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Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
So, by now, we should have a fairly good idea about what’s happening in Hong Kong regarding the students and the government. If you want to see sort of a preface to what’s this article is talking about, check out Jimmy Lynde’s post from September, linked here. To summarize, China wants to place some stricter restrictions on Hong Kong, formerly held by Great Britain, in regards to how candidates will be chosen for elections there as well as some other specific changes. The public, led by the students didn't like this, so they began to protest, an act that the Chinese government reacted rather sourly to.
This conflict had hit sort of a high point, with militarized vehicles (thanks again Jimmy) being sent in to sort of intimidate protestors. However, conflict is in sort of a lull right now, due to the Hong Kong city government willing to talk with student protestors over the general constitutionality of political changes. This may not be a general solution to the initial problem, but I believe it is a sort of step in the right direction, as discussion may foster some sort of realization for the Hong Kong government; this is sort of extremely hopeful and idealistic though, given the state of the Chinese government as a whole.
Based on how these talks go, two radically different results could come out. The first is if the talks do succeed, then protests will quiet down and the public (especially the students) will be happy. The other result is if the talks fail, then protests could continue, and we could see greater, possibly even more forceful government intervention.
This whole story brings to mind a few interesting questions:
-As the students are an extremely vocal group in pushing for change, are they really reflective of all of Hong Kong? Is this accurate public opinion?
-Are there possible dangers with allowing the public to choose their own candidate? Yes, it's more democratic, but is that always necessarily the best thing? Could a government-chosen candidate even be better for Hong Kong?
-If protester demands are met, what happens from there? If they are able to get what they want, would they try for more? What if they don't get what they want? Would they try harder or just give up?
-If protests were to continue, what do you think China might do? Could we possibly have something reminiscent of Tiananmen Square?
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Tuesday, October 7, 2014
The Students' Call for Democracy: Hong Kong Responds
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2 comments:
Regarding your first question, I think that any group of extremely vocal protestors are not an accurate representation on the public opinion, since they are almost always going to be the ones with the strongest opinion on the subject. An article in the New York Times this week said that there has been inconclusive attempts at polling Hong Kong residents, although past years' surveys show that over 3/5 of the Hong Kong population favors democracy, although "some democracy supporters have long been wary of confrontational tactics."
As for your third and fourth question, I feel that things get even more complicated, because the idea of having elected officials in Hong Kong for the first time ever is probably such a scary and foreign idea to the Chinese government, since the inevitability of these protests may also foreshadow a prolonged push for more democracy to test the government's willingness / persistence. And brutally suppressing the protests isn't the best solution for the Chinese government either, since it also hurts the economic prosperity of Hong Kong (which Beijing very much enjoys). So basically I think it's really complicated and have no idea what the outcome will be.
I definitely agree with Netta on this first question that, naturally, protestors aren't an accurate representation of public opinion but I also think that it takes strong opinions and passion about an issue for people to disrupt there lives and put themselves in possible danger by protesting the government. In terms or your last questions, I don't think that this issue will bring something like tiananmen square but I do think there is a very real possibility of this escalating but also like netta said, we really have no idea.
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