With Beijing a direct target, has Hong Kong reached a ‘new normal’ as violent protests escalate?

No endgame in sight as street mayhem spirals, warns political observer, while survey reveals overwhelming majority of protesters sympathetic to violence

Worrying shift as protesters target Beijing’s liaison office for first time, says another academic, who suggests independent inquiry could defuse tensions

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Tear gas is fired during a violent Hong Kong protest, which academic observers fear is the ‘new normal’ for law and order in the city. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 10:00am, 22 Jul 2019Updated: 2:58pm, 23 Jul 2019

After tense clashes between protesters and police on Sunday night that left streets blanketed in tear gas and buildings defaced by expletives heaped at the central government, political watchers saw no endgame in sight, with one warning Hong Kong was entering a “new normal” on how it viewed law and order.

An academic also revealed a survey conducted on the marchers who took part in the Sunday protest found that 80 per cent of 1,000 people polled said they understood why protesters would resort to violence. They were left with little choice given the government inaction, those surveyed said.

The protests over the now-suspended extradition bill have become a weekly affair, but on Sunday night the demonstrations descended to an unprecedented level of mayhem as protesters trained their sights on the central government.

Just before nightfall, protesters who had begun their march at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay splintered into different directions to occupy main roads in Central while others advanced towards the liaison office in Western district to pelt the building with eggs, deface the national emblem and spray paint the walls with expletives against Beijing.

The procession was earlier ordered by the police to end at Southorn Playground in Wan Chai but many demonstrators defied the order and marched westwards towards the city centre, targeting not just the liaison office but also the central and western police stations.

After hours of a stand-off with defiant protesters, groups of whom brandished metal poles and bricks, the police fired several rounds of tear gas after repeated warnings.