At the heart of the crisis, the South China Morning Post uses reason to talk of the protest and its implications. Its editorial says, “It is not in Hong Kong’s interest that the stalemate continues; as city authorities said yesterday, the disruption to lives and livelihoods is unwarranted and damaging. The behaviour of the protesters has been exemplary — they have been good-natured and peaceful. Hallmarks of days-long protests overseas, vandalism and littering among them, have been absent. But the longer the stand-off continues, the more risk there is of the Occupy movement being hijacked by radicals. Irate citizens may want to take the law into their own hands.”
The Chinese ire at this development is being widely showcased by many international newspapers as they refer to the official warning issued by China to Hong Kong. China’s People’s Daily ran portions of the official warning: The demonstrators, it said, have “incited the public, paralysed transportation, disrupted businesses … and interfered with the daily lives of Hong Kong people” and should “bear the legal responsibilities for their illegal activities.” The unsigned editorial goes on to ask Hong Kong residents to support police working to quell Occupy Central.
In contrast to such dire messages, much of the West is empathic about Hong Kong. Says the Toronto Sun: “For President Xi Jinping and the all-controlling Communist Party, the street protests in China’s most important commercial hub pose the gravest political challenge in a generation. How Xi responds will determine whether China’s Communist leadership is prepared to honour the spirit of the “one country, two systems” model that was promised when Britain handed back the former colony in 1997.”
“The miracle ingredient that distinguished Hong Kong was not democracy, which Britain refused to deliver, but rule-of-law. The freedoms that came from clean, impartial and independently administered courts enabled Hong Kong’s unique mingling of Chinese traditional folk society and Western civil society. It produced global banks, vibrant newspapers, thriving businesses and also formidable police and impartial courts that were envied by nations that had been far more generously endowed,” the paper said.
The Sydney Morning Herald appeals to China to show open-mindedness. It writes: “The Herald urges authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing to respond to the peaceful protests in a peaceful manner that is worthy of China’s great power aspirations. And we firmly stand with the vast majority of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people who are fighting to defend the institutions that have made their great society work.”
The Boston Globe stresses on the obvious breaking point between China and Hong Kong, which it says has been evident all along. “In many ways, the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong has been on a collision course with China’s Communist Party ever since the British gave back the territory in 1997,” it says. “China has been slowly expanding its control over the city, supplying more and more of the fresh water, electricity, and food that it needs to survive.
