Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine, discusses his new book, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2020).

Wasserstrom frames Hong Kong's 2019/2020 protests, and the new National Security Law, in a wider historical narrative - taking us back to the end of the First Opium War, and retracing the city's footsteps, including the 1991 Handover.

Temperate and moderate, Wasserstrom makes parallels to the controversial "T"s - Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen - even as he traces the limits of these analogies.

Wasserstrom also takes us through his drafting process, from retitling the book to revising its historical analogues.