A common thread in recent conversations with friends is just how ugly Hong Kong society has become. As if the malicious words that appeared on the “democracy wall” at a local university, congratulating Undersecretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin for her son’s suicide, weren’t repugnant enough, elected Legislative Council member Junius Ho Kwan-yiu recently called for Hong Kong independence activists to be “killed without mercy” – shocking words from a former president of the Law Society.

Distressed by the state to which their city has sunk and pessimistic about its ability to heal itself, more than a few Hong Kong-born friends have articulated, and acted on, their desire to leave.

Today, Hongkongers of different political persua­sions are refusing to talk to one another ration­ally, much less meet somewhere in the middle, but political factionalism was practically a given in China’s past. Hostilities between political cliques were especially rife in the Eastern Han (AD25-220), mid-Tang (766-835), Northern Song (960-1126) and late Ming (the 1570s-1644) periods, to the point where political debate descended into vicious personal attacks, adversaries opposed each other’s policies for the sake of opposing, and good governance was held ransom to factional rivalries – all rather familiar in present-day Hong Kong.