Glory to Hong Kong

The story

"Glory to Hong Kong" is a protest anthem of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Since mass protests against the extradition bill broke out in early June 2019, demonstrators had sung songs such as "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Misérables and "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord". A music composer and Cantonese lyricist writing under the pseudonym "Thomas dgx yhl", mainly a pop rock artist, set out to write a song of their own "to boost protesters' morale and unite people"; Beyond's "Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies" and "Glory Days", he said, had rhythms out of place at the protests. Drawing on "God Save the King", "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of Russia, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and Vivaldi's Gloria, he spent two months on the melody, working backwards from its last line, which gives the song its title. He posted an instrumental version and the words on 26 August 2019 to LIHKG, an online forum of pro-democracy Hongkongers, and revised the words on its users' suggestions, among them adding a motto of the protests.

A music video of protest scenes went up on YouTube on 31 August 2019 and spread within days; an orchestral video with a four-part chorus, posted on 11 September, reached 1.5 million views in a week, and versions followed in English, German, Japanese, French, Catalan, Taiwanese and Italian. The song was sung at most demonstrations from then on: at a sit-in at Prince Edward station on 6 September demanding footage of the police's attacks on passengers on 31 August, by Hong Kong football supporters at a World Cup qualifier against Iran on 10 September, when the Chinese anthem was booed, and that night by large crowds in more than a dozen shopping malls at 8:31 pm, a reference to 31 August 2019 and to the decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee of 31 August 2014; secondary school students sang it in human chains. Commentators called it the anthem of the protests and the unofficial anthem of Hong Kong. Its composer said it could only be a protest song: there was no nation, so there could be no national anthem.

Reactions divided along political lines. The Los Angeles Times wrote that its Cantonese words affirmed a collective identity at the heart of the conflict, and Chow Po-chung of the Chinese University of Hong Kong that it united the protesters; the former Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang praised it as a professional production. Wen Wei Po, a state-owned paper controlled by the Hong Kong Liaison Office, called it on 12 September 2019 an anthem of Hong Kong independence that idealised violence, and an article by Carmen Poon in Ming Pao the next day called it a brainwashing song promoting independence. In September 2019 RTHK staff reported being told not to play it outside the news, and its director said the song was to be avoided as controversial, though a spokeswoman said it had not been banned; in Guangzhou the dissident Lai Rifu was arrested on 16 September after posting a video with the song as background music. A version with new words praising the police, "May Truth be Bestowed Upon Hong Kong", was reposted on Sina Weibo by the People's Daily and the Communist Youth League.

After the national security law of 2020, the government declared phrases of the song, above all the protest motto it contains, separatist and subversive, and schools were told not to allow it. Public performances drew police attention and prosecutions on charges such as obstruction or busking without a licence; in September 2022 a harmonica player who played it among the mourners for Queen Elizabeth II outside the British Consulate was arrested for sedition, and a year later an elderly busker was jailed for a month for playing it on the erhu. Because Google searches for Hong Kong's national anthem returned the song, it was played in error for Hong Kong teams at a rugby sevens match in Incheon in November 2022, at a powerlifting championship in Dubai and at an ice hockey match in Sarajevo in February 2023; Chief Executive John Lee called it closely connected with the 2019 violence and with advocacy of independence, and Google declined the government's request to change its results.

In June 2023 the government sought a court injunction against the song's words, melody and adaptations. The Court of First Instance refused, citing the chilling effect on freedom of expression, but on 8 May 2024 the Court of Appeal granted it, banning the broadcasting, performing, publishing or distribution of the song, with exceptions for academic and journalistic purposes. YouTube blocked 32 videos of it in Hong Kong while saying it shared concerns about free expression; the song was briefly removed from streaming platforms worldwide and, after a month of removals and re-uploads, restored.

What it says

A protest anthem of the 2019–2020 movement in Hong Kong, about resistance and hope for the city's future; solemn, rising to a hopeful close.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.