#HongKong students turn their backs as flag is raised for National Day to start Day 4 of city-wide protests: http://t.co/5GYpKiNdMu
— WSJ China Real Time (@ChinaRealTime) October 1, 2014
From SCMP‘s liveblog:
… October 1, the Chinese national day and what was believed to be the intended date for Occupy Central before it was started early in support of student protests, will see rallies occur in more than 30 cities around the world.
Hundreds of people are expected to doorstep the Chinese embassy and consulates in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, to protest at Beijing. Some 400 protests gathered for an impromptu protest in Trafalgar Square, London, last Sunday to denounce the heavy-handed police tactics
“It’s intolerable for the government to treat their people like this,” said student Anthony Lau On-wing at the London protests. “I think we have a critical mass right now – there are enough people who are angry whose coming out to really say what they feel about the government.”
More than 27,000 people have signed up on Facebook to ‘Wear Yellow for Hong Kong on October 1st‘, an event started by students at Harvard University which has quickly spread to other American colleges and internationally…
From the NYTimes:
… The pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong appeared headed for a showdown with the authorities on Wednesday, with larger numbers expected over a national holiday and some organizers threatening to escalate the conflict by seizing government buildings.
Yet it has been a diligently clean, exceedingly polite and scrupulously peaceful insurgency, one that supporters are calling the Umbrella Revolution.
“An umbrella looks nonthreatening,” said Chloe Ho, 20, a history student distributing apples, chocolate and wet towels on a six-lane expressway occupied by protesters. “It shows how mild we Hong Kong people are, but when you cross our bottom line, we all come out together, just like the umbrellas all come out at the same time when it rains.”…
The mass sit-in — and for hardier participants, sleep-in — in several of Hong Kong’s key commercial districts has presented the Chinese leadership with one of its biggest and most unexpected challenges in years. The protesters are demanding the right to elect the city’s leader, or chief executive, without procedural hurdles that would ensure that only Beijing’s favored candidates get on the ballot.
China’s state-run news outlets have depicted the protests as the handiwork of a conspiracy aided by the West to topple the Communist Party. But what leaders in Beijing and Hong Kong face is something even more alien to party thinking: an amorphous movement that does not answer to any particular individual or agenda…
The society that has sprung up on the baking-hot roads has already developed its own rhythms. The days begin mostly with university students, retirees and middle-class office workers who have taken time off or been given leave by sympathetic bosses.
In the evenings, as temperatures cool and the workday ends, the crowds expand and become more diverse. Teenagers do their homework on the streets. And then the die-hards settle in for the night, sleeping under the skies on newspapers or foam before heading home in the morning for a shower and a nap.
“We want to stay clean to show that we are normal citizens fighting for our democracy,” said Billy Chan, 21, a computer science student who was heading home on Tuesday morning to wash up…
Hong Kong democracy activists are offering their umbrellas to rain-soaked police #OccupyCentral http://t.co/OXo1KtCYYR via @qz
— Andrew Au (@AndrewAu) October 1, 2014
Natasha Lennard, in Vice, “Occupy Central Is Not Like Previous Protest Movements“:
… Occupy Central is making demands from and on a political system, it is not seeking to upturn it. This is not my judgement — Occupy Central’s official website asserts as much. As the FAQ section of the site notes, the protests have an “ultimate goal.” The site asserts, “This campaign is not a ‘revolution’ because Occupy Central does not aim at overthrowing the existing system. The Occupy Central campaign has one and only one goal, without other associations.”
The official goal is democracy, but not in some broad ideological sense, which aligns democracy with goodness and fairness. Occupy Central’s expressed goals deal very explicitly with voting and elections. Hong Kong’s constitutional document — the Basic Law — determines how the region would move from British to Chinese hands, and what degree of autonomy Hong Kong’s government can exercise. Basic Law promised the people of Hong Kong universal suffrage, but the devil lay in the lack of detail. Interpreting the document to their own advantage, China ruled recently that the nominees for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive would be vetted by Beijing. The protesters want the promise of universal suffrage fulfilled, as well as the resignation of current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying.
Of course there are broader issues at play. Hong Kong’s record-breaking levels of inequality undergird arguments for suffrage. It is the second-most expensive city in the world but its minimum wage is only $3.86 per hour. Occupy Central does not barter in the language of economic struggle nor class conflict, but the demand for more direct democracy reflects an anger at how Beijing’s control serves Hong Kong’s billionaires not, as the protest chant goes, “Hong Kong People!”…
Anytime you hear a white liberal talking about #OccupyCentral becoming another Tiananmen, tell them that the US already did that in Ferguson
— Chuks (@OwningMyTruth) October 1, 2014
Louisa Lim, “visiting professor of journalism at the University of Michigan, and the author of ‘The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited’”, in the NYTimes, “Hong Kong People!“:
… What causes pause is that so many of the tactics used against the Hong Kong protesters echo those used in Beijing in 1989. Indeed, in the run-up to the weekend’s protests, as Hong Kongers debated the future of democracy in the territory, the state-backed press repeated familiar accusations that “hostile foreign forces” were whipping up dissatisfaction. This culminated in an “exposé” on Thursday in the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper charging the 17-year-old student leader Joshua Wong of having ties to the American government and being manipulated by a “black hand” behind the scenes, in an eerie echo of Tiananmen-era language. Mr. Wong said the accusations were false…
Another prominent figure forced to deny links to the American government — this time with the C.I.A. — was the media baron Jimmy Lai, an outspoken advocate for democracy. He was the target of an investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption after his email was hacked and then leaked, revealing large donations to pro-democracy politicians and activists. The timing of the anticorruption investigation — just as debate about political reform was at its zenith — was seen as suspiciously convenient.
And in a sensational corruption trial last week, the man who was once Hong Kong’s second-highest civil servant, Rafael Hui, admitted to taking a payment of almost $1.5 million from a Beijing official as far back as 2007. So the vaunted political neutrality of Hong Kong’s civil service, trained by colonial administrators, is looking somewhat shakier.
The growing anger in Hong Kong stems not just from a lack of democracy, but also from gaping inequality, embodied in government policies perceived to be rigged to benefit the city’s billionaires. So when President Xi Jinping responded to the growing discontent by summoning Hong Kong’s business tycoons to Beijing last week, this further underlined the gaping chasm between the governor and the governed, the wealthy elite and the ordinary people…
The moment that Hong Kong citizens have been dreading for 17 years has finally arrived. And the ramifications will ripple out, to Taiwan, whose residents are increasingly wary of the idea of reunification, as well as to the fringes of Beijing’s empire, where it is struggling with suicidal Tibetan protests and a murderous ethnic insurgency in the northwestern province of Xinjiang…
Live blogs from Hong Kong: From @ChinaRealTime: http://t.co/YQZBip5Fuo CNN: http://t.co/JebPTtwRmq @SCMP_News: http://t.co/sSKTkCYhV1
— China Digital Times (@CDTimes) October 1, 2014
Meet the man behind HK's protest movement Occupy Central with Love & Peace. Benny Tai spoke to Newsday's @BBCNuala http://t.co/ZMNJuXhhcF
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) October 1, 2014
`In just a week, Hong Kong’s student-led class boycott has morphed into a social movement.' http://t.co/eZWSxy2pIT via @emilyrauhala
— Scott Cendrowski 孙卓 (@scendrowski) October 1, 2014
"@adammccauley: Birdseye view on tonight's crowd. #OccupyCentral @ajam / #uncountable http://t.co/h7LfXsD7q9 pic.twitter.com/wqkTE3sChz"
— Gyanendra Awasthi (@GyanendrAw) October 1, 2014
(for Amir Khalid)
"@paulmozur: This depressingly cynical image is making rounds among wealthy Chinese on Facebook. #OccupyCentral pic.twitter.com/B6j14eyERn" ouch
— Dora Fang (@dorafang) October 1, 2014
Come on #OccupyCentral at least let me do my shopping today? How else can I spend my corruption money? #HongKong
— Xi Jinping (@RealXiJinping) October 1, 2014
HK lawmaker seen with yellow umbrella at China's Oct 1 celebration http://t.co/uojvGpHtek pic.twitter.com/qxr1QHhj3B @ChannelNewsAsia
— China Outlook (@ChinaOutlookMag) October 1, 2014
I can't believe XJP let it rain in Beijing on National Day. First #OccupyCentral and now this.
— Ryan Vande Water (@RyanVandeWater) October 1, 2014
Tourist visit Causeway Bay #HongKong show solidarity
#OccupyCentral #OccupyHongKong #UmbrellaRevolution pic.twitter.com/0zIttUf2ck
— JU (@JigmeUgen) October 1, 2014
Amir Khalid
Why, thank you.
Chris
An anticommunist popular protest movement borrowed the label “Occupy.”
Somebody tell Fox News, I wanna see their heads explode.
Citizen_X
@Chris: An “anticommunist” movement that’s against inequality and rule by billionaires? Sounds like Fox ain’t the only place where heads should explode from the cognitive dissonance.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris: According to the Right the Nazis were the real communists.
Mnemosyne
I’m very curious to see where this all goes. We’re supposed to be bringing a museum exhibit to Beijing and Shanghai next year and Hong Kong was one of the proposed additional venues. I’m pretty sure the Giant Evil Corporation isn’t going to want to be seen as picking sides in a political battle, and this one could get pretty ugly.
everbluegreen
This piece was written by a former grad school classmate of mine who is currently a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong. It’s worth a read.
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1604701/against-my-fear-i-see-you-hope
Amir Khalid
@Chris:
The PRC’s communist party has reached that stage at the end of Animal Farm when you can’t tell the pigs and the people apart.
Funkula
While looking for info about how the protestors are treating emergency services (apparently they didn’t agree to let them pass until Tuesday, which is sad. I would have expected them to do so from the start if they want to be seen as a peaceful movement), I found this:
http://m.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-29421740
Apparently one of the major points of tension between mainland and HK is anchor babbies, which I find hilarious.
Chris
@Citizen_X:
I’ll grant that China today doesn’t look much like a traditional communist state, but even in such states, “rule by billionaires” wouldn’t seem like an unfair description – party apparatchiks can skim money, run expensive boondoggles and cheat the public out of its fair share as skillfully as any American banker or defense contractor. (Or to quote a book I read for class two years ago, “while the United States *had* a military-industrial complex, the Soviet Union virtually *was* a military-industrial complex).
There’s also no contradiction between being anticommunist and being against inequality and rule by billionnaires. Solidarity was, after all, a labor union.