Brian YS Wong

As soon as I walked into the train carriage, a whole family packed up their belongings and shuffled nervously to the next one. It happened on a train from Oxford to London earlier this month. I am an ordinary postgraduate student but for the fact, extraordinary in these times, that I’m Chinese. As the coronavirus outbreak spreads around the world, I have been experiencing a different epidemic – one of racism and xenophobia. I felt unwelcome. For the first time in years, I was self-conscious of my status as the person of color in a white space, the alien in a culture whose values I share. I expected a better Britain than the one in which two of my Hong Kong friends, walking on a Manchester st

When confronted with some of the worst turmoil since the Hong Kong handover, the response from the city’s administration and many from the pro-government camp is that our city must get back to “money”: that the focus should be on addressing socio-economic problems.  They attribute the massive anti-extradition bill protests to severe inequality and dissatisfaction amongst the youth about their job prospects. The government is vowing to set aside controversial policies and return to livelihood issues. They seem to think the ongoing political crisis has an economic cause. In many ways, this view is not entirely incorrect. Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities to live in globally. Inequa