Hong Kong protesters’ violent means defy liberal goals, leading Chinese writer Ren Yi says
- Member of revolutionary Communist Party family accuses radical demonstrators of pushing a damaging strain of localism
- Ren says one online forum is filled with hate speech that would have been shut down in the West
An influential Chinese writer and a member of a prominent revolutionary family has compared Hong Kong’s protests to populism in Germany in the 1930s, offering a glimpse of how the mainland intelligentsia views the city’s unrest.
In the article published on his social media account on Sunday, writer Ren Yi argued that the protesters’ tolerance of violence was at odds with their pursuit of liberal democracy.
“The West knows too little about Hong Kong,” he wrote.
“There should be in-depth coverage of LIHKG.com, and it would immediately show who the real Nazis are,” Ren wrote, in apparent response to the “Chinazi” term – a combination of China and Nazi that protesters have used to refer to the central government. Pro-democracy activists have also compared Hongkongers to Jews living under Nazi rule.