[wobblegong]

Agreed, I'm an HKer who grew up there but am in the US now. There is a certain desperation that is palpable from talking to my friends back home.

They've been so let down by the HK govt that they've just given up all hope. Career sucks, family sucks, home sucks, can't marry cause houses are too expensive, rent is unaffordable so you can't move out, unless you're in the top 20% of your senior class, you can't go to college, it's grim. Most people I know are trying to move.

Unless the societal ills get solved, people will always find another proxy/reason to protest.

[xster]

Right. Protests are a means to an end and the people should be clear about what the end is. That's the whole point of not being administered by China in the first place, where you would just voice your discontent and let the 'technocratic' 'leadership' figure out a solution. The people have to self-direct towards a long term goal.

I think the current situation is tricky in that the 2 issues are partly conflated in the sense that Hong Kong needs to be careful to not just give the half-democratic colonial leash to China. But that's the extent of it (since Beijing didn't setup that colonial structure), and it's important to not conflate the rest of the issues with it. The institutional/functional half of the legco basically seems like a collection of medieval guilds and I don't see it trying to, or having the financial incentive to resolve societal issues for the bottom of the society anytime soon.

The fight for political reform does seem like the right thing to do but I think the only way to success is to stay extremely focused and framing it as a people vs colonial oligarchy issue rather than a British vs China issue or a woke vs brainwashed wumao issue. And most importantly, to not make it about defending the status quo, where Hong Kong will fall deeper in the hole since it not being able to continue to skim off the top of all China trades like it could during the 80s can't float all boats like it could in the past anymore. If Hong Kong fails to prove that its current political system is an advantage rather than a disadvantage that translates to economic and social wellbeing, Beijing will have little incentive to not scrap its system come 2047. And from the present perspective from the Beijing side, all signs would point to it looking like a disadvantage so far when comparing the relative deltas of urban and rural development and wellbeing vs the mainland. This, of course, ignores the fact that the CCP system will hit a glass ceiling in economic development vs countries with mature judicial systems, checks and balances etc, but that’s a limitation for its future potential rather than a present problem for Hong Kong and mainland.