Editorial | Reach out to hearts and minds of young in Hong Kong
- A Hong Kong survey has found many young people have lost confidence in the rule of law since the 2019 protests and the introduction of the national security legislation, and authorities would do well to discover why
The national security law has helped bring order to Hong Kong’s streets since the chaos of the 2019 protests, but whether at the perceived cost of the city’s core values remains the subject of debate.
Foremost among them has to be the rule of law, and the confidence in it that has been fundamental to the city’s success. It is worrying that a study by Youth IDEAS, a research centre under the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, has found many young people losing confidence in the rule of law.
The results are based on a survey of just 529 respondents within the 20-year age span from 14 to 34. There is room for further research, but to simply dismiss the findings does not do justice to such an important value.
Youth IDEAS found that about seven in 10 young people have less confidence in the rule of law than before the social unrest, with 45 per cent saying they believed the government could now exert influence on the courts, and almost 80 per cent revealing they had less confidence in the police.
Results suggest that the divide between the establishment and young people that emerged during the 2014 Occupy protests has not narrowed, and sentiments underlying protest outbreaks some five years apart remain strong today. The question is what has been done about it. If the survey is to be believed, authorities may be mistaken in thinking the national security law has solved everything.