[video=youtube;bI9MGFH8WJw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI9MGFH8WJw[/video]Emily Lau of the pan-democrats gets called out for taking going to the hair salon
A pro-democracy protester takes a photo with a camera attached to his helmet during a standoff with riot police in the Mongkok shopping district of Hong Kong early October 19, 2014. Violent clashes erupted early on Sunday in a Hong Kong protest hotspot as unarmed pro-democracy activists once again confronted riot police despite the confirmation of talks between protest leaders and officials early this week. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
Pro-democracy protesters shout at advancing riot police on their encampment in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, early Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014.
Riot police officers advance on a pro-democracy protest encampment in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, early Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014.
Riot polices arrive at a protest site during clashes with pro-democracy protesters at the Mongkok shopping district of Hong Kong October 19, 2014. Hong Kong pro-democracy activists recaptured parts of a core protest zone from police early on Saturday after hours of turmoil that the city's police chief warned undermined order and jeopardised public safety. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
A pro-democracy protester is taken away by police offers at an occupied section of a roadway in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong early Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014.
Iconic umbrellas used in the pro-democracy protests dubbed '"The Umbrella Revolution" are used to display portraits of Hong Kong's embattled leader Leung Chun-ying in an occupied area in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014. Hong Kong riot police battled with thousands of pro-democracy protesters for control of the city's streets Saturday, using pepper spray and batons to hold back defiant activists who returned to a protest zone that officers had partially cleared. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)
Pro-democracy protesters remove barriers before clashing with police on a road in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong early on October 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ed Jones)
Protesters cry as some of the protesters are beaten by riot police in the occupied area in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong, early Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014. New scuffles broke out Friday night between Hong Kong riot police and pro-democracy activists in a district where police cleared protesters earlier in the day. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Riot police officers use batons against protesters at a main road in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong Friday, Oct. 17, 2014. Hong Kong riot police struggled to hold back hundreds of defiant pro-democracy activists who returned to a district that officers had partially cleared earlier Friday. Police used pepper spray and batons to fend off a huge crowd that had gathered in Mong Kok, and several protesters were seen knocked to the ground or carried away by police. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Riot police officers use batons against protesters at a main road in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong Friday, Oct. 17, 2014
Pro-democracy protests took a violent turn in Hong Kong early Sunday morning, as police officers clashed with demonstrators in the territory's Mong Kok neighborhood. The scuffles, which caused at least three injuries, occurred amid news that Hong Kong's government plans to meet with student leaders on Tuesday in an effort to resolve the crisis.
Mong Kok's role as a separate front in the protest movement, however, will complicate efforts at a resolution. The neighborhood, located in Hong Kong's Kowloon district, is a densely populated, working-class area where residents living cheek-by-jowl mingle with shoppers drawn to Nathan Road's famous retail area.
“Mong Kok is very self-organized; it's a real people's movement.”
Previous protests, by contrast, have occurred in Admiralty, a neighborhood on Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong Island encompasses the city's most elegant commercial streets and its main government buildings. Protests there, while spirited, have been more orderly than those on Mong Kok, where a lack of sophisticated crowd-control infrastructure has exacerbated the chaos. In Admiralty, groups like Occupy Central for Peace and Love and the Hong Kong Federation of Students are representatives of the students. The protests in Mong Kok, by contrast, have been more spontaneous, and appear to ebb and flow based less on political developments than on behavior by the police.
Trey Menefee, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, who described this contrast in great detail in a recent blog post, told me that "Mong Kok is very self-organized; it's a real people's movement. There isn't a representative with whom the government can negotiate."
Protesters in both Admiralty and Mong Kok share political goals. Hong Kongers in both neighborhoods want Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's chief executive, to resign, and they want the government to grant residents universal suffrage in choosing its leadership. Leung, while refusing to consider these demands, has vowed to work with Hong Kong's protest leadership to seek a political solution to the crisis.
Hong Kong's student leaders, however, have far less influence in Mong Kok, the site of Sunday morning's violence.
"The consensus among the Mong Kok protesters was that, even if Admiralty could be negotiated into packing up, the movement in Mong Kok would stay," said Menefee.
The umbrellas are taking their toll on Beijing. The Central Committee may have managed, so far, to avoid major bloodshed in its standoff with Hong Kong demonstrators, but the clash between democracy defenders and guardians of Communist doctrine is reverberating in many of China’s provinces and is dimming its hope of peacefully annexing the independent island of Taiwan and uniting it with the mainland.
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong are sending a grim signal to businesspeople in the region. After years of improved commercial ties between Taiwan and its giant neighbor, many Taiwanese sense that the thaw is moving too fast for comfort. The clashes in Hong Kong between the Beijing-backed authorities and demonstrators bode ill for Taiwan’s advocates of further integration with the mainland.
Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has done more than any of his predecessors to ease tensions, signing dozens of treaties with Beijing that seemed unthinkable until very recently. Yet, even before events in Hong Kong started to dominate our television screens in late September, young Taiwanese protested against his cozying up to China, forcing him to rethink a major trade agreement with the Communist monolith the island separated from in 1949.
Now, as Ma’s Kuomintang party faces a challenge, in a round of local elections on November 29, against candidates of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, the president has sharply rebuked Beijing’s leadership, expressing solidarity with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
“This is a major test case for the new leadership in China,” said a senior diplomat from the region, who has managed his country’s relations with Beijing. Speaking on condition of anonymity, as criticism of China is a delicate matter in the region, the diplomat said that Xi Jinping, not yet two years in office as China’s leader, seems “unpredictable.” The way he brings the Hong Kong crisis to a conclusion—peaceful or otherwise—will not only put to the test Xi’s ability to handle internal affairs but also China’s relations with its neighbors.
As the Hong Kong crisis grew, Xi displayed his political tin ear by inviting pro-China businessmen from Taiwan to visit the mainland. “One country, two systems” was the best way to realize reunification between the mainland and the independent island, he said. But Hong Kong’s business district was being besieged by protesters—hardly the right time to resell that dubious idea, which China seems to have unilaterally reneged on in Hong Kong.
I know, the remainder of the article was not very interesting.But the recent clashes in the streets seemed to have ended any hope that Beijing would let the city’s long-established democracy continue to thrive.