Opinion | After Occupy, will Hong Kong be better or worse off?
Michael Chugani believes the end of protests will bring a more polarised society and tighter control by Beijing. So, has it been worth it?
When the tents, barricades and protesters in the occupied zones are finally gone, will we say to ourselves it was all worth it, that we're better off than we were before Occupy Central? What kind of Hong Kong will await us? How will we be changed by the extraordinary events?
Some talk of a lost generation - radicalised youth who will go through life harbouring angry memories of police tear gas, an unresponsive government and authoritarian state leaders who blocked their dream of democracy. Will this radicalised youth continue to challenge the central government when its generation produces our future lawyers, doctors, business leaders and government officials?
How will Beijing view this radicalised generation as Hong Kong and the mainland move unavoidably closer together? How can it manage closer integration when a growing number of young people now identify themselves more as Hongkongers than Chinese? Will state leaders downgrade Hong Kong as an unreliable part of the engine that propels the nation to superpower status?
I don't buy the fear of a lost generation. It is normal for young people in open societies to be radicalised. Being radicalised when young doesn't mean you stay that way forever. The radicalised 1960s generation in the US went on to produce capitalists, conservative business leaders, politicians and even a president. Student leader Li Lu from the 1989 Tiananmen uprising is now a US investment banker.
My worry is not a lost generation but Beijing tightening rather than loosening its political grip on Hong Kong as a result of Occupy. It sees the civil disobedience protest as an audaciously direct challenge to its authority with outside help, something it won't tolerate. That came across loud and clear in President Xi Jinping's stern public warning to US President Barack Obama not to meddle in Occupy.
We wanted state leaders to trust us with democracy. I fear they now trust us even less. In our fight for more democracy, I fear we'll probably end up with less. How will that square with a Hong Kong after Occupy that is drunk with democracy fervour fuelled by the civil disobedience movement? How will the radicalised youth - whose democracy demands amounted to virtual self-rule - react to Beijing's tightened political grip?