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Tim hamlett's hong kong

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The July 1 public holiday is turning into a pleasant public ritual. In the morning those who wish to celebrate the handover gather at one place, enjoy some entertainment, walk to another place, and go for lunch. In the afternoon those who wish to lament the continuing absence of universal suffrage gather in another place, walk another route, and go for tea.

There appears to be no objection on either side to energetic people attending both events, and no reason in principle why someone might not wish to do so. No doubt different social circles are involved so this is, in practice, unlikely. The great question of the next day's press coverage is the numbers who turned up. This is a fruitful source of arguments because counting the numbers of people at public gatherings is not and cannot be an exact science, so there is never an authoritative figure.

This year the happy morning group were a little constrained in their efforts exaggerate numbers by the fact that most of their marchers had been in the Hong Kong Stadium, whose capacity is known. No such inhibitions affected the afternoon organisers, who claimed about twice the police figure, as march organisers usually do. In any case the figures do not mean much.

We do not know whether any marcher was a serious demonstrator, or went because his friends were going. Did he or she support the official line or slogan, or did he has other gripes to ventilate?

I enjoyed the contribution from the morning marcher who admitted receiving a small sum of money and snacks from her employer, the Bank of China, but stoutly insisted she would have gone anyway. Those left-wingers certainly know how to get a crowd out. The afternoon lot, meanwhile, seemed mesmerised by the performance of their secret weapon, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, who had spent the previous week tickling RTHK's airwaves on behalf of the democratic cause.

I have doubts about the effect of this. Academics have laboured to detect a connection between media output and the behaviour of the citizenry. Generally they have laboured in vain.

The idea that four days of Mrs Chan rabbiting about democracy would have any effect other than persuading a lot of people to switch channels is extremely far-fetched.

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