Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Demonstrations

[ScotsAlan]

I cant read Chinese, so I cant comment on the bbc Chinese news section.

 

A screen grab from my mobile tonight. No vpn.

 

 

[ScotsAlan]

this photo.

[Donald Trumps]

You can imagine what the response of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is going to be to this request

[CrossRoss]

You can imagine what the response of the [cabinet office/Central Committee] of the [Council of Ministers/Communist Party] of [isle of Man/China] is going to be to this request

 

delete as applicable for most eventualities

[ScotsAlan]

bbc still not blocked on the mainland.

 

 

[Donald Trumps]

Chinese sending in paid thugs to beat up students

[Chinahand]

Triads have attacked liberal or campaigning journalists and newspaper editors in the last few years too.

 

It's the ugly side of China's politics, every now and then the mask slips and you see the thuggery which is still part and parcel of the CPC's use of power.

 

If you cross them they don't have any qualms about someone using a meat cleaver on you, or you just disappearing into the gulag, ask Gao Zhisheng.

[Donald Trumps]

Chinese now putting out rumour that students are funded by American Embassy

[Lxxx]

Chinese now putting out rumour that students are funded by American Embassy

Wouldn't be the first time the US has indulged in such activities.

[ScotsAlan]

Mainland Chinese don't really care about this at the moment. Just my opinion of course.

 

 

 

The general view seems to be that an already more privaliged group are trying to get more for themselves.

 

It would be a bit like Douglas college students coming out to support Oxford students protesting about something that only affects Oxford.

[Chinahand]

I think there is a lot of truth in what you say, Alan.

 

But as well as a cultural divide between HK and the Mainland - and I very much agree there is quite a lot of animosity and arrogance in HK'ers attitudes to the mainland and the mainlanders return the favour - there is also another reason why mainlanders aren't engaged in this issue.

 

They are far more aware of the CPC's teeth.

 

Hexie Farm's cartoons sum up what the CPC can be like, and I fully understand why the 老百姓 laobaixing keep their heads down and move along when people try to stand up to it.

 

The placards say Freedom and Democracy.

 

 

 

The speech bubble says: Anyone who disagrees please raise your hand.

 

 

 

The CPC is perfectly willing to resort to extreme violence to maintain its harmonious rule and only the foolish or extremely brave stand up to be counted, usually with ... well shall we say ... life changing results.

 

I get why mainlanders think that student rebellion and demonstrations are only something the pampered citizens of Hong Kong can afford, but they have to be careful or the mask may well slip.

 

Hee hee ... I wonder if posting this lot will make this page inaccessible to Alan ... send us a screen shot if you can! ;-)

[ScotsAlan]

I can still see this thread Chinahand :-) But I could not see your cartoons... because I looked at the page on my phone and my phone does not download most pictures on this site. But I can see them now on a PC ( I admit my PC is on a VPN at the moment)

 

I think things are different now from what they were then. In those days the old long marchers were still pulling the strings. But the long marchers are gone now, and a new generation are in charge.

 

And I think we need to remember that these guys in charge now are not stupid. They have been hand picked from their early days in the best universities, and they have been nurtured by the party over a long "appreticeship". During the Bo Xilai affair, Grandpa Wen made it clear.... the days of the personality cult are gone.

 

The Harmonious Society is still up there on the agenda list, but they are using new tools to enforce it. They don't need to use the baton, the threat of being accused of corruption does the job. No doubt this moment in time will come to be known as the "tigers and flies " purge.

 

And what an amazingly powerful tool the anti corruption drive is. For example, in the recent past, if a violent forced eviction made it into the foreign press, the news would be suppressed here. But not now. Now it makes the news here first, then on the next day they announce the officials are being investigated, then 2 days later the officials are arrested for corruption. Some even find themselves in front of the firing squad.

 

It's a win win for the party. They can purge the idiots, and at the same time are seen as sticking up for the masses.

 

Will the Police use tear gas to clear the demo?

 

Probably. It's the same method used by almost every other Government on earth. Or maybe they will just wait till the temperature drops in a few weeks.

 

Ha ha, can you imagine if Theresa May was in charge of HK? She would have the rubber bullets deployed already.

 

Or maybe Boris Johnson can send over the water canons he bought from Germany?

[Chinahand]

I think this is quite a good Spectator piece which give context to some of Alan's remarks. It's a bit out of date now - written when the Riot police had gone in hard in the first days of the demonstrations - the result was a huge public reaction with the demonstrators increasing tenfold in anger at the authorities' behaviour.

Since that first misstep the administration has played a much cleverer longer game and has let the lack of a single powerful figurehead leading the demonstrations sap energy from the demonstrations as they fail to find a position which can be negotiated. Power is a fascinating thing - without a way to use the demonstrations to articulate a political point it quickly become blunted.

But even so the differences between Hong Kong and the Mainland do explain why these demonstrations are different from those Alan is raising.

Hong Kong is in many ways more Chinese these days than mainland China. That might be what scares the authorities so much. The shrines and altars that dot Hong Kong speak to the richness of Chinese custom, annihilated between 1949 and 1976 in the mainland. ...

Hong Kong preserves hobby clubs, literary societies, family associations, clan ties and ancestral temples that once made up the fabric of Chinese society. In mainland cities, the once-vast variety of regional cultures and traditions has been wracked twice over; first by Maoist persecution and then by waves of migration and materialism.

Most of all, the Hong Kong protests themselves are part of a great Chinese tradition, not only of peasant revolt and popular uprising, but of the student demonstrations that made China’s 20th century, from the protests of 4 May 1919 onwards. The Chinese public have never been the complacent sheep or communal masses of some westerners’ imagination, but an active, powerful force. ...

China is still seized by thousands of protests every year, from irate migrant workers whose bosses have disappeared with the year’s salaries to middle-class marchers against poisonous factories. The exact numbers are hard to pin down, since what the government calls ‘mass incidents’ can be anything from a dozen pensioners to an angry crowd of thousands, but Chinese researchers estimate around 90,000 incidents a year.

The reason the government doesn’t worry too much about these protests is because they are very localised. The paramilitary People’s Armed Police may bloodily clash with farmers, but local officials can also be sacked, unpopular policies rescinded, or families paid off — and the state has already won the war. In destroying any wider sense of civil society, they’ve eliminated any means by which these protests might link up into something more threatening. No institution, whether media, environmental groups, unions, or churches, has been allowed to develop into the kind of alternative framework that might bring diverse causes together. Any hint of sympathy protests or wider ideological campaigning is met with a vicious force, legal and otherwise, that has only become worse in the last few years; the very term ‘civil society’, common in 2008-2009, is now virtually taboo in Chinese media.

But Hong Kong still has that civil society, and it’s fighting to stay free. Plenty of mainlanders are emotionally invested in the Hong Kong protests, but they are scattered and un-able to speak out. ‘Hang in there, Hong Kong! Fight for the future!’ one of my mainland friends wrote from the safety of Europe on Facebook, itself blocked in China.

Other mainlanders buy the government line, or dismiss the protestors as childish, irresponsible or elitist. ‘They are only 7 million people… they can’t be allowed to endanger 1.3 billion of us. Even if the army has to kill some of them, it’s OK to maintain stability.’ This, from a Chinese acquaintance of mine in her thirties, just this afternoon.

And she’s right — this is the real danger Hong Kong protestors pose to China: good old-fashioned, traditional instability. They’re not just fighting to make Beijing keep its promises. They’re putting forward another version of what it is to be Chinese; not the bland nationalism of Beijing, but the argumentative, cultured, passionate visions that once remade the country.

[ScotsAlan]

That is a good article Chinahand, and I do agree with much of it.

 

However, I would add an age aspect to the lack of traditional culture in the mainland as opposed to HK.

 

There is a lot of tradition creeping back into mainland society these days. Indeed, I don't think it was ever fully wiped out by the cultural revoloution.

 

For example, my mother in law was a red guard during the CR, but these days as she gets older and becomes closer to becoming the family matriach, she is getting more and more traditional. My wife is becoming more traditional as she gets older, and the other Chinese women I have known for almost 10 years are also becoming much more traditional. The old superstitions never really went away I thing, they were just hidden below the surface.

 

In HK it is the young people who are protesting. And they are exactly the same as the mainlanders in that they seem, ( in my observation), to be considered too young to be taught the traditions. In the PRC, it is almost as if tradition starts to be taught when the marriage proposal is accepted. Then it's stepped up a gear when the baby is expected. After the birth of the baby the mother seems to become like a sponge to learn all the tradition she can.

 

But as I say, the above is just my own opinion formed from knowing a group of people.

 

It's almost as if the elders are allowing the young to have their bit of fun, but if the elders think their children's future is being put into doubt then they will draw the line in the sand.

 

What I write above is of course massively insulting to the protesters who are out there doing what they think is right. They have the right to demand universal suffrage. Of course they do. But they won't get it. The British did not give it to them, nor will the CPC. At least not in the near future.

 

But you see, I just think the young people have not been exposed to the full strength of " filial piety". I reckon that's the real thing that bonds China. Just as a grown child is expected to submit to their parents will without question, so too do the parents act with filial piety to the Government. But there is always a limit.

 

Anyway, what annoys me is how the coverage claims that there is a news blackout in China. There isn't. You can click away on BBC pages no problem. But, I just had a search for a link on BBC about it, but one story I clicked has a photo of tank man in it. So that was that. 404.

 

Tank man is most definately banned !!!

[ScotsAlan]

Ahh, got the link, without VPN :-)

 

I find this interesting.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29498378