Hong Kong financial firms brace for disruptions as protests intensify

[specuvestor]

They have reached the state of protesting for the sake of protesting.
As proposed by David Webb, the effort should be spent on refining the candidate selection process which is likely a more acceptable solution to all parties.

Yeah as per posted...

http://www.valuebuddies.com/thread-5759-...l#pid97816

HKers are inherently pragmatic. As long no excessive violence is used and the police stays within the laws, the students have run out of political capital

If the protest are led by working people then after sometime they will disperse. Even happen so in Thailand because ultimately they have to work and feed the family.

But students feed on ideals and easily manipulated. They are actually more dangerous. LKY's tactic is to send police to their parents especially the mothers to warn them they are going to crack down and their children might get hurt. Let the mother do the job of bringing the children back. Recently China was smart to cordone off the entire Tian An Men and claim refurbishment, after there was a twitter call for gathering there

HKers are very pragmatic people. Their main purpose is 1 Oct so as long China can contain the crowd by 1 Oct I think they will disperse, except for the students maybe. China just need to impose some economic pain on HK and things will change... the carrot does not seemed to be working.

[CityFarmer]

Occupy Central movement's founders have lost control on the "pro-democracy activists"...

Hong Kong Occupy founders tell students to retreat amid fears of violence

HONG KONG - The founders of Hong Kong's Occupy Central civil disobedience movement on Tuesday called on pro-democracy activists to retreat from the city center over fears of violence, just hours after a student leader had called on supporters to regroup.

Protesters on the streets, while united in their calls for full democracy for the Chinese-ruled city, have been split over tactics since the demonstrations started in late September and the movement has lacked a clear leadership.

On Monday, thousands of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists forced the temporary closure of government headquarters after clashing with police, defying police orders to pull back.

Benny Tai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, urged the protesters to go home on Tuesday, saying the situation had become dangerous.

"The government that uses police batons to maintain its authority is a government that is beyond reason," said Tai, one of three leaders of the Occupy movement.

"For the sake of the occupier safety and for the sake of the original intention of love and peace, as we prepare to surrender, we three urge students to retreat, to put down deep roots in the community and transform the movement to extend the spirit of the umbrella movement."

The three plan to surrender to police on Wednesday for their role in gatherings labeled illegal by the government.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/world/hong-ko...l-district

[CityFarmer]

The students have push themselves into a dead-end...

Hong Kong democracy students reject calls to retreat

HONG KONG - Hong Kong students vowed to stay put at protest sites in key parts of the Asia financial center on Wednesday in their demand for electoral reform, defying calls by leaders of the civil disobedience movement Occupy Central to retreat.

Hundreds remain at the main protest site in Admiralty, next to the Central business district, determined to continue their fight for free elections for the Chinese-controlled city's next leader in 2017.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/world/hong-ko...ls-retreat

[butcher]

Everything will come to an end. Life as usual, party goes on. The occupied street are filled with empty tents which I think they have gone back to work and school and returned at night and clashed occasionally with the police. I was there last week, quite empty in day time with some people tending the area only. They only flocked there at night

Mongkok is the most affected area as you can see policemen along the whole stretch of the road. You feel pretty safe with them around actually.

Btw, the protest area is actually a tourists hotspot with many people visiting and taking pictures. LOL.

[Art or Science]

Yup, actually feel safe with tourists taking pictures, etc.

Believe most Hongkongers, who are pragmatic people, are tired of this ongoing protest. Was speaking with my colleagues and they all have pretty much the same opinion..

[CityFarmer]

A brief and useful intro on the Occupy Central movement in HK.

The three protesting groups and where they stand

Occupy Central with Love and Peace: This is a politically experienced and self-restrained protesting group founded by a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, Mr Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a former sociology professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dr Chan Kin-man, and Baptist minister Chu Yiu-ming. The group demands genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Mr Tai, Dr Chan and Reverend Chu surrendered to the police yesterday, but were released without charge. They have urged the students to stop protesting amid fears of violence on the streets.

Scholarism: A joint high-school student organisation led by 18-year-old Joshua Wong Chi-fung. Mr Wong is a political firebrand and is known for being social-media savvy. He was named one of TIME’s Most Influential Teens of 2014 and nominated for TIME’s Person of the Year 2014. Chinese state media has attempted to portray him as an extremist with ties to the United States, which he denies. Mr Wong was charged on Nov 27 with obstructing a bailiff clearing one of the protest sites. Scholarism is determined to continue to fight for free elections in 2017. Mr Wong began an indefinite hunger strike on Monday and said he would persevere until Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying restarts dialogue on electoral reform.

Hong Kong Federation of Students: The student federation is a government-registered organisation. It has members from eight tertiary education institutions in Hong Kong and is the largest student organisation in the city, The group is led by secretary-general Alex Chow Yong-kang, a student of sociology and comparative literature at Hong Kong University. The student federation is the closest ally to Scholarism. The federation planned to paralyse government offices on Monday, but did not succeed. The South China Morning Post said the federation decided not to join the hunger strike as it felt this might not be an effective way to pursue a dialogue with the government. Mr Chow also told the paper on Monday that ”it was only a matter of time before they would give themselves up”. AGENCIES

http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/ch...they-stand

[opmi]

Was in HK. Talked to some elderly folks. They think these Occupy students are bums. Eat Sleep and Get Fed. And still hang out with their friends. And 不识趣。never scale down when got chance.

They laments HK 10 years behind SG. (Exaggerated).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalki

[CityFarmer]

Two of the three main groups are down, and one more to go...

Hong Kong student protesters consider pulling up stakes

HONG KONG - One of the main student groups leading pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong said on Thursday it was considering ending more than two months of street demonstrations in the Chinese-controlled city.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students will decide in the next week whether to call on protesters to pull up stakes despite having failed to achieve their goal of ensuring open nominations in the election for the city's next leader in 2017.

"Some people wish to stay until the last minute and we respect that - but we cannot occupy without meaning," federation spokeswoman Yvonne Leung told local radio. "We will decide within the next week whether to stay or retreat."

The federation is one of several groups driving the protests in the former British colony. Some members of another student group, Scholarism, have gone on hunger strike while leaders of the pro-democracy "Occupy Central" movement surrendered to police on Wednesday and called on students to retreat.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/world/hong-ko...ing-stakes

[greengiraffe]

Children of the revolution

Lisa Murray
1502 words
6 Dec 2014
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.

Hong Kong protests Older campaigners have called it quits but the students have vowed to fight on, writes Lisa Murray.

A week before Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests began, Chan Kin-man was in a philosophical mood. One of the three founders of the "Occupy Central" movement, the 55-year-old sociology professor had a clear view of how it would play out.

Thousands of people would march through the central business district and then a few hundred would bunker down for a sit-in overnight before being arrested. It would all be over in a couple of days, he told the AFR Weekend on September 23.

"Lawmakers, professors, religious leaders and lawyers will join hands with young people and workers and will be arrested for the first time in their lives," he said. "I think it will be very historic and it will open up a Pandora's box. Young people witnessing this will have to think about what they should do if middle-aged people who have led comfortable lives are taking this sort of action."

Most organisers of Occupy Central at the time held similar views. But they were all wrong. While the protests have ­certainly been "historic" and opened up a "Pandora's box," they could not have played out more differently.

In the end, it was the students and not the older pro-democracy activists who took the lead. After police used tear gas on the first night of the protest, tens of thousands of ­people poured onto the street in dramatic scenes, shutting down the city. While they didn't all stay, a core group have camped out at key sites for more than two months now.

What started out as Occupy Central evolved into the "Umbrella Revolution" and took on a life of its own. "It went beyond our imagination," Chan says now. "We thought it would be the beginning of an awakening but the students were already awake."

The determination of this core group of activists is even more striking given where they are. Hong Kong, which became one of Asia's most dynamic economies by linking the world to China, has long been recognised for its political apathy. Making money appeared to trump any democratic aspirations held by its 7 million people.A generation mobilised

But that has been forever changed by a mobilised youth young enough for idealism and not old enough to remember first-hand the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

That could be a problem for Beijing as the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong stokes political demands on the mainland. China, under its increasingly hardline ­President Xi Jinping, may have missed an opportunity to experiment with a local form of democracy that could satisfy some of the hopes and desires of an increasingly vocal and rising middle class.

Still, early predictions of robust intervention from Beijing were off the mark. Unverified sightings of People's Liberation Army tanks driving through the streets of Hong Kong appear to have been based on old footage on the internet. And comparisons with Tiananmen turned out to be far-fetched.

But tensions have been rising and on Wednesday Chan and his Occupy Central co-founders, law professor Benny Tai and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, turned themselves in to police in a public show of surrender aimed at ending the protests peacefully by persuading the remaining students camped outside the government offices to go home.

"I believe that there is more and more anger and frustration building among the remaining protesters," says Chan. "It's our moral responsibility to end this before it reaches a point of serious confrontation."

He adds that protesters must also ­recognise dwindling public support for the campaign. "Eighty-three per cent of Hongkongers are asking us to stop the occupation," he says. "As a democratic movement, how can we ignore this voice."No longer the leaders

But Chan and his colleagues are no longer calling the shots. The remaining protesters are taking their lead from two student groups, the Hong Kong Federation of ­Students and Scholarism, headed by Joshua Wong, who is in his first year of university. With his trademark spectacles and angular features, the instantly recognisable 18-year-old has become a figurehead for the protests. This week he and four other students began a hunger strike, vowing not to eat until the Hong Kong government agrees to more talks on democratic reform.

The skinny teenager rose to fame two years ago in a high-profile campaign against the government's plans to introduce China's national education curriculum into the ­territory. This year he is a contender for Time magazine's Person of the Year

While the older activists are focusing on the achievements of the protests – including the immense pressure exerted on unpopular chief executive C.Y. Leung and his ­government and the growing awareness of the democracy campaign – the students are focusing on a lack of concrete outcomes.

The protests were launched after the Hong Kong government earlier this year announced the introduction of limited political reforms for the city's next election in 2017. China, which took back control of the territory from Britain in 1997, has promised to give every eligible Hongkonger a vote for the first time but only from a list of candidates vetted by a pro-Beijing election ­committee. Activists want a genuine choice.

Since the protests began, neither Beijing nor the Hong Kong government has made any concessions – leaving some student ­protesters feel they have nothing to show for the past two months.

"Younger people are typically more energetic, more passionate and more aggressive," says Ding Xueliang, a professor of social science at Hong Kong University.

"They don't have a family to support or life experience to hold them back."

Observers say the movement began to fracture along generational lines weeks ago as the Occupy Central leaders ceded influence to their younger, more fiery counterparts and a coherent strategy became difficult to negotiate. "This is a typical mass movement dilemma," Ding says. "The people who start the mass movement are not likely to exert control over it."The end of the movement?

Even so, there is a sense the protests are winding down. The Hong Kong Federation of Students announced late this week that it was considering its options, which included ending occupation of the last remaining site.

The decision may be taken out of the protesters' hands as the court has granted a bus company an interim injunction to clear a section of the main site, effectively giving police the go-ahead to use force to regain control of the blocked-off streets.

Jessica Chan, a 20-year-old biology student and organiser for the Federation of Students, says some police officers have been using excessive force.

"We were just standing in front of them and they said we were charging them and started to arrest people," she says.

"The relationship between the police and the people, between the Hong Kong government and Hong Kong people and between the Chinese government and Hong Kong people – they are all worse."

But overall, Chan says the protests have been positive for the city.

"Hong Kong people are really starting to think of what's happening instead of just earning money. The new generation is starting to stand up and fight for what they want and what they think is true and right."

After the tear gas misstep early on, the government opted to wait out the protests, a strategy that seems to have worked as public opinion turned against the demonstrations.

"The instructions from Beijing were: don't yield an inch," says Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics and an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"After two months most people want the students to beat a retreat. But the protests have weakened the legitimacy of the C.Y. Leung government."Ripple effect across the territories

They have also had knock-on effects to other Chinese territories.

There were protests in Macau earlier this year to mark the re-election of the gaming hub's Beijing-backed chief executive Fernando Chui, who was returned to office unopposed for another five-year term. Meanwhile, ­Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang Party (KMT), which has pursued a policy of closer ties with China, suffered a landslide defeat at local elections last weekend. Analysts said the result reflected voters' unease about renewed engagement with the mainland and was a reaction against Beijing's moves to restrict political reforms in Hong Kong.

Back in Hong Kong, Chan and the other Occupy Central founders are fighting no less than 39 court cases brought by people seeking compensation for the inconvenience or cost caused by the protests. Once the legal wrangles are out of the way, he plans to continue his pro-democracy campaign. "These protests have aroused a civic consciousness in Hong Kong and we need to keep up the pressure," he says.


Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited

Document AFNR000020141205eac60000z

[touzi]

That could be a problem for Beijing as the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong stokes political demands on the mainland. China, under its increasingly hardline ­President Xi Jinping, may have missed an opportunity to experiment with a local form of democracy that could satisfy some of the hopes and desires of an increasingly vocal and rising middle class.

Actually they are already experimenting by giving HK a chance to choose from candidates approved by the Beijing. If HK grab the opportunity, they could be leading the way for the whole of China.