Another perspective on Hong Kong in light of the electoral victory of the “pro-democracy” forces:
To say that the protests are not organic is not accurate. They are organic, it’s just that they’re being used and manipulated by US and UK forces for their own purposes. But Hong Kongers definitely have real grievances, some real and some suffering from a bit of over-active imagination. On the real side is the housing market. Regular people can’t afford to buy a home anymore, and this is a bigger deal in Chinese society than it is in the West. The reason is two-fold: One, real estate is controlled by a handful of tycoons, and Two, Beijing has courted and collaborated with those tycoons. Everyone knows that part of the reason the prices have gone up is because of increased investment from wealthy mainlanders, with whom ordinary Hong Kongers can’t compete.
On the imagined side, the Hong Kong protesters have a view of mainland China which might have come from Fox News, which is remarkable since they live right next to it, and many of them visit on a regular basis. But in talking to them, they talk about China the same way people in America who have never been there and only know what they see on the news talk about it. I don’t quite know why this is. Perhaps because they’re descended from people who fled during the Mao years and heard horror stories about those times. The unfortunate thing is that Beijing could help Hong Kong by intervening in the housing market the way they do in Shenzhen. But Beijing wouldn’t do that, and Hong Kongers wouldn’t accept it if they would. There is a general lack of trust and understanding between the two sides which hinders any solution to the problems.
This is actually very much in keeping with what I have heard from people living there. But while the votes for the “pro-democracy” forces and the protesters are certainly overlapping, they are not the same thing.
I am, of course, extremely skeptical of anything that purports to be “pro-democracy”, as historically that tends to mean little more than “CIA-backed”.