Shedding light on the HK protests

JOSHUA WONG IS gangly, bespectacled and speaks English with moderate fluency. He looks so young and unassuming that you might never have thought him capable of leading a student protest movement in Hong Kong.

But that's exactly what the teenager did in 2011 when the Chinese government announced its intention to establish a pro-China national education programme in Hong Kong. The government hoped that through the programme, Hong Kong youth would become more patriotic to China.

Wong, who was just 14-years-old then, was having none of it. He started a student activist group called Scholarism to stop the programme, which he saw as a way of indoctrinating the youth of Hong Kong and ultimately curbing free speech. Miraculously, he won the battle - but the war with Beijing was only just starting.