Berkley Center

On December 15, 2014 the last group of protesters who joined the "Umbrella Revolution" of Hong Kong withdrew from their camp in Admiralty. The three month mass demonstration against the mainland government’s nomination for the candidates in the chief executive election of Hong Kong was over.

The protesters said, “We will be back!” just before they withdrew, and they really did come back two weeks before the Lunar New Year’s holidays. On February 1, 2015 13,000 Hong Kong citizens gathered at Victoria Park, the largest park on Hong Kong Island, and marched toward the Central District they once occupied last year. Daisy Chan, the vice convener of Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), said that the parade is an extension to the last “Occupy Central” movement. According to AFP, she added, “The rally continues to call out people to join the democracy movement.”

Nevertheless, living in a student residential college at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for one and a half months, I have felt uncertain about whether the resumed protest really “called out” the students who tried to occupy Central and Admiralty last fall. It was not just because the number of those who participated in the parade was much less than the 50,000 people expected by CHRF. In January 2015, as they always have done in the beginning of every spring semester, the executive committee members of each college were performing mass dance and encouraging the local students to vote in favor of their successful selection. The students are no longer insisting on democracy either at the square in front of the main library or on the nearby street. Most of the local students did not recognize that another parade following the Umbrella Revolution was scheduled for February. Only some yellow pieces of cloth saying “我們要真普選, wo men yao zhen pu xuan” (We Want the Real Election), drenched and torn by a rainstorm, reminded me of the circumstances of Hong Kong a month ago.

Are Hong Kong people becoming milder in the year of sheep as CY Leung, the chief executive of Hong Kong, wished in his Chinese New Year address? Not really. However, now hostility of Hong Kong residents against mainland China is not directed toward the undemocratic central government in Beijing. Rather, the citizens blame the mainland tourists who annoy them in their daily life in the crowded shopping malls. In the New Territories region of Hong Kong, hundreds of mainlanders coming across the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border are notorious for heavily buying up anything they see at drugstores and cosmetic shops. Taking advantage of free entry, traders with suitcases from Shenzhen and Guangzhou try to resell necessities in mainland cities. Last weekend, about a hundred Hong Kong citizens who hate the mainland traders filled New Town Plaza, one of the largest malls in New Territories. They shouted “Please do not come to our city, and go back to the mainland, okay?” Although the police used batons to disperse them, at least three protesters were reported injured.

The influence of the mainland on Hong Kong has gradually increased, as the twentieth anniversary of the handover is coming soon in 2017. Now secondary students in Hong Kong are required to learn Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin proficiency is emphasized as much as English language skills in the local job market. Therefore, a recent series of protests representing blatant antipathy for the Chinese government and the mainlanders seems surprising. Though the movement for democracy in universities stopped heating up fast, can the protests against the mainland traders resume the opposition against the political interference of Beijing?