Occupy Central protesters in Hong Kong. Yahoo/Reuters.
Thousands of Occupy Central protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong again to protest for democracy. Yahoo/Reuters. 12,000 protesters and 2000 police faced off in the city's financial district. Last years protests were the first major challenge to China's rule since the 1989 Tianamen Square protests, but they fizzled out. The new protests have the same goal, the ability to have candidates on the ballot that aren't picked by China's communist government. Organizers called for peace and refused to occupy any areas like they did last time. No violence was reported at the event.
My Comment:
I predicted back in December that this issue would crop up again. Even though the protest failed back then, none of the issues were decided. China will still screen any candidates and that is unacceptable for the Occupy Central movement. The movement seemed to fail because there was so much division between the peaceful protesters and the ones that just wanted to fight the cops (sound familiar?). But the movement itself didn't die. As long as China doesn't back down there will be some people that want to demonstrate against them.
The bad news for the protesters is that only 25,000 of them showed up, which is half of what they wanted. I am guessing that people didn't show up because they don't think the movement can get what they want. Right now the Chinese government has no reason to loosen up the democracy in Hong Kong. That's the last thing they want to do. If the protest had gotten too violent then they would have cracked down. But just because they didn't smash the movement doesn't mean that they approve. It's just that Occupy Central has no leverage whatsoever.
I often wonder what it would take to finally end the Communist party's control of China. They have a massive security apparatus that has a number one priority of continuing the regime. That's nothing different then many countries, it is just that China is really good at it. The people don't have much reason to revolt (other then some minorities like the Uighar Muslims in the Xinjaing province) because the economy has getting better. That will not last forever but when the bubble bursts there will be no way for the people to fight back since there is no private ownership of firearms. In short, I don't see the Chinese government going anywhere anytime soon.
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