From Beijing Without Love: The Hong Kong Protests

Protestors outside a government
building

You might be wondering how the Hong Kong protests are being covered in mainland China.  The short answer is that for the most part they aren't.  However, yesterday the party mouth piece, The People's Daily, published a front page editorial about the protests.  It's significance cannot be understated due to its prominence and reactionist tone.  Shortly after the protest began last weekend, people began to post news items on my We Chat feed (We Chat is the Chinese carbon copy of What's App).  It didn't take long before these were deleted by the state censors.  The "Great Firewall" is legendary, but Chinese censors have been forced to work overtime as mainlanders start to ask just what the Hell is going on in Hong Kong.  Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government suspended travel group trips to the territory a short time ago.  The South China Morning Post ran a great editorial cartoon about the suspension.

Love this cartoon

Rhetoric from the party and Beijing loyalist isn't surprising, calling the protests the product of foreign conspirators and chaotic.  The only words missing from the party's news coverage of the event and Tiananmen in 1989 is "counter-revolutionary".  The main argument of Beijing loyalists stems from the fact that Hong Kong didn't enjoy a form of representative democracy under the British.  This isn't entirely correct considering Hong Kong has a tradition of elected local assemblies.  I don't buy the argument because it rests on the assumption that something denied by one party should be continually denied by another, and that Beijing's election plan should be embraced because it is a slight improvement.  The only group the election plan pleases are those in power.  This shouldn't come as a surprise.  The week before the protests started, Chinese president Xi met with a group of notable Hong Kong billionaires, showing once and for all that the Communist Party of China isn't the party of revolution, but the establishment.

The last thing the Chinese ruling elite want right now are photos of young, umbrella holding students being tear gassed by the police, particularly during a slowing economy and political "corruption crackdown".  I am curious to see how the relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland affects the events.  Having worked and lived regularly with groups....let's just say the bitterness runs both ways across the border.  The days ahead will test the relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland politically and culturally.  I unabashedly support the protests.  I am proud to see a group stand up and demand their voices be heard.      

After living here for over a year, I have had several things repeated to me over and over again.  "The Chinese don't care about politics", "The Chinese people can't handle democracy", and "the Chinese people worry more about what they can buy than freedom" appear commonly at dinnertime political discussions.  I have heard these same phrases multiple times, always from wealthy, male Chinese who are well-connected with the party elite.  One even went as far as to try to tell me that it was racially ingrained into the Chinese to unquestionably obey their superiors.  The official stance of the party explicitly rebukes the idea of universal rights and the "western" style democracy.
These protests show this provincial, racist thinking doesn't hold water.  Now the same people who routinely say these lies must either admit the statements are untrue or that Hong Kong is fundamentally separate and different than the mainland, and it is highly unlikely they'll do the latter.