First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.
Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically.
Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government.
[0]https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-cris...
[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-afford...
[2]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001
This paper directly contradicts your claim it was mainly due to housing [4].
> Our empirical findings suggested that the systematic threat concerning the erosion of the city's values and institutions imposed by the extradition bill was a primary cause of the unprecedented mobilization.
[1]https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/exclusive-hong-kon...
[2]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asia...
[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/arti...
[4]https://www.proquest.com/docview/2714819043
(On my phone, so some sources are secondary sources).
Reuters is a British news agency wholly owned by Thomson Reuters[0]
Nevertheless, only 17% expressed support for seeking independence from China, and 20% were opposed to "the current path of one country, two systems" - the arrangement under which Hong Kong is governed by Beijing.
Many protesters say Beijing has used its authority under the system to gradually undermine certain freedoms - such as an independent judiciary and freedom of speech - that are supposed to be guaranteed at least until 2047 under the arrangement.
The results of the survey, involving 1,021 people and conducted from Dec. 17-20, also showed a large plurality of respondents mainly blamed the Hong Kong government for the crisis, the worst civil unrest to hit the city in decades, rather than the central government in Beijing.
This paper directly contradicts your claim it was mainly due to housing [4].
> The survey data reported in this article were collected via a telephone survey conducted by a research centre at a university in Hong Kong from May to June 2020.
And they also quote this paper with very similar results
> Chung, Ting-Yiu Robert, Pang, Ka-Lai Karie, Lee, Wing-Yi Winnie, and Edward, Chit-Fai, comp. 2020. Survey on Hong Kong People’s Views Regarding the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement (Round 3). Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute. July 10. Accessed March 19, 2025.
I summarized it with a quote? What do you want? Alternatively/also read 2nd source, which also discuss it, and again they say economic/housing was a factor, but not the largest like you claimed.
Okay use my 2nd source then? Data source:
I summarized it with a quote? What do you want? Alternatively/also read 2nd source, which also discuss it, and again they say economic/housing was a factor, but not the largest like you claimed.
> residents polled in a survey conducted *for Reuters* by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute
You managed to mistake [1] with [2] three times, really?
What about it makes you think that it's right and not the other sources citing housing? How much do you know about the HK housing situation in 2014-2019?
The survey data reported in this article were collected via a telephone survey conducted by a research centre at a university in Hong Kong from May to June 2020.
edit:
I'll just reply here since max depth. You made a claim, that [2] has relation to Reuters. It doesn't, end of story.
Can we at least check biases first?
I'm still looking for how your life was living in HK in 2019. Or are you just basing this purely on western media and institutions, like I mentioned in the OP?
I guess you didn’t check your own source.
residents polled in a survey conducted **for Reuters** by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute
Anyways, how was your experience living in Hong Kong in 2019?
His source doesn't actually disprove what I said - that most locals hated the protests.
Lastly, let's just say that the survey source is highly suspect. It's commissioned by a British news agency with an institute whose CEO has been accused for treason and has expressed pro-succession views and has since been exiled to the UK.
Now you mistake [3] for [1] too? [3] is a peer reviewed paper (just like [2]), and neither [2] nor [3] has anything to do with Reuters (the British news agency you refer to).
Let me link [3] again for you:
[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/arti...
edit:
Since max depth I'll just reply here (since you clearly also argue in bad faith). You claimed the paper had relation to a British news agency, it doesn't. So factually you are wrong, end of story.
No, I'm not mistaken.
Regardless, how was your experience living in HK in 2019? Hopefully you've talked to many locals in cantonese?
It's just absolutely false that "a vast majority of the locals hated the protests". See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1]. There was also a District Council election in November 2019 in which the establishment (pro-government) parties were utterly wiped out [2].
To your second point, HK's housing situation is an unmitigated disaster that undoubtedly contributed to the overall atmosphere of discontent with the government, but it was not a proximate cause of the protests.
To your third point, merely going to a foreign government and asking them to put pressure on your home government would not remotely reach the bar for a treason conviction in the U.S. This idea that what Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai did would be considered sedition or treason in Western democracies is something that everyone in China seems to "know" that just isn't so.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-hong-kongers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_local_elections
See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1].
First, it was commissioned by Reuters, a news agency based in UK.
polled in a survey conducted for Reuters by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute
Personally, I wouldn't call this survey unbiased.
They literally petitioned US gov to sanction HK politicians, and drew up lists, which US did. That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.
Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate. Lets not pretend any west reporting on HK was/is legitimate.
Evidence please. You're unintentionally illustrating my point here.
> Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate
The polling was conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute at the University of Hong Kong. Do you think Mike Pompeo infiltrated the District Council elections too?
>infiltrated ... too
Yes? This isn't complicated, there's reason lack of NSL turned HK into one of the largest western intelligence hubs in Asian, targeting mainland. HK is thoroughly infiltrated / influenced, full of compradors who thought they had immunity because PRC too magnanimous to ram NSL down their throats like any other sane country.
Don't mistake the local population being sympathetic to some of the protester's messages over supporting the protests. When the protestors became disruptive and violent, I distinctly remembered most locals did not want the protests to continue anymore.
The biggest reason for this is because of China. Hong Kong acts as a financial hub for business between China and the outside world.
Can we stop pretending like Hong Kong people are oppressed?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
> used to belong to "them"
Not "used" to, legally belongs to PRC/China, under Westphalia / UN law, HK belongs to PRC, TW belongs to One China territory. Liberal World Order idiots have no conception that international law matters when it favors PRC. There is no need to reach for muh history copium when it's plain literal current legal international order is built around HK (and Tibet and XJ) legally belonging to PRC, and TW/PRC part of One China both at UN and PRC/ROC constitutional level.
And it is in fact pieces of paper that determines ownership not living breathing humans who come and go. Ultimately self determination doesn't (and shouldn't) factor into sovereignty, but if it just so happens in China's case, the mandate overwhelming favors PRC who has 98% of consensus. What is best for everyone is 1400m mainlanders vs 40m greater China.
Not everyone is an American, and that's fine. Asians--on average--just care more that things "just work" than having more freedom to faff around. It's like Apple users versus Linux users. The Chinese government is a good government for the things that most Chinese people actually care about: economic development, building infrastructure, keeping trains running, etc. At the end of the day, most Chinese people in Hong Kong aren't missing the political freedoms that Americans would miss in their shoes, and value the things they do have that the government is good at.
Just because it is convenient for the CCP to coerce "confessions" about CIA involvement, and it's convenient for willing accomplices to their dishonest and cruel misrule to pretend that this is relevant, no one else needs to take this seriously.
There were large participation in non-violent protests in the beginning.
By the time it got violent, it was almost all just students and the youth protesting. It lasted for almost an entire year.
What HK need is politicians that works for people and have a spine to go against the elites
Basically, it was pent up frustration from the youth over housing controlled by Hong Kong's property tycoons. The extradition law was just the final trigger.
It does seem most widespread revolutions only happen when the discomfort grows big enough (as the saying (1) goes, "civilisation is n missed meals away from anarchy" (n = a number below 10, I thought 3, but it's 9)).
It's interesting though, the CCP does chicken out. The last time that I remember this happening is when enough citizens in Beijing protested against their prison-like Covid restrictions, that they relaxed it within a day or two.
Same thing with Russians and the war: 2). Heck, Americans are anguishing but most are too comfortable/don't want to go through the discomfort to actually do anything against the rising fascism in their country.
1) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/05/02/nine-meals/
2) https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/06/war-of-the-worl...
On a spectrum from like Appalachians at one end to the CCP on the other, most societies in the world are closer to the Chinese end of the spectrum. Appalachians will forgo civilization to avoid government. But most people in the world do want government to be a strict parent and maintain order and a well-functioning society. This is something that Americans completely do not understand.
Totally false
If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.
I'd be interested to see what has been implemented with regard to this under the stewardship of the CCP.
Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades.
It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.
I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.
https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-...
https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"
They were some prodemocratic demonstrators. Laudable but sadly they had no chance of winning that fight. There were some genuinely weird people with weird demands too (like some far-right ultranationalist HKer). The attacks on some politician, journalist and medias, and extradition law passed at all cost, was a clear authoritarian push. But from a chinese perspective, it is just putting HK in line with the rest of the country. There was some weird disappearance of some protestor, the clear usage of the triad to inflict violence on some protestor, and some protestors turn violent too. One could say, every country would react the same to a part of a country trying to secede. But if we look at, for example, Spain and Catalonia, will independence is firmly denied, there was way less violence and authoritarianism (Catalonia still have some special status).
All in all, the sad part is that some well-meaning idealistic kids might never be able to go back to HK. And with the integration with china, HK will slowly lose its identify and distinct culture. Now that it's no different than most other chinese territory, there is no real interest for foreign investor to invest there specifically, which was a part of what made HK rich. Its landscape will probably change a lot as the land value is not as prized anymore (which, tbf, might be a win for a lot of HKer). A lot of HKer now move to the bigger and richer Shenzhen for work, as more mandarin-speaking chinese move to HK. There are too many speakers for Cantonese to disappear overnight, but it might become a secondary language for most over time. The one you use to talk with you grandparent and feel slightly unique.
Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?
Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business
Fair enough, but many have the ability to empathise with people even if they don’t know them personally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing
A guy commited homicide and walks free after 19 months in jail.
Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.
At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.
A lot of Hong Kong people have fond memories of the "old HK" because their living standards and socioeconomics were well above Mainland Chinese. Today, this gap is much closer which doesn't sit right in many HKers minds. They were suppose to be the higher class, westernized Chinese. How dare any Mainlanders become wealthier, more capable, more cultured than we are. It wasn't because they had "freedom" under British rule.
It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence.
the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people.
However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.
No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
Yeah. Words matter. I do indeed wish we were back to a time where that was the case. America has always been flawed and contradictory, but our greatness came from a shared sense of some higher ideals that we strived for, regardless of the messy reality. That's been lost, and it's sad.
Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China.
Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country).
There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices.
In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.
If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.
Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.
sounds like the whole op was a setup from the very beginning, very convenient indeed and i wouldn't put it past them to even plan a murder
No, it wasn't.
It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
Are you suggesting that flooding a country with opium so that the ruling classes would sell them tea, causing huge addiction, is somehow immoral?
Its not the british empires finest moment. mind you, france, portugal and the USA were very happy to collude with us to get decent trading terms.
(hence why there are some really well preserved portugese style neighbourhoods in Macau )
Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?
If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.
Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago?
Or russia that killed parts of our royal family?
Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936)
the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)
If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.