[JDShu]

Two thing come to mind as a starting point: Negotiation and focusing on building Hong Kong's economy.

Negotiation: The truth is, HK politics is very much like American politics. It consists of people blocking any progress on anything because the two sides are so deeply divided. Instead, I suggest making an honest effort to negotiate and take things step by step. For example, the central issue to the protests - the universal suffrage framework described in the Basic Law is strictly better than the current system. Accepting it while signaling that something even better is desired and will continue to be brought up would have been more productive. (Note that the whitepaper came out after the threat to occupy central).

Economy - One of the subtexts of the whole issue is Hong Kong's decreasing relevance in relation to China and indeed on the world stage. The stronger HK is, the more leverage HK has. Instead, real wages are barely increasing, rent continues to skyrocket, and there is basically no economy besides finance - and in that HK's competitive advantage shrinks every year. Instead of saying things like "we are willing to sacrifice the economy if it gives us true democracy", I think it should be accepted that destroying the economy is not likely going to get democrats what they want, and that a better economy would a) free up more people to be able to worry about politics rather than just putting food on the table, and b) make China think harder about killing the golden goose.

Occupy Wallstreet was a game of brinksmanship, but unfortunately that only works when both sides have something to lose. China has nothing to lose today.

[wyuenho]

Negotiation: We have been doing that for at least 30 years.

Economy: I in general agree but let's not forget most of China depends on the banks in Hong Kong for lending. There's a lot of capital at stake here.

[crazychrome]

right. how about previous 150 years? woo, I forget, the Queen sent a Governor who suddenly realise HK needed democracy!

[spacehunt]

It's more like the previous 150 years were ruled by benevolent dictators like Linus so relatively few people complained, but now it's turning into something like XFree86 so people instead wanted to become like Debian.

[lotsofmangos]

Only if Linus had initially moved into your house to deal heroin after beating you up.

[lotsofmangos]

The people in Hong Kong demanded the democratic reforms, however they never got universal suffrage while an outpost of the UK, which is something the UK should quite frankly be utterly ashamed of.