人固有一死, 或重于泰山,或轻于鸿毛。 (Translated: Though death befalls all men alike , it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather) The protestors are majoring on the minor and ruining Hong Kong for all the wrong reasons. - The umbrella revolution won’t give Hong Kong democracy. Protesters should stop calling for it. This is about inequality, not politics, so democracy cant fix the problem. - The prevailing media narrative about the Hong Kong protest — namely that the citizens are politically dissatisfied and are fighting for democracy against the tyranny of Beijing — is false. What’s actually happening is this: A fringe of radical (or sometimes, more charitably, merely naive) ideologues are recasting the real and legitimate economic grievances of people here as a fight about Hong Kong’s autonomy. The movement is part of a global trend you might call maidancracy (rule of the square, from the infamous Maidan in central Kiev where the Ukrainian protests began). If carried out to its full extent, it will not end well for Hong Kong. - Empirical data demonstrates the nature of public discontent, and it is fundamentally different from what is being portrayed by the protesting activists. Over the past several years, polling conducted by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong has consistently shown that well over 80 percent of Hong Kongers’ top concerns are livelihood and economic issues, with those who are concerned with political problems in the low double digits at the most. - Hong Kong’s economic issues are daunting challenges for any government. But they have been made even more difficult by protesters attempting, successfully it seems, to manufacture a narrative that Beijing is the cause of Hong Kong’s troubles. By misdirecting the frustration and anxiety of Hong Kongers to Beijing, the maidancracy ideology has overtaken rational discourse about the root causes of Hong Kong’s problems and their solutions. - At the moment, the situation is tense. If either side makes the mistake of escalating, we know that maidancracy can be destructive. Hong Kong’s current conditions do not call for such destruction. Let calm return to the City by the Harbor. Hong Kong needs problem solvers, not revolutionaries.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:27:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015