"President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong"
--- Hong Kong protesters
I have been watching the unfolding Hong Kong riots with amusement, horror and disgust. For posterity, it all started when two young kids went to Taiwan. The boyfriend killed the girlfriend and stuff her body into the suitcase. He then flew back to Hong Kong. Since there was not extradition treaty with Taiwan, Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong legislature introduced an extradition bill which allow extradition of people accused of crimes (as defined by both Hong Kong and Taiwan) to stand trial. Since by implication, this would also allow the same for mainland China, it sparked a new round of protest because people fear they would be extradited back to China for trial.
It is completely out of character for Hong Kong people to have such ferocity and persistence with their protests. These are well organized and funded. I know a number of people from Hong Kong, they are generally not political at all. They warship money and people with money, but generally not the type who would go out and do protests. So what changed?
If you listen to the pro democracy movement side, there does not seem to be any coherent reason for this. They say they want democracy and to be left alone. The truth is, for the most part, they have been left alone. While China get to pick who runs for the Hong Kong office, the people do get to finally decide who they chose. The judges are all British trained and many are none Chinese. The average Hong Kong person that I know have never bothered with things such as Democracy or free speech. So none of what they ask for now made any sense. This little snot nosed kid, for example, is mainly concerned that people called them cockroaches. That is wrong because of Nazis and genocide. Well, they call these kids cockroaches because they cover their faces in anonymity and scatter when confronted with a force greater then they are, just like the way cockroaches behave. Nazis and genocide is just what a bunch of bratty kids call people when they don't like them, like their American left counterparts. In actuality, they are the menacing ones. The level of lawlessness and violence perpetrated against the police, none Hong Kong Chinese and anyone who disagree with them while they are waiving American and British flags is just disgusting and very out of character with the Hong Kong that I knew.
The Chinese side claim that the tycoons have taken too much and left the youths unable to buy a place of their own. The lack of upward mobility plus the ever increasing home values entrapped the youth into a no win situation which resulted in them going off their rails. While this is true and explains to a large degree the underlying unhappiness, it still left a lot of things unexplained. For example, the pay in Hong Kong is not that bad and there is not an unemployment problem. While the salaries are no longer higher than the wealthiest part of China such as Shanghai, it is still quite high compared to the average Chinese. They could easily find a very nice place to live across the bridge at Dongguan with the earning power they have. The Chinese government have made a lot of improvement in transportation so they could do that. This happens to every U.S. city. For example, in the Bay Area where I live, places next to a company like Apple is very expensive, so people commute tens miles away to places like Blossom Hill from their work so they could enjoy the higher salary and lower cost of housing. In fact, people don't have the right to live in the city of their birth if they are not able to earn the high salaries it takes to keep a house there. The U.S. population is generally OK with that concept. After college, most would settle in a different region due to their jobs and think nothing of it. Lack of housing also does not explain the animus towards mainland Chinese. When talking to someone who speak Mandarin, they automatically get upset and start talking to them in English, even though many of these Hong Kong kids can not speak good English even if their lives depend on it. To me, this look like the culture revolution in the old China or the race riots in the U.S. like L.A. after Rodney King or Ferguson after Michael Brown.
Finally, What was it about the extradition bill that started this whole thing? Most of the young people obviously have never gone to China and don't intend to go soon so they are not in any danger of being extradited. While people said that this was just an excuse for venting some long simmering anger, one still wonders, why is this a spark that triggered the multi-months long violence?
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