Can any account of history be said to be free of bias? The canonical answer appears to be "no". If no account of history should be free of the whips and scorns of sceptical historiography, then recent history should truly stand no chance.
Antony Dapiran's City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong is an account of events that ride so close to recent history that they are perhaps more properly classified as current events. Indeed, the 2019 Hong Kong Protests bleed now into the 2020 Hong Kong Protests, seamed only by the brief and subsiding dampener of global pandemic conditions. Protesters gather even now in violation of lockdown laws, in tentative groups of a few, ambitious, hundred.
But the Hong Kong protests of 2019 are indeed history. From March onwards they saw gatherings far beyond the groups of 300 or so now emerging from isolation. Marches of millions, as much as a quarter of the Hong Kong population, turning out together in the streets in what they saw as the swan song, the last stand exercise of their imperilled civil rights. These people had turned out to fight the Extradition Bill, but quickly their rattling transformed into the united cries for more: The Five Demands - the formal withdrawal of the bill, withdrawal of the characterisation of the then peaceful protests as 'riots', amnesty for arrested protesters, an independent inquiry into police behaviour, and universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive and LegCo.
To these protestors, it seemed they were fighting not just a bill, nor merely a political war; they were fighting for the proto-national soul and identity of Hong Kong.
But what the hell is an Extradition Bill? And why did it matter so much? If it was going to matter so much, why did the government introduce it in the first place? What did the protesters mean when they said "be like water"? And what were the umbrellas about? Why, ultimately, was a turnout of a quarter of the voting population an insufficient prompt for any significant government response? Why is the same true of the subsequent escalation of violence and force over the many following months?
This is where Dapiran comes in, attempting to fashion a coherent answer from the chaos, situated in Hong Kong's culture, history, and legacy of protest. Dapiran is uniquely qualified to provide such an analysis, having worked as a lawyer and journalist correspondent in Hong Kong for two decades, and having penned, in 2017, a book on the history of Hong Kong protest.
City on Fire provides a clear and authoritative account of the unfolding events, well-seated in Hong Kongese history, culture, and politics, such as in its use of the Cantonese discourse to be found in the protest media and slogans, and frequent reference to other authoritative sources, from the New York Times to academic studies.
What will sew doubt in this version of history is the extent to which Dapiran's account is 'even-handed'. If you want a discussion of the benefits of state stability and unity, wrought at any cost by the hand of an authoritarian government, you will not find it here. Is this book a discussion of the rightness or wrongness of the protesters? No. Is it a book about the supremacy of central sovereignty versus the supremacy of the populace? No. Is it a book considering alternatives to the Western denouncement of totalitarianism and espoused faith in the sanctity and inviolability of political rights? No. But does this book rest on answers to these questions? Yes.
Dapiran's analysis is predicated on an understanding of these issues, which slants his attention and his language. Everyone who picks up this book will have strong, fundamental answers to the above questions. Indeed, the significance of these answers can seem to cry out for want of no possible, valid alternative view. Yet it must be remembered that though history is an interpretive exercise, veracity is meaningfully ascertainable - and the unavoidable taint of perspective should not warrant the dismissal of the entire account of an opposing view, or - to borrow the loaded, modern parlance - to cry "fake news". I would defend City on Fire against accusations of being "one-sided", but this is not to say that it is not "sided". If you support the Hong Kong police, you will find this book frustrating, while if you support the protesters, it will seem sensible. It remains a valuable contribution.
In Dapiran's book we see, month after month, from the streets to the airports, from schools to overpasses, from peace into violence, the expression of political rights careened into a natural, explosive extremity. The lights, the smoke, the noxious fumes of burning Hong Kong caught the attention of the world. Not just as history in the making, but in the prophecy of history yet to come.