Ordinary Gweilo

In the early weeks of the protests, damage generally got cleared up very quickly so everything could return to normal.  MTR stations re-opened the next morning and services ran normally.  Damaged traffic lights were repaired within a few hours.

By September, things had changed.  The MTR started closing stations near to protests (both planned as well as ongoing).  In October large number of shopping centres were shut, which made life very inconvenient.   

Then we moved to the next phase. 

• The whole MTR network closed early every night. 
• There were large signs to say that MTR facilities had been vandalized (even when actually they were still working).
• Traffic lights were left unrepaired, often causing gridlock and extensive delays.
• The Festival Walk shopping centre in Kowloon Tong has been completely closed for weeks, and damaged facilities in other malls have been repaired very slowly.    

Presumably the idea was that the silent majority would blame the protestors.

That didn’t work.

However, the reality is that the government has the power to do whatever it chooses, and Hong Kong people can’t do much about it.

The proportional voting system for the Legco elections, coupled with the large number of legislators who are not directly elected, mean that it is unlikely that opponents of the government could ever get a majority.  And we have seen that there an endless number of ways that Legislators can be disqualified, and by-elections can be delayed indefinitely, further reducing the ranks of the opposition.

On top of that, many large companies in Hong Kong are reluctant to do anything that might offend the PRC government.  Early in the protests Cathay Pacific was the most prominent example (mainly because of their subsidiary Cathay Dragon), and the MTR is not only 75% owned by the HK government but it also operates the Shenzen Metro (and parts of other metro system in the PRC). 

If Hong Kong people can’t effect change by marching in vast numbers, by the protests, or by voting, what is left? 

Well, the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Affairs (at the Chinese University of Hong Kong) say that 42% of Hong Kong people want to emigrate (pdf), up from 34% last year

Over 3 million are entitled to the currently useless BNO passport (which looks like a British passport, but doesn’t give the holder the right to settle in the UK, which is quite some limitation).

There is the possibility that the British government might do something about that.  However, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (did someone say “useless”?) apparently thinks that might “antagonize China and fall foul of the ‘one country, two systems’ approach”.  

That could be very annoying for the PRC government.  Troublemakers leaving, to be replaced by an inexhaustible supply of shiny new citizens from the Motherland.  Yes, that would be a bad outcome, definitely.

Of course there are plenty of others here with real passports for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and, yes, the UK.  Many of these were acquired back before the Handover when prospects looked bleak. 

But the handover went smoothly, and the talk of Chinese troops being sent in to quell the protests has (at least so far) proved to be nothing more than rumour.

The story of the last 22 years has been of Hong Kong slowly becoming more like Mainland China.  Putonghua (Mandarin) is now widely used, and there is a quota of 150 “one-way permits” per day for PRC citizens to settle in Hong Kong.  That’s 50,000+ per year, and more than one million since the handover in 1997.

On top of that, many thousands come to Hong Kong for the day, and they are very important for the retail sector.  In fact, one of the biggest economic impacts of the protests was the absence of those visitors. 

Which might help to explain why building fences to protect the railway (see right) is a higher priority than repairing traffic lights.

Imagine for a moment that you have to decide whether the District Elections should go ahead.  The protests give you the perfect excuse to postpone them, but that would certainly make things worse, so you need to think carefully.

You’re not actually in Hong Kong, of course, but you have the benefit of advice from both the Hong Kong Liaison Office and the puppet government  (including its first-rate Chief Executive Carrie Lam Yuet-ngor). 

They tell you that the “silent majority” hate the protests and so they won’t vote for those troublemakers in the pan-democrats, and not to worry because the (pro-Beijing) DAB is really well organized and very active in local communities, so they will be fine.

Based on this excellent advice, you decide that it would be a really bad look to cancel these elections (nasty, messy, unpredictable things though they are), and you’re looking forward to a good result that will strengthen Carrie Lam – at least until you let her resign.

Hong Kong people, on the other hand, were expecting the elections to be cancelled, right up until very last minute.  Or there was the theory that there would be some excuse to end voting early before most of the pan-democrat supporters had got to the polling stations.

After all, why would they risk things going wrong?  Surely it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the majority of voters would take the opportunity to express their feelings – of (qualified) support for the protestors and contempt for Carrie Lam and her administration. 

But, no, the election went ahead, and vast crowds turned up from early in the morning right through until the evening.  People were happy to queue up for an hour or more.  

• By 11:30 am, one million people had voted.  It took until 6.30 pm for the same number of votes to be recorded in 2015.
• By 3:30 pm it was over two million.  That’s about one-third more than the total number of votes in 2015.
• The final total was just below 3 million.  A turnout rate of 71%, compared to 47% last time.

The result was a landslide victory for the pan democrats.  17 out of 18 councils, 60% of the votes, and nearly 400 of the 452 seats.  On the pro-government side, the DAB won just 21 seats, compared with 119 four years ago. Plenty of big names lost their seats, including Junius Ho Kwan-yiu, Michael Tien Puk-sun,  Holden Chow Ho-ding, Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan, Vincent Cheng Wing-shun and Edward Lau Kwok-fan.

One big factor is that District Council seats are decided under the “First Past the Post” system, whereas of course the more important Legislative Council elections use a form of Proportional Representation that would not produce a “landslide victory” based on 60% of the votes.

The question is what happens next.  Will it force Carrie Lam (or the people who give her instructions) to try to find a solution now that they know what the “silent majority” really think?  

Visitors to Hong Kong are expecting chaos at the airport and all over the city, and are shocked to find that there’s nothing to see (and delighted by the low low prices charged by hotels).

The protests are still very much happening, but most last only a short time, and there’s hardly any evidence of them afterwards (with everything cleared up within hours).   Even the one at the airport didn’t last too long, and on the second day flights were still taking off long after it was reported that everything had stopped.  

I’m not going to risk any analysis, but the following are worth following on Twitter: @HongKongFP @HongKongHermit @Lok. Renaud Haccart (sadly, I’m not getting anymore “helpful” tweets from PRC media organizations to give me a more balanced view).

And Hemlock is usually worth a read.

This article is quite good:  'We must defend our city': A day in the life of a Hong Kong protester

This, on the other hand, is terrible:

The World Is Reaping the Chaos the British Empire Sowed

Locals are still paying for the mess the British left behind in Hong Kong and Kashmir.

BY AMY HAWKINS | AUGUST 13, 2019, 4:14 PM

There was a time when the sun never set on the British Empire. That’s long gone, but the grubby legacy of imperialism remains in Asia, where two seemingly distinct crises—in Hong Kong and Kashmir—share the same legacy.

Hong Kong is in its 10th week of demonstrations, as hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of society call for greater democratic freedoms in their city. The police have responded brutally while Beijing now describes the protests as “terrorism.”

Where to start?  The UK wanted to introduce more democracy to Hong Kong in the 1950s, but were told by the Beijing government that this was not acceptable and that they would invade the territory if there was any attempt to change the status quo. 

Then in 1982 (when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister) the Foreign Office apparently believed that China could be persuaded to allow Britain to continue to run Hong Kong in return for acknowledging Chinese sovereignty.  The response from China was (predictably enough) that it was going to take control on 1 July 1997 come what may, and if necessary they would use troops to make it happen.  There was very little that the UK could have done about that, but both sides wanted an agreement, and one was duly reached. 

Of course we know that Chris Patten did introduce greater democracy in the 1990s when he was Governor, and ignored similar threats from Beijing.  Needless to say, when China took control they changed the voting system, so Patten’s reforms achieved very little.

Yes, you can say that the UK could have done more in the first hundred years it ruled Hong Kong, but that wouldn’t have changed the fundamental problem that the New Territories was leased from China. 

Or you could say that all imperialism is wrong and the UK should never have had any involvement in Hong Kong.  Which is fair enough as a general principle, but totally misses the point of the protests, which are actually about wanting Hong Kong to be different from the Mainland. 

Today’s Cantonese expression is 加油 “gaa yau”, which means “add oil” and can be used when you want to offer encouragement to anyone (it’s widely used to give support for the protestors).