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In the short term, both the Occupy Central protesters and the Hong Kong government are losers.
Opinion
Mr. Shangkong
by George Chen
Mr. Shangkong
by George Chen

Beijing risks losing an entire generation

Hard-line response will prevail in short term but damage Beijing-HK relations over the long term

I guess very few people, even the Occupy Central co-founders and student leaders, ever expected the pro-democracy movement could be so big and last so long. Now in its second month, more people are beginning to ask how it will end and who will be smiling when it does.

In the short term, there will be only one “winner” – the central government. Beijing’s strategy in handling the worst political crisis in Hong Kong in decades is to play a waiting game in the hope exhaustion sets in among the protesters. Ironically, some political analysts say Beijing learned this strategy from Washington’s efforts to cool off the Occupy Wall Street protests following the 2008 global financial crisis.

The longer the movement goes on, the more impatient people from all sides will become, including protesters, ordinary people who may sympathise with the protesters but need to rely on public transport in their daily lives, and the Hong Kong government. Beijing’s hard-line, zero-compromise stance offers a clear message to Hong Kong and the rest of the world – “Listen to me. I’m the boss. I’m the winner.”

The longer the movement goes on, the more impatient people from all sides will become

Also in the short term, both the Occupy Central protesters and the Hong Kong government are losers. No major changes such as the firing of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying or civic nomination for the 2017 election as demanded by pro-democracy protests will be made and the Leung administration has completely lost the hearts and minds of the Hong Kong people.

But what about the winners in the long run? One of the student leaders, Joshua Wong Chi-fung, spelt out his message very clearly in a commentary piece published in The New York Times last week. “I would like to remind every member of the ruling class in Hong Kong: today you are depriving us of our future, but the day will come when we decide your future,” he wrote. “No matter what happens to the protest movement, we will reclaim the democracy that belongs to us, because time is on our side.”

That’s more important than being a short-term winner and the central government must seriously consider whether Beijing wants to win the battle of Occupy Central at the very real risk of losing an entire generation of Hong Kong people.

The younger generation, featuring Wong and many other student leaders, may originally have had a simple request, restricted to Hong Kong’s political future. But as time goes by, more young Hongkongers will begin to feel disappointed and impatient with Beijing’s repeated hard-line responses to their requests. The breakdown in communication will eventually sink the Beijing-Hong Kong relationship, with the Occupy Central movement already proving the failure of Beijing’s “united front work”.

 

George Chen is the SCMP’s financial editor and a Yale World fellow. Mr. Shangkong columns appear every Monday. Follow @george_chen on Twitter or visit facebook.com/mrshangkong

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Beijing risks losing an entire generation
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