The View | Hong Kong’s business elite: ‘a bellicose regime, a tangle of cowardice, blindness, craftiness and stupidity’
Shocked out of their arrogant complacency by the elections, they must now devise bold solutions to the problems they can no longer deny or ignore
The dust has settled on the polls and the result is extraordinarily vivid history.
Sprawling, profligate and bursting at the seams with self-contradiction, Hong Kong’s unsustainable and volatile mix of civic freedoms constrained by the lack of democracy has brewed a victory for six localists in the Legislative Council elections.
The rise of young activists such as Nathan Law shows the strength of democratic aspirations and desire for change. Hong Kong’s business elite suffered an unscheduled appointment with the rocket-propelled grenade of the independence campaign despite pitching a stupefying amount of vitriol and insults at them.
The real story of this election is that Hong Kong people are finally responding to the rise of economic and political inequality.
Critics derided the kids as brainwashed victims of a subprime liberal education who majored in gender studies, film deconstruction or any of today’s other academic fads.
But, voters have risen up against what they see as a corrupt and self-dealing establishment. They have supported radical outsiders in the hope of gaining some hope of political renewal. Power is a curious tool. It is where people believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall.