Hong Kong officials become the butt of online jokes after Occupy crisis talks

Hong Kong government negotiators who sat down to crunch talks with student leaders have become figures of online derision with netizens mocking them as empty vases, garbage bins and Teletubbies.

Five student leaders, in their early 20s and dressed in T-shirts bearing the slogan “Freedom Now”, faced off against five senior government officials in suits during tense talks at a medical college campus on Tuesday night.

The discussions made little headway but provided ample opportunity for online satirists who portrayed the government team as out-of-touch and with little to offer protesters demanding full democracy in the southern Chinese city.

In one graphic that quickly went viral the government’s lead negotiator, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, was pictured as a decorative empty vase while her colleague Raymond Tam was replaced by a cassette player.

Another showed the negotiating team dressed up as characters from the British children television series  Teletubbies.