My Take | Bets on the future of beloved Hong Kong

Perhaps Beijing has studied the stages of grief and is betting - probably correctly - that we will in the end opt for acceptance.

We are still at the anger and denial stages, which may explain why columns in this and other papers and media have been either angry and/or agonising in tone since Beijing handed down its harsh political reform package for Hong Kong. This is the new "Cry, the Beloved City" genre.

People are working themselves to levels of outrage and anguish I have rarely seen anywhere. Judging by a few navel-gazing commentaries and the massive response they have attracted, you would think this time is really - really - the end of Hong Kong; or less melodramatically, the end of the navel-gazers' stay in Hong Kong. The latter may be all that it really amounts to. If I pack and leave, the decent thing to do may be to go quietly, being well aware there are many who don't have that choice and come rain or shine, have to live here.

The worst rhetoric is emotionally satisfying words we tell ourselves because we can no longer keep a cool head. It's what the philosopher Wittgenstein calls "the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language". People have always come and gone in Hong Kong. Whether or not you tell yourself in such terms, you are betting on the future of Hong Kong, and act accordingly on whether to leave or stay for the long haul or for a short time.

What's the new situation? Is this time really that different? What is different, I argue, is that the actual threat level is a lot lower than it was during the 1967 riots and Cultural Revolutionary infiltration, the bogged-down handover negotiations and currency crisis of 1983, the June 4 blood-letting, and the bird flu and Sars outbreaks.

This time, we are upset because we think we are denied what we don't have but rightly deserve. During those other times, we were in danger of losing what we already had and held dearly.