A phone call to friends on the mainland indicates a lack of
awareness of any Hong Kong protest and those who are aware appear not to give a
damn anyway.
Attitudes to the so-called “Umbrella Revolution” (umbrellas
for deflecting police mace) are much the same on the Island as people go about
their business as normal despite having to step over 50,000 youths.
Okay here’s the rub;
Beijing wants to put up its own candidates for the 2017 Hong Kong elections,
allowing HK residents only a choice from Beijing’s choice.
Only 25 per cent of HK
residents object, they are mainly youngsters and student activists who are not
yet integral to the workings of the monetary monolith. The remaining 75 per cent
see Beijing’s interference as inevitable and just want to get on with business.
Beijing is resolute and unwavering in its disputes with Taiwan, Tibet
and over Japan’s Senkaku Islands, so there’s little chance it will succumb to a
few Hong Kong student radicals staging a sit in.
Beijing has scant regard for human rights, it restricts the social
media “menace”, manipulates media and deals with Islamic terrorism in a way the
West wishes it could. Basically, Beijing does what it bloody well wants.
In this scuffle it holds all the cards, both legally and pragmatically,
for the simple reason that Hong Kong’s sole interest is in money, actually
there’s not much else on the island to be interested in.
China’s economic success is due to treading a fine line between
capitalism and communism... it’s just that regular calls for that pesky
principle of democracy get in the way sometimes.
And it is the only one of the big four
that has wisely ignored the Middle East.
During talks with the Brits in 1982, Deng Xiaoping of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), told Margaret Thatcher, in reference to Hong Kong,
that, "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon".
That was true then and it’s even truer since the 1997 handover. But
that’s a solution of last resort for the mainland and it won’t be necessary.
Time is on Beijing’s side and the protesters resolve will soon wane as
they tire of sitting their skinny bums on hard asphalt and wander back to uni.
Crowds of 50,000 for China don’t even register on a population scale of
1.4 billion.
Pickering
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