Animal Farm | Hong Kong: where are you and where are you going?

Albano Martins

Hong Kong is entering a spiral of violence that, especially in the face of unequal forces, is not a solution for those who aspire to keep or have greater democracy within the second system. The attitude of many people who object to Carrie Lam, engaging in sometimes violent and almost endless demonstrations, with assaults on security forces and their supporters, will be not be favorable for the movement. The same posture by the police complicates the matter. The candor of the first moments have turned into a kind of viral hate.
It is understandable, but the world, fortunately or unfortunately, deteriorates greatly because men are after all too small for the grandeur and complicated problems of this world we inherited. Some small logs in the fireplace will easily set off huge flames. Once out of control there will be new violence against the people! And that of course will come from China, the only one with this capability.
It is important to remember that China is usually not contained in its “big house”.
There isn’t much analysis of the class structure of the core of Hong Kong’s pro-Democratic movement, but it seems they are not, in the main, from working or poorer classes.
As has happened and is happening a little all over the world, and in China it will have happened, too, students wear the shirt of freedom against dictatorships or similar governments, and they readily become out of control.
Carrie Lam is helping to foment this mismatch of wills, but if she were replaced, I doubt that the movement for greater democracy in Hong Kong would sit down with the new Chief Executive to “compromise.”
The truth is also that the first system is not used to doing thus. It is a hard exercise for a first system!
As told in popular slang in foreign tongues, they are all stretching the rope and it will have to break!
By the way, involving foreign governments in an internal struggle is not a sustained solution to solve the conflict. It’s putting more logs on the fire. All be calm! All political exercise must be done with compromise.
On the basis of this exercise it must be clearly assumed by both sides that Hong Kong is an integral part of China (and this I think many contestants do not accept, especially those who are flying the flag of a colonial time) and that they should be able to enjoy their second system status as enshrined in its Basic Law and signed international agreements (China says it does but does not always seem to).
China has to be able to stop the idea of accelerating the integration of the two systems to the detriment of the second, before its “expiration date”.
It has launched a very clever, economically and politically brilliant bait, the Great Bay, which will be a work of the devil but which will stir everything and everyone. Many people turn to it, not out of patriotism, but for mere economic interest.
China should get prepared and carefully plan this integration rather than accelerating it by creating chaos, confusion and much anguish to those who never lived in the first system.
Please, sit at the table, talk and stop the bullshit!
That is the message that should be sent to both sides of the barricade, because the third side, the Government of Hong Kong is not worthy of it: it seems not properly prepared for this heavy workload! I have the perception that the Hong Kong Government does not know where it is or where it is going!