The sedition case of children illustration book series has often been cited as an act of soft resistance. Candice Chau/HKFP. The original version of this report was published in Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) on August 5, 2023. The following edited version has been published on Global Voices as part of a content partnership agreement with HKFP. In recent months, Hong Kong officials have vowed to take a hard line against “soft resistance” but failed to define what the term means. HKFP examines when it first emerged, what it has been applied to, and what legal scholars make of it. On April 15, 2021, the then-director of China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Luo Hui-ning, warned that Hong Kong must crack down on any behaviour that threatened national security, which he described as “hard resistance.” He was making a speech to mark the city’s National Security Education Day almost a year after Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution to criminalise subversion, secession, foreign collusion and terrorism. Luo said that the city must also regulate “soft resistance.” Following Luo’s speech, pro-establishment commentator Lau Siu-kai told local news outlet HK01 that hard resistance referred to pro-independence forces and those promoting separatism and violence. Soft resistance focused on ideological work, including “disseminating disinformation, creating panic, maliciously attacking the SAR government and the central authorities and distorting the Basic Law.” Lau pointed to the media sector and accused some outlets of engaging in “opinion manipulation” and spreading hatred. He claimed there were also teachers who “disseminated misleading information” in schools and made statements which amounted to “distorting history.” Those were the major causes of the unrest in Hong Kong in recent years, Lau said, but they belonged to the “ideological realm,” which was “difficult to be fully addressed through the law” and hence needed to be regulated. According to the Hong Kong government press release archive, the term soft resistance was first used in Chinese by Secretary for Security Chris Tang on July 3, 2021, during a speech he gave in Cantonese at a legal forum about the Beijing-enacted security law. Although the national security law curbed the “flagrant illegal behaviour” of pro-independence forces in the city, they did not “give up entirely,” the minister said. He pointed to street booths set up by organisations advocating for Hong Kong independence, documentary screenings and the sales of protest-related books as examples of material “glorifying rioters” and “infiltrating violence through culture.” Tang said, Therefore, we must remain vigilant and also urge the citizens of Hong Kong to stay away from activities that are hijacked by Hong Kong independence advocates. They should not be used as a shield for the Hong Kong independence movement. The term first appeared in the press release archive in English in August 2021, when Tang was responding to questions from then-lawmaker Horace Cheung, who was concerned about “young people’s minds being poisoned by terrorist ideologies.” The minister said at the time that student concern groups, political bodies or even tutorial schools “wantonly instilled among students improper values and disseminated false or biased messages.” They promoted such “extreme ideologies” by producing biased teaching materials, holding street booths and through the internet. He added: Also, ideologies endangering national security are still infiltrating via the media, culture and arts, and other ‘soft resistance’ means to poison young people. On April 15 this year, Beijing’s top official overseeing Hong Kong and Macau matters, Xia Baolong, again warned the city to be vigilant against soft resistance. Five members of the speech therapists union behind a series of animal-farm-like children's books were jailed last September after being found guilty of sedition, a case often cited as an act of soft resistance. Tang mentioned it again when he told the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao that tackling acts of soft resistance was necessary and the authorities would not compromise. The speech therapists’ case was also mentioned by Edwina Lau, the head of the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force, in April this year when she gave media interviews before her retirement. She said, While it may seem to be harmless, in reality planting provocative ideas in the minds of children can have long-lasting harmful effects. This is a prime example of a signature case of ‘soft confrontation’. Lau, speaking to reporters, also gave another example of soft resistance.