Too often, we tell ourselves we're different, that Hong Kong people will never behave in the radical way we see elsewhere. We are convinced that the kind of street violence we saw recently in France over pension reforms just won't happen here. It's not in our nature. We do things peacefully, even when 500,000 angry citizens take to the streets to express disgust at government policies, as happened in 2003. That's what we tell ourselves.
But how can we be so sure? How smart is it to measure tomorrow's public mood with today's yardstick? Surely, everything has a breaking point.
We saw a glimpse of tomorrow's public mood last January when young people from the so-called post-1980s generation rose up in anger against what they saw as a rigged system that favours the privileged class at their expense. Their siege of the Legislative Council, clashes with riot police and jeering outside Government House didn't quite qualify as the kind of violent behaviour we've seen elsewhere. But the heavy presence of jittery police suggested the authorities feared a breaking point.
I wrote here sometime back of a revolution now under way in Hong Kong. Not the rock-throwing, car-burning kind, but fury expressed peacefully.
Some readers took issue with my categorisation of snow-balling societal discontent as a revolution. But how else would you describe the current rebellious mood against the old order? Isn't it a revolution when the people, after staying silent for so long, suddenly rise up to say they will no longer tolerate the excesses of tycoons, the wealthy class and the business sector?
When we reassure ourselves we're different, that we don't smash windows, hurl rocks and burn cars, we're talking about yesterday's Hong Kong people, not today's and tomorrow's. Yesterday's people just wanted a roof over their heads, a job and enough money to raise their families. If they got it, they were happy. There was no talk of correcting societal inequality, curbing the power of the tycoons, bridging the wealth gap, fair wages and standard working hours. They didn't think they had the power or the right to force such change.