Opinion | Hong Kong has been warned: come together and stop the city’s descent into chaos

Time is running out, the HKMAO press conference was a warning. Challenging Beijing will only make addressing the desire for greater autonomy more difficult

A coalition of a wide cross-section of influential members of society needs to ask protesters to stand down and start a dialogue

Reading Time:4 minutes

Published: 2:00pm, 30 Jul 2019Updated: 2:04am, 31 Jul 2019

Why did the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office under China’s State Council take the unusual step of calling a press conference on Monday?

It was a warning – Hong Kong must urgently stem its rapid descent into anarchy.

Before July 1, large protests in Hong Kong were, on the whole, peaceful, and there was hope that protesters would declare victory and move on once the government suspended the controversial extradition bill and the chief executive apologised.

That has not been the case. The Legislative Council has been vandalised, the police demonised, bomb-making materials discovered, and protesters continue to line up rallies around town. Businesses not on the side of protesters have suffered their wrath. The owner of a mall in Sha Tin was blamed for clashes with the police, and protesters have disrupted subway services and rallied at the airport.

The external walls of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, including the national emblem, have been defaced — marking an unwise challenge to the central authorities. A group of violent aggressors with triad links beat up people in Yuen Long rail station they thought were returning from a protest march, raising suspicions as to who had instigated them.

Whatever may have been the administration’s strategies to defuse the protests, they have not worked. Its credibility has been shot. Even the traditionally politically neutral civil servants have threatened industrial action and they too are planning to rally this Friday.

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