China's two-day exercise to gauge local views on how a selection committee should be set up to return a provisional legislature and the first chief executive for the post-1997 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has turned out to be a public relations disaster.
Fingers have also been pointed at the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, which is responsible for the security for the visiting Chinese delegates. China's Preparatory Committee (PC) has been accused of being authoritarian in muffling dissenting voices.
The police have been criticised for using excessive force to contain legitimate protests.
While the consultation forums were still in progress, China's Central Television (CCTV) concluded in its main news broadcast on Sunday that the meetings had been a success and 'had created some positive effects'.
The assessment by Beijing's propaganda machine, however, hardly tallies with the mainstream public opinions expressed in the territory. Unlike CCTV, the local media has focused their coverage primarily on activists' protest actions. A photograph carried on the front page of Ming Pao newspaper last Friday, for instance, has probably negated much of the police force's efforts to boost its public image.
A plain-clothes expatriate police officer was captured clutching the throat of a protester, when a score of activists tried in vain to present a petition letter to the director of the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Lu Ping , outside the airport. CNN and other global television networks also showed footage of the incident and other subsequent protests.