Hong Kong Aff
[OLD] A2 Protests Have Stopped
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[OLD] A2 Protests Have Stopped2 reasons this doesn’t applyPerception of future protests will continue to impede business until countermeasures are takenEven without the protests, Hong Kong public opinion is polarized against China, challenging CCP legitimacy – that triggers the aff impactsThis was just the first round, and they’ve enabled more divisive future protests that will continuously escalate until their demands are metBuckley 12/11 [(Chris, journalist) “Hong Kong Protesters Lose a Last Bastion, but Vow to Go On” NY times, Dec 12, 2014] AT Yet even in their defeat, the protesters, most of them college students, left with a new sense of political identity, a willingness to challenge the almighty power holders in Beijing, and a slogan from a science-fiction film that many of them repeated as they cleared out of the encampment in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district: “We’ll be back.” (A sliver of a protest camp remains in Causeway Bay, a busy shopping area.) “We have learned we have power when we are together and have enough people,” said Cat Tang, a tall youth who showed up for the scripted final act wearing a menacing helmet and gas mask, with safety pads on his limbs and a plastic shield on his right arm. “Today, we don’t have enough people. But tomorrow, sometime, we can.” The protests had no tangible success in forcing China to allow a more open election for Hong Kong’s next chief executive. But neither did China have any clear success in persuading the rising new generation in its wealthiest and most westernized enclave that they should passively accept China’s vision of what is best, as many of their elders have done. The intransigent positions on both sides seem likely to last. Hong Kong, if subdued for now, could well offer a continuing reminder, in an uncensored environment, of thwarted hopes for greater rights in greater China. The protests have also left the territory deeply polarized and trickier to govern. “It means the soldiers and generals of the future movement are there,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, a longtime labor leader and pro-democracy lawmaker. “The young people have awakened. This is really the gain of the movement.” Solidarity with the movement was on display as it ended. The police were forced to detain dozens of the city’s pro-democracy A-list on Thursday afternoon, hauling wealthy lawyers, prominent lawmakers, student leaders and a media mogul through a phalanx of officers and onto waiting buses with barred windows. The sight of peaceful, sober-minded pro-democracy leaders among the 209 people arrested during the clearance of the camp embodied a volatile new current in Hong Kong politics, said Fernando Cheung, a democracy supporter who is a member of the city’s Legislative Council. Many of those arrested, such as Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the city’s Democratic Party and a Queen’s Counsel of the British bar, were neither radicals nor given to confronting the police, he said. “It shows the growing divisiveness,” said Mr. Cheung, seated under a canopy surrounded by empty bottles, plastic sheets and other debris as the police cleared the site. “Society in general will have to pay a large and growing price for that.” A little later, Mr. Cheung was arrested after refusing to leave the area of the encampment, on a major road past the headquarters of the Hong Kong government. For more than a quarter-century, many of the same men, and a handful of women, have led countless demonstrations with limited visible effect. But the Umbrella Movement did not only mobilize youth who had previously kept out of politics. The long standoff also garnered an audience for more truculent groups, including raucous online communities, who argued that escalating confrontation with the authorities was the only way to break the will of the government and win concessions. At the same time, the street protests may have had the unintended effect of increasing the job security of the very person whose resignation the demonstrators called for repeatedly: Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying. “He does have very strong backing from Beijing — they’ve found him someone they can really work with in tough times,” said a person with close ties to the Hong Kong and Beijing governments, who insisted on anonymity because of the continuing political tensions. He also said he believed protesters’ vows that they would keep challenging the authorities. “We will clear it, they will regroup, we will clear it again, they will regroup,” he said. “But eventually, they will dissipate.” Charlotte Chan, a 19-year-old nursing student, reclined on a sofa that had been used to block an escalator leading to the government offices and said that even those who wanted to keep up the demonstrations could see that they lacked broad support. But Ms. Chan predicted that students would soon rebound with new plans for civil action. “This is the start, the very beginning, and the pressure will accumulate — the next protests will be more aggressive,” she said. “Those who claim political neutrality cannot go on. You can’t pretend not to care.” Some in Hong Kong worry that the protests this autumn have harmed the long-term cause of achieving greater democracy. They fret that Beijing has permanently transferred large numbers of security and intelligence specialists to Hong Kong to keep a much closer eye on the Chinese Communist Party’s many critics. Beijing, they say, could end up even more resistant to further democratization in Hong Kong for fear that a hostile government might be elected. “This movement has done more damage to the pro-democracy camp than anything in the last 17 years,” said Steve Vickers, who was a senior Hong Kong police official before Britain handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, and who said he favored the introduction of greater democracy. Under the British, and through the first 17 years of Chinese sovereignty here, the most powerful political force has been the leaders of the city’s biggest businesses — heavily Scottish at first, but now mostly Chinese families originally from the neighboring Guangdong Province or from Shanghai. These tycoons have long opposed increases in social spending, fearing they would lead to higher taxes on them. But the bruising political battle with democracy activists has hurt the tycoons’ image and their clout with top city officials and the Beijing authorities, people with a detailed knowledge of Hong Kong’s policy making said. To Beijing’s annoyance, the tycoons were reluctant to criticize the protesters for fear that their own businesses might be boycotted. One of the most politically active business leaders, a real estate developer, James Tien, publicly broke ranks in October with the administration’s support for Mr. Leung and called for more negotiations with the protesters. “The tycoons are no longer a factor; their days are past,” said the person who works closely with the Beijing and Hong Kong governments. That may be an overstatement: The tycoons have a history of hiring retiring senior civil servants and keeping close personal relationships with government leaders. But economic inequality and a lack of job opportunities for the young emerged as potent issues this fall for rallying young people, prompting an active government review of ways to address these issues. The students and other protesters vowed to keep the demonstrations alive. Late Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators gathered diagonally across the street from the demolished encampment. They stayed on the sidewalk, not blocking traffic, and shouted to wary police officers that they were engaged in one of Hong Kong’s favorite pastimes, “shopping!” Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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