Last week Carrie Lam, the embattled chief executive of Hong Kong’s increasingly beleaguered and unpopular government, deplored the latest round of protests against her administration. “Selfish” protestors, she declared, had “ruined” Christmas for millions of ordinary Hongkongers. Doubtless some of the territory’s citizens agreed with her but, having just returned from spending Christmas in Hong Kong there was little obvious sign that her appraisal of the latest round of demonstrations was either correct or the view of the majority of Hongkongers, silent or not. Riot police were much in evidence but then they always are in Hong Kong these days.
Tomorrow may prove a different matter. Hundreds of thousands of Honkkongers, not all of them young by any means, are expected to march through the city demanding that Lam’s government finally begins to listen to their demands. “Glory to Hong Kong: revolution of our times,” they say and they may be right.
This is not simply a matter of now or even of next year.
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