I remember one quote in the Times 97, something like that " Will China change HK, or will HK change China". I am hoping for the later. As to many young HKer not identifying with China, isn't that their rights? Why should they? It's the people that should matter not some the political identity. That said, the misunderstands from both sides are truly bothersome.
HK has been a constant reminder of China's dysfunctional past (~~ mid-1800s to just before Nixon's visit). PRC's policies, since the handover, has been to marginalize the strident HK
He said "feelings", not that there really are any. I can understand them having those "feelings" since Shanghai and other cities have been developing fast while Hong Kong is pretty much standing still or going backwards. After this occupy central event Hong Kong economy will only get worse.
It genuinely makes me sad to see that there is an inevitable bloodbath coming in mainland China to get rid of these f***ers. I just hope that when the time comes, people around the world press their government to support Chinese people even though it would mean less lucrative trade relations with the current government.
I smelled this years ago, China made all those promises because it needed Hong Kong the way it was. Now with Shang Hai and other cities catching up with the trading, technology, infrastructure to deal with foreigners, why should China treat Hong Kong better than the other cities ?
those who did very well under UK are also doing well under PRC. in order word, the protest is not supported by the rich. those waving flags are young kids who have no idea and trying to antagonize the other side.
by the way, I think it's naïve to say that mainlanders are sympathetic with HK or would even support this. recently, many mainlanders are realizing that HK people are just not nice to them and look down upon them. I have seen many videos where even intellectuals are just cursing HK people online in TV interviews. those are extreme, but it nevertheless reflect the new sentiment in mainland about HK. my wife is a professor in one of the universities here, most US educated mainland professors don't support this and openly showing their pride for National Day yesterday with 'tweeter' like posts. let's just say that mainlander support is dwindling.
You don't think there's an effort by the government to downplay Cantonese culture in the region whether through enforcing Mandarin language as lingua franca in schools and business (when some in the region don't even speak Mandarin well) or encouraging the influx of Chinese from other regions?
there may be a little bit, sure. most of the CCP leaders can't speak good Mandarin themselves. so at least they are not purposely doing it for the political reasons at least.
It all comes down to the Leaders of HK. British gov't was smart enough to send someone at least half competent to make the society progressing while gouging HK for money on the other hand. All the Chinese hand picked leaders so far sucks so bad. Other than the first one, they are all corrupted to the core and only know how to suck up to the CCP. Hence all the self censoring and corruption cases being discovered and most of the HK citizens had been alienated. All those 50centers are saying HK never have democracy while under British control and didn't fight for it. It was completely wrong, it's just the movement was not as wide spread (e.g. 1988 Direct Election protest) because at least we got competent leaders that actually did something to help back then so not everyone was furious to the point to come out. E.g. Setting up ICAC to get rid of almost all corruption until China took over was one of the most successful example. The bottom line is when a leader is so incompetent and corrupted, citizens would wish they can vote for their leader. At least that way, they would be responsible for the outcome instead of just being a piece of meat sitting on the cutting board.
All the good movies come from Hong Kong, the mainland only makes propaganda movies. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HYwhqo3u140" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
again that doesn't make any sense. There is no such thing as downplaying Cantonese culture, or even the language for that matter. Guang Dong or Canton is a province, and Cantonese Culture has been alive and well for like thousands of years, Cantonese is not a Hong Kong thing, it just happens that Hong Kong is situated in the area. As far the language thing goes, that has nothing to do with enforcing any culture. You have to understand that China has hundreds of dialects and Cantonese is just one of them, the effort to standarize one language as the official language is purely for convenience of communications. In most parts of the country people speak their own dialects at home, but have the ability to speak official or proper mandarin if they need to communicate with people from other areas of China. By the way people in Beijing don't exactly speak the "official mandarin" either, they have their own sort of dialect that "official mandarin" is based on. I don't think any of the higher leaders of the country are from Beijing, nor are their native tongues mandarin, but they all have to speak mandarin officially (with terrible accents no less) or else 90% of the country wouldn't understand what the hell they are saying.
Everyone in china speaks at least one of the hundreds of dialects. Neither Mao or Deng could speak mandarin so their speech could be hard to understand to a lot of people. When my wife and her relatives bring on their dialect i cant understand a thing. Same when she goes to my hometown. We definetely wouldnt have been be together if we didnt both learn mandarin in school.
I support the right to protest, but get off the street and stop blocking people who have places to go. At least the Occupy Wall Street idiots camped out in public open spaces. These protestors need to get a life and stop impacting people with jobs. Winter knocked out the Occupy losers. Maybe a typhoon could do the same there.
Interesting thread, guys. Don't know much about HK and China. We are planning our next big trip to the area probably next summer. It will be interesting as leading US capitalists sure love them those cheap docile Chinese workers. It will be tough to keep them content as China keeps increasing its inequality and the workers start wanting more of the pie.
Yes, so this might seem like a trivial item for the D&D, film, but think about it. China will start censoring Hong Kong movies if they feel it's too violent or not too PC for them.
As the other poster said it's more a feeling that policies setting up special economic zones have been been benefiting places like Shanghai to the detriment of Hong Kong.
