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Alex Lo

My Take | Hong Kong localists now spout extreme nonsense

Independence is no longer enough for radicals; what they are now calling for is the complete disintegration of China

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Why you can trust SCMP
Student independence activists protest outside Kwai Chung Methodist College in November last year. Photo: Xiaomei Chen/SCMP
Alex Loin Toronto

Abandoned by mainstream pan-democrats, hounded by the authorities and ignored by the public, many radical localists have become increasingly extreme.

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It’s no longer enough to demand independence for Hong Kong. Some activists are calling for the collapse of China and the Communist Party, and the merging of independence movements in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, and the unification of the Mongolias.

Education centre with aim to promote Chinese national identity opens

Here’s an example, titled “The power of the peripheries: the need for solidarity in the face of China’s communist hegemony”, and published in the online Hong Kong Free Press.

“Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkestan and Taiwan appear now tiny and now immense,” wrote Kong Tsung-gan, described as a writer, educator and activist living in Hong Kong.

“But in terms of the challenges they have posed to Communist Party rule, especially in the last decade, the peoples of the peripheries have an importance disproportionate to their numbers.”

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Notice the writer refers to Xinjiang by the preferred name of Uygur separatists.

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