Let’s be real here, China has a long history of doing things better than the US. Their economy is growing faster than ours, their school systems are better than ours, and up until a few days ago, they even held protests better than ours.
Those protests are part of a larger movement called the Umbrella Revolution and were held to display the people’s stance on the so-called “electoral reform” recently implemented in the Hong Kong government. On paper, the reform gives every citizen the right to democratically elect the Chief Executive based on the desires of the people. In practice, each and every candidate must be nominated for election by local tycoons, business factions, and Beijing-loyalists. This ultimately forces the ruling body of Beijing to disregard the average citizen in order to gain the favor of the wealthy business mogul, for fear of losing their good graces and therefore their power to stay in office.
Originally, the protests displayed consisted of model citizens, with the slogan “putting the ‘civil’ back in ‘civil disobedience’” often used to refer to the good conduct held by the demonstrators. Volunteers would walk around with trash bags and collect litter to avoid messing up the roads, and there had scarcely been any major reports of violence between the protestors and police. However, the government barely acknowledged the demonstration at first, firmly stating that the upcoming elections of 2017 would remain unchanged despite the protests, causing tensions to rise and citizens to grow restless.
Everything changed on October 8th, when a huge force of police officers moved to clear out demonstrators from a tunnel outside the city government headquarters. Prior to this incident, there had been scattered reports of misuse of pepper spray on protestor, and very rarely tear gas, but for the most part they had stayed isolated and everything was kept relatively passive. It seems that the protestors had enough by this point however, as there were reports of demonstrators chucking debris at police from an overhead while they clashed with the citizens below. The real spark to ignite the powder keg came from the recorded beating of a leading democracy advocate, Ken Tsang, by six police officers during the tunnel conflict. The video is just under a minute long but clearly shows the ruthless beating of Tsang while he lays on the ground in hand cuffs. The video has since become a rallying cry for the movement, serving to reignite both sympathy felt for the demonstrators and their cause, as well as reinforce skepticism towards the local police, and by extension, the government.
Even despite the recent escalation of the conflict, the current leaders of Beijing still remain firm in their stance of refusing to change anything for future elections. With both parties seemingly unwilling to back down, it leaves us to wonder what the citizens will be willing to do in order to make their voices heard.