know well how utterly irresponsible and useless it is for us to succumb and wallow in despair and cynicism, don’t we?