It’s time for me to write about the Hong Kong protest movement, currently into its third week – not directly related to Myanmar, but with clear parallels. I want to start by reaching back to a Facebook exchange initiated by my friend and HKU colleague Joseph Chan. Joseph has long been a leading political activist and commentator in Hong Kong, and his page is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary events. On October 2, he posted a simple statement: “This is umbrella resistance, not umbrella revolution.” Many have since acknowledged this as a critical distinction, for it sends a very different signal to Beijing and the wider world – not that Hong Kong people wish to overthrow their government, but rather that they wish to defy the entirely objectionable reading of democracy being offered to them by it. My own contribution to Joseph’s page made the small point that resistance is indeed an ideal term because of the overlapping scientific meaning. This is the version provided by Dictionary.com: “In electricity, a measurement of the difficulty encountered by a power source in forcing electric current through an electrical circuit.” That’s a pretty neat analogy for what’s going on in Hong Kong right now. Although umbrella revolution continues to dominate Twitter hashtags and other social media, it’s important to disseminate Joseph’s alternative term – umbrella resistance.