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I lived there 2012 to 2021, and left my heart there. I'd likely still live there if I felt it were a better place to raise kids. In the treaty between China and the UK handing over HK, the people were promised eventual universal suffrage for the Chief Executive (governor/mayor). The elections for Chief Executive are held every 5 years, and there are protests every 5 years asking for universal suffrage. In 2014, there were tents on the main roads, and students making makeshift barricades, a small number of people being beaten and/or pepper sprayed by police. The protests in 2019 were very different. It looked crazy on television, but in person it actually wasn't very scary. I lived in a neighborhood with a lot of immigrants from Fujian province who got in a big brawl with protesters half a block from my flat. Unfortunately, some subway stations and a few shops were burned, but it wasn't random arson. The subway company is majority-owned by the government, and police were using stations as makeshift police stations. The businesses that got burned had owners with large business interests in the mainland and had spoken out against protesters. That's not to say the arson was justified, but I was never worried someone would torch my building. Though, as an obvious Westerner, any protester would have assumed that I supported at least peaceful protest for democracy. On the other hand, with all of the propaganda/rumors saying all of the protesters were organized and paid by the CIA, I was careful not to do anything that would feed into that. I had a strong sense that as long as I minded my own business, both the police and the protesters would likely leave me alone. In 2019, a journalist was charged with misuse of a police database because they looked up the license plate of a van that dropped off a bunch of triad thugs to beat up protesters in a subway station. The journalist discovered the van belonged to a pro-mainland politician. Also, sometime around the 2019 protests (a bit earlier, if I remember), there was a dual-citizen bookstore owner in Causeway Bay who published a book about Xi's mistresses . He disappeared. His wife didn't know where he was. The Hong Kong government had no record of his having crossed passport control at any airport, pier, or land crossing with mainland China. A bit later, he showed up in the mainland to give a televised statement that he had gone to the mainland of his own free will to confess to a DUI case several years prior, and asking his second country (Sweden or Switzerland, I forget) to stop investigating his disappearance. Absolutely nothing fishy about that. (As I remember, the bookstore had 5 owners, and at least 4 of them had similar legal troubles. I believe only the one had an unexplainable border crossing into the mainland.) 2024 is another election year. I worry a bit what will happen, but I get the feeling the government has finally broken the will of the protesters. |
Did you also live in North Point? I still remember the eerie vibes of the days after, almost every single shop was closed, and corners were guarded by certain people. A couple of days after, I went out for a walk, and came home to a standoff between protesters and riot police. I ended up going to Macau for a couple of days so to avoid the chaos.
I also felt that as a foreigner it was rather difficult, protesters would assume you're on their side, until you slightly criticized some of their actions, then you were just labelled as misinformed, and "you wouldn't understand as a foreigner". So I mostly just stuck to myself and refrained from discussing it with locals.