Impossible to get away from politics these days in Hong Kong, and the conclusion that the majority of Hong Kongers are pro-protesters/democracy

 

From March 2016 to October 2019 

 

A different look at the same statistics

Before June 9th of this year, my blog had mainly been about movies, hiking, food, travel and drink -- with some whimsy thrown in by way of the likes of Funassyi, Hello Kitty and (Puppet) Ponyo.  It's not like I was apolitical: indeed, with my participation in the Umbrella Movement along with a number of protest marches and June 4th vigils over the years, some people might even have pegged me as an activist.  But it's also true that I often spent far more time regularly thinking about that which made me happy rather than often could upset.

Since the day of the largest protest march that Hong Kong had seen in years (yet would go on to be surpassed in size just a week later) though, and especially after the shocking events of June 12th (which, sadly, have also since been surpassed -- this time in terms of levels of brutality along with scale), I've regularly felt compelled to try to draw people's attentions to political troubles and other goings-on that Hong Kong has experienced for some 20 weeks now.  Indeed, most days, I've felt it to be somewhat criminal if I were to blog about a lighter subject (though it's also true that there has been the odd day when I've decided that a bit of light relief might actually be helpful).

In recent months, this tendency towards political discussion also has spread into my real life.  As a matter of fact, I've found it well nigh impossible since June of this year to have an extended conversation with anyone in Hong Kong that was completely devoid of political talk.  I think this is partly due not only to my feeling a need to emote and share my feelings on what's been happening to the place I've come to look upon as home but many of my friends being this way inclined too.  Then there's the fact of politics and police actions having such direct and wide impact on people's lives these days.

As an example: while having my hair cut a couple of months ago, I found myself listening to my hairstylist lamenting his local MTR station having had tear gas fired into it as well as talking about how business had been negatively affected by the protests.  And when attending a film preview earlier this month, the film publicist started telling me about how they had chosen the particular screening venue by trying to figure out which would be the part of Hong Kong with a cinema that would be the least troubled by the police, who Hong Kongers are more and more likely to view as bringing trouble into areas into which they venture rather than keeping it at bay.     

By and large, the political views I hear tend to be pro-protests and -protesters and anti-police, -Hong Kong government (particularly Carrie Lam) and -Beijing.  For a time, I had wondered whether I had gotten stuck in an echo chamber by way of people with markedly different viewpoints having decided to "unfriend" me on Facebook and stop talking to me in real life.  But over the past few months, I've also gotten talking to a number of people I previously hadn't exchanged political opinions with and/or I had previously never spoken to at all -- and still found everyone to think extremely lowly of Hong Kong's Chief Executive (in Name Only)!

Consequently, I've become increasingly convinced over these past few months that the majority of Hong Kongers are indeed pro-protest, -protester and -democracy -- like has been shown by way of surveys by the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for Communication and Public Opinion (reported in Ming Pao and translated into English by the very useful Hong Kong Columns -- Translated).   To be sure, some people might point to the surveys' sample sizes as being on the low side.  But they still are larger than the 30 people chosen to ask Carrie Lam questions at a "community dialogue" session last month (of whom, as it turned out, 24 were identified as "yellow", 4 as neutral and 4 as "blue")! 

In addition, there are people who will argue that these days in Hong Kong, many "light blue" pro-government/Beijing folks tend to publicly identify themselves as "neutral" while some would say the same there are pro-democracy individuals who also think it's less trouble to publicly identify as "neutral".  For my part, I think there's some truth in both these suggestions.  I also reckon that the two groups may balance themselves out as well as both contribute to inflating the "neutral" numbers.  

In any case, it's indisputable that, in the latest survey, the combined numbers of "neutrals" and "pro-Beijing/establishment" individuals are smaller than the combined numbers of identified "democrats" and "localists".  Put another way: it's not just that the majority of my friends are "yellow" but, as a matter of fact, Hong Kongers in general!