Public Eye | Has Beijing missed the boat for Hong Kong hearts and minds?
When it comes to a choice of boarding the Liaoning or having freedom of speech, the young appear to have already decided
Can a one-party communist state win the hearts and minds of those who belong to that same state but have lived in a separate free society for generations ? Twenty years after Hong Kong’s reunification with China, that remains a question many would rather avoid.
Hearts and minds have been lost – mainly in the past five years. Should we blame former chief executive Leung Chun-yin? A conspiracy theory thrives that he highlighted an obscure pro-independence article so he could play hardball with the movement to brown-nose Beijing.
Is the opposition to blame for picking a fight with Leung – and by extension Beijing – on every issue during his rule? Is Beijing to blame for alienating Hongkongers with its obsessive suspicion of the opposition, and for treating the independence movement as a bigger bogeyman than it really is?
Or is it simply Hongkongers cannot identify with a country that limits free speech, controls the media, and jails political dissidents? Hongkongers take their democratic freedoms for granted. That’s why many are repulsed by Beijing’s treatment of the now dying Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was jailed for speaking his mind.
