Decision time in Hong Kong

Just about everyone in Hong Kong seems shocked by what happened last night. The streets in the central district of this safe, well-ordered city descended into chaos as the police moved on thousands of protestors, firing tear gas and pepper spray as they went.

We watched on an inner-city motorway as the demonstrators scattered, throats rasping and eyes billowing with tears, before they regrouped and crept up on police lines again. From our reckoning the vast majority on Harcourt Road were under 25 and their enthusiasm seemed infectious – a group of first-time protestors who had, in the words of one onlooker, “never been brave before.”

Their motives are mixed. Some are clearly by the Chinese government’s refusal to sanction open elections for the territory’s next leader in 2017. Instead, Hong Kong’s ultimate overlord offered a ‘democracy-lite’ package where the public can vote but a special committee loyal to Beijing will pick the candidates who stand.

Other protestors say the autonomy the city has long enjoyed under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework agreed when the UK handed back the territory to China is being eroded and worry the city is losing political and legal freedoms no other Chinese city enjoys.

Perhaps most importantly though, Hong Kong is a city where it is tough to be young. Graduates struggle to find work and if they do land a position, they will probably have to gruellingly long hours to keep it. That job probably won’t help them buy a flat either. Hong Kong’s real estate market – the world’s second most expensive – is out of reach for all but the seriously-wealthy (only London is considered a more expensive place to live and work in).

So the time has come then, for the city’s youthful protestors to decide how far they want to push it. The best known protest group called ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace’, announced the beginning of their civil disobedience campaign early yesterday morning. Their objective is shut the central business district down – but with images of shot-gun toting police officers fixed in the minds of many, some protest leaders are calling for a strategic retreat.

‘Occupy Central’ co-organiser Dr Chan Kin-man told the South China Morning Post this morning that the protests had gone too far. “It is a matter of life and death … Retreating does not mean giving up … Occupy Central has succeeded as long as the spirit of democracy never dies.”

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, another influential supporter of Occupy Central, said: “We do not want to see anyone get hurt.”

Of course the police too have difficult decisions to make. If they appear weak, they may lose control of the situation. If they act more aggressively, by using rubber bullets for example, against what is – for the most part – a large group of university and high school students, they risk alienating large swathes of the city’s population.

Both sides are testing the limits, at least for now. But the prospect of more violence is this normally peaceable metropolis, is very real.​

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