Are anguished cries a sign of Hong Kong's decline?
Suddenly there are all these anguished voices about leaving our beloved Hong Kong because its future is uncertain, our way of life is being undermined and freedoms are slowly being eroded or denied.
Suddenly there are all these anguished voices about leaving our beloved Hong Kong because its future is uncertain, our way of life is being undermined and freedoms are slowly being eroded or denied.
There are others, like the student activists about to launch class boycotts, who are voicing their opposition and resistance, declaring a new "era of civil disobedience" to Beijing's denial of full democracy and our government's acquiescence to it.
Our reactions remind me of the classic study, by the sociologist and economist Albert Hirschman.
How do you detect if an organisation like our public education system or our society is in decline?
One sign of decline that Hirschman points to is a sustained voicing of dissatisfaction, protest and criticism on one hand, and on the other, an exodus of disgruntled people who just pack and leave. But those who have loyalty to the place are torn between fighting to reverse the decline or acquiescing in the status quo.
Hirschman's thinking has a way of seamlessly guiding your thinking and his categories become yours. His book provides a pretty good description of different Hong Kong people who want to work within the system to improve and at least halt its decline, those who take up opposition and resistance, and those who just leave because they can.
There is, of course, no prescription from Hirschman as to who is doing the right thing. Within each group, whether it advocates resistance or cooperation, there are intelligent and principled actors and others who are not. But an organisation or state only has a chance of reversing decline by addressing voices and concerns and working with loyal customers or citizens to improve service or policy.
There is then an obvious pessimism in our situation in that our government is bound by what it can do by Beijing in addressing those concerns. With this socio-political reality, we may end up with resisters who have pious goals but have no end-game in sight or strategy to achieve them, status quo advocates who turn a blind eye to our decline and fall, and a government acting more like a bystander than an agency.
