Want a graphic summary of the past month of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong? Local graphic designer and artist Carol Hung has you covered. She posted the above (click to enlarge) last night on Facebook, a calendar showing the main events that have led us to where we are today: the pepper spray, the umbrellas, the arrests, the barricades, the Kenny G…

And where do we go from here?

Hung, 30, told CNN three weeks ago that she wanted “to make people laugh in this heavy atmosphere” with this cartoon:

Here latest work is decided less funny, but no less impressive.

(H/T Jerome Taylor)

On Monday morning, Hong Kong media reported that the barricades around Admiralty would be removed after two-plus weeks of bulwarking pro-democracy protesters in their concrete campground near government offices. The evidence was right there on the tele: moving pictures of police clearing the roads! And so, after lunch, I found myself in a friend’s dad’s car going from Wan Chai in the direction of our final destination in the western Mid-levels. We had just gotten onto Queensway and could see Pacific Place, a luxury complex of business and commerce, when we encountered… a barricade.

As we were figuring the proper detour, middle-aged and slightly older men at the scene became suddenly animated by an unexplained rage. We exited the vehicle to this ruckus amid growing layers of interested and camera-phone-toting bystanders. As the men rushed in to dismantle and drag out the barricades, which scraped loudly against the asphalt, they were met by resistance in the form of young people, first one, then others, possibly students, who stood defiantly in front of vehicles. (Yes, the obligatory reference to Tiananmen Tank Man was overheard.) They sat in the middle of the road to form a human barricade:

No one should have been surprised at the resistance. After bunkering down in their cove of dissent, dozing in tents and showering in makeshift facilities, passionately, thoughtfully, and artfully pleading their case, in multiple languages, to anyone who would listen, did authorities really think the protesters — organized and motivated as they are — would quietly step aside to watch their movement extinguished by a giant-claw douter?

Every time authorities have tried to step in, the protests have flared as a result, like an angry flame. Two and a half weeks ago, they tried pepper spray and tear gas, inadvertently giving this movement its distinctive symbol – the umbrella. But popular support for these protesters was beginning to wane last week — at least among Hong Kongers, who increasingly see the protests as a nuisance — when the government made yet another boneheaded decision. It announced, then retracted on Thursday, a meeting with student leaders. Why? In a very non-rhetorical sense, why? Why, if you decide to schedule a meeting — option A – wouldn’t you go through with said meeting, maybe try to win a bit of positive press before using that momentum to cast the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism as stubborn, callow, and unrealistic? Why, if option B is to never engage, wouldn’t you actually not engage, and let the momentum slowly fade, the protest starved out by boredom, school, and work? Indeed, the worst thing the government could have done was option C: rescind a promised talk one day before the weekend. Predictably, protest numbers skyrocketed. Here’s what it looked like from my vantage point on Friday:

And then, today, while barricades were going down, they were being built — and deployed – just as quickly:

#HongKong #OccupyCentral protesters’ local solution to crackdown peril – bamboo barricades http://t.co/VS3TZfGATo pic.twitter.com/MfRBMbSHXW

— Phelim Kine 林海 (@PhelimKine) October 13, 2014

Students mix up cement in #causewaybay to reinforce new barricades after police dismantled some… http://t.co/6oppFy8Eh5

— Sofia Mitra-Thakur (@_sofiamt) October 13, 2014

Recent reports are that city officials have now gone to Guangzhou for a forum. Government… leaders… what are you doing?

But here’s where it gets tricky. On the corner of Queensway and Tamar, the opposition was not reciting pro-government slogans, extolling the Communist Party, or Leung Chun-ying. They were upset*, sure, but their anger and frustration was directed at the protesters’ actions… not the values they represent, but the hard fact that they had incapacitated the day-to-day lives of many and threatened livelihoods. And all for what? The choice to elect leaders who, in the end, will still be beholden to Beijing? (This isn’t a popular reality, but Hong Kong relies on mainland China and will only rely on mainland China more in the coming years… but that’s a different story.)

*QUICK INTERLUDE: “Go fuck your mother,” an old man screamed at some Occupy protesters. Another man, also fairly senior and on the side of the anti-Occupy folks, blurted, “Don’t curse, don’t curse.”

They chanted, “Open the roads!,” “Clear the area!,” and “Rubbish!” (Thanks to Alicia for the translations.) Signs read, “Retake the road, I’ve suffered enough,” “Save my rice bowl,” and “Hong Kong is my home.” Some, I suppose it should be noted, spoke Cantonese with mainland accents; many others did not. On the other side, protesters sang “Congratulations to you” sarcastically. “Please leave peacefully,” a man in an orange shirt appealed, though it was unclear who he was addressing. “Please protest elsewhere.” He was expressing a sentiment I’ve heard often lately: fighting for what you believe in isn’t wrong, but preventing other people from making a living probably is.

How should we feel about these people? They are called the “anti-Occupy group,” but that term is problematic. It works on a literal level, describing those who oppose the folks occupying Central, but it has a ring of unpleasantness, doesn’t it? As if this nebulous group, in addition to being anti-protest, were also anti-justice, anti-democracy, and anti-Hong Kong. But let’s call them what they mostly are, shall we? Taxi drivers. Restaurant owners. Small business owners. Their spouses. People who understand the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and who mistrust college students who lecture them about the future. This “group” is not a faceless, masked opposition against values that Westerners on Twitter hold dear. These are the people who will ultimately decide whether this movement moves forward or subsides, because they are the ones who are skeptical — never mind the spirit of the protesters, their optimism, their courage and grace – about whether they can sustain a 30 to 50 percent reduction in business.

Above on the overpasses, pedestrians peered at the action below, snapping pictures as if at a zoo. Underneath Pacific Place, in the Admiralty subway station, a poster extolled “New rail lines for a better Hong Kong” while advertisements cycled between Calvin Klein models and McDonald’s burgers. All the way home via public transport, we heard no chatter about the protests, which seemed to exist in a different realm altogether, a small but significant part of the city that created its own vortex while everyone else went about their day, now night, undisturbed by visions of democracy or the prospect of economic disenfranchisement.

And where do we go from here? Maybe hold hands and hope better decisions are made from the top to facilitate — not hinder – a resolution. No one wants to see Hong Kong fight Hong Kong.

As a postscript: a commendation for the Hong Kong police, from the low-level blue shirts to the plainclothes cops who are asked to rove the streets to find violence to defuse. They inserted themselves between pro- and anti- groups on Monday afternoon and basically kept the peace. There’s time yet for the police to bungle a future task, but so far they’ve performed admirably under difficult circumstances.

That’s a plainclothes cop in the foreground, along with his comrades forming a protective line

As another postscript, here’s how the main Occupy protest area looked during the daytime while skirmishes happened a few blocks away:

John Ross (right), pictured in London

Last week, coverage of the embattled but peaceful pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong earned the unsolicited though controversial criticism of one John Ross.

Ross, a British academic who describes himself as a “Senior Fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University,” took to Weibo (a Chinese Twitter) to accuse foreign media of being “too hypocritical.”

“In 150 years of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, they never permitted its people to elect their own governor, and the United States didn’t criticize the UK about it,” Ross wrote. In erecting this particularly withered straw man, of course, Ross utterly ignores the actual catalyst for these protests: the promises, originally brokered by the British, then later arguably broken by Beijing, for universal suffrage, as per the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ template agreed in 1984 between the UK and China.

Ross is obviously far too concerned with the hypocrisy of foreign governments to have any time for his own.

He proposes, for example, that the suffrage system now on the table in HK – three candidates, hand-picked by Beijing: Any color you like, so long as it’s red – is “much more democratic than the United Kingdom.” That’s presumably the same UK where calls for a referendum on Scottish independence were ruthlessly censored, its leaders crushed, journalists and activists imprisoned, and where the streets of Dundee and Glasgow are now lined with friendly, tear-gas wielding soldiers to preserve Scotland’s freedoms. To put things in perspective, in 2013 the Economic Intelligence Unit used actual data to rank countries by democracy, placing Hong Kong at 65 out of 165, with a score of 6.42, making it a “flawed democracy” (the UK is 16. China? 143).

Ross doesn’t – yet – enjoy the profitable pro-Party punditry platforms of his fellow foreign cheerleaders, such as Martin Jacques or meritocratist Daniel Bell, but nevertheless is intent on filling the mould of “foreign stooge of a Chinese dictator… manipulated by those who found him useful,” like US constitutional scholar Frank Goodnow before him.  Clearly he believes there’s still gold up in those hills.

So when the “former director of London’s Economic and Business Policy to ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone,” was approached this summer by Chinese tabloid the Global Times (GT) for a profile about foreign China Watchers, he was, no doubt, expecting a nice soap-job.

After all, GT is a state-owned affiliate of People’s Daily, and its Chinese edition (whose bug-eyed editorials the English edition faithfully reproduces) is particularly known for its “nationalist” bent.

Ross, meanwhile, is a loyal toady of the new world order. The Marxist economist is so committed to serving the people that, back in 2004, he gracefully accepted a massive salary of £110,000 – more than the then-Mayor of New York – as one of “Red” Ken Livingstone’s closest crony-advisors. (The post was not advertised, which might have struck even Tony Blair as rather non-egalitarian.)*

Ross and GT would seem natural bedfellows.

Unfortunately, the paper’s reporter went off (Ross’s) script to deliver an actual piece of journalism: a long article about various overseas admirers of the Communist Party – often known as “Panda Huggers” – such as Ross and Martin Jacques, and entitled “Our Friends in the West.”

The cached article as it originally appeared

Within hours of this going online – and being enthusiastically shared among Twitter’s China hands – Ross was on the line to complain. Demonstrating his commitment to Party values by attempting to get the young journalist in trouble, Ross demanded immediate expunging of negative comments about himself. “I am well used to expect such articles by people such as the Southern Media Group,” Ross fumed, “but it was a great surprise to see it in Global Times.”

The reasons for Ross’s rage became abundantly clear: “This article attacks and attempts to discredit me by the typical methods of suppression of information and selective quotation,” he wrote (our emphases). Ross then demanded that several lines be removed – aka “suppression of information” – to make way for pre-approved remarks, supplied by him, inserted in their stead… a.k.a. “selective quotation” (!)

The article originally noted that – in Ross’s own words – he had been criticized by “British right wing [sic] writer Nick Cohen”:

Original text containing criticism of Ross as first written in the Guardian

This passage was excised at an unknown date, after publication, to be replaced with a glowing passage that displays a complete volte face in both facts and tone:

The new passage now features praise from former BBC chairman Gavyn Davies

Of Cohen, all reference had vanished like a dissident in the night (apparently, “Cohen has no knowledge of economics,” as Ross fumed in his e-mail). Also missing:

The original contained a scathing reference to Ross’ tireless work in the state-media sector, now deleted

Not content with neutering these small jabs, the overweening Ross then had an entire 90-word paragraph inserted, in which he demonstrates that he has, at least, apparently as much grasp of modern Chinese history as Cohen purportedly has of economics:

According to Ross, who simply ignores the entire periods of 1949-1976 and 1989-1992,  individual entrepreneurship is now the standard of measurement for a state’s human-rights record

Meanwhile, the fawning comments about Ross from his boss at the Chongyang Institute – a state-backed “think tank” run by a former hack from the Chinese edition of People’s Daily, Wang Wen – were unsurprisingly left untouched. The article, once a spiky piece of journalism, had effectively become a standard fluff piece larded with dripping encomia to Ross – all under the byline of a “senior reporter” who was powerless to prevent it.

Although he was indeed interviewed for the article, Ross concluded his email of complaint by remarking that he was “astonished that Global Times should publish such an attack on myself… without giving [me] any chance to reply to these attacks.”

Well, now we do have Ross’s reply:  In the form of the professional harassment of a female journalist at a state-owned paper, a shrill demand for heavy-handed censorship, and the wholesale manipulation of someone else’s work to further his own agenda. The difference is, we’re not the slightest bit astonished.

p.s.

@akaDashan Please learn colloquial Chinese idioms that even the State Grid understands as no such weibo exists

— John Ross (@JohnRoss43) October 8, 2014

*While in position under Livingstone, Ross enjoyed 12 foreign jamborees in just three years, according to WorkersLiberty.org. But his finest hour came after Livingstone was defeated by Tory candidate Boris Johnson in the bitterly contested 2012 London mayoral elections.

Ross lost his incumbency – a hazard of democracy to the humble public servant-crony – but threatened Johnson with the use of “m’learned friends.” The justification? Before rejoining the ranks of the common man, Mayor Livingstone had slipped a new “unfair dismissal” rule in, which allowed political appointees the same redundancy rights as, well, chimney sweeps and nurses. Well – almost the same. Ross got a thoroughly socialist settlement, in the region of £200,000. Bottles of Karl Marx champagne all round!

You can follow the author on Twitter @MrRFH

A dispatch from Hong Kong, where life – parties, business — continues as usual… with one high-profile exception.

It’s Day 8 of Occupy Central, or Umbrella Revolution, if you will. A few nights ago I was enjoying a nice steak dinner at La Vache! in the heart of Soho district when the conversation steered itself to the events happening only a few blocks away. As the wine flowed, so did the opinions of the dinner guests.

In case you haven’t heard, tensions are high here in Hong Kong. You feel it on the streets, at dinner tables, and of course on Facebook. The protests kicked off Sunday, September 28, when tear gas exploded, protesters covered their faces with makeshift masks and continued to hold their ground using the only tools they had, sheer numbers, umbrellas, and dare I say maybe a bit of force?… Monday morning came and the crowds dwindled, as peaceful protesters reported to work. As the 6 o’clock bell struck, protesters flooded back to the streets and Occupy Central was yet again in full swing. Rinse and repeat on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday saw public holidays here in Hong Kong and reportedly the largest number of protesters, who expanded their hold — Central, Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok had all been occupied. The city was forced to cancel its annual National Day fireworks.

Roads are emptier and the typical wait time at the cross-harbor tunnel is nonexistent, which is nice. The mass transit railway “MTR,” on the other hand, is getting a constant level of insane traffic, usually only seen on Fridays at 6 pm. Those wanting to be part of the action travel via MTR, as all major occupy zones are close to subway stations. Most of the city is still accessible, though some people are experiencing difficulty in maintaining their normal routines. Some schools have been forced to cancel activities, while many business owners are feeling the pressure to think ahead, as rent is due at the end of the month. And let’s not forget our outspoken Hong Kong taxi drivers, who now complain about a slowdown in business.

Outside of occupy zones, city life continues best that it can. The local watering holes in Lan Kwai Fong (Central) are filled with the usual rowdy expats and local ladies doing their best to navigate the steep terrain as they wobble in their four-inch red bottom heels. Shopping malls and restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) are full, and though I don’t have access to their financials, it appears it’s business as usual. On Thursday Hong Kong hosted the ever-trendy “Run For Your Lives” zombie race with thousands of people, which ended with a packed after-party including an outdoor concert and live DJs.

As the police sit back and allow the peaceful protesters to carry on, a new wave of Hong Kongers have hit the streets – the “blue ribbons,” who are protesting the protesters. Mong Kok, typically known as one of the more violent parts of the city, where in my earlier days I had been chased from a local karaoke bar in a classic case of a friend speaking to the wrong girl, has seen some of the most physical clashes of pro- and anti-government protesters recently. No surprise.

A group of masked men, who looked eerily similar to the yellow ribbons (the Occupy protesters) fighting on the front lines of Admiralty, also approached the Causeway Bay area and started ripping down barricades in an attempt to take back the streets. “Shame on those cowards for covering their face,” “it was a peaceful protest until they came,” and “where are the police now to stop the violence” are common Facebook status updates by my proud yellow-ribbon-supporting friends. If the police haven’t been overworked enough, they now have a new duty they’re destined to fail at – protecting anti-government protesters. Rumors are swirling that these blue ribbons are merely paid thugs, possibly from the Triad, ordered to create chaos so the police can come in and shut the whole thing down. To top it off, women are reportedly being sexually harassed in the confrontations. Sickening.

At this point, who knows what to believe. I’m no different from most people who’ve settled here and call Hong Kong a second home: I believe in equality and I want to live in a world where we all have a say in choosing the leaders who represent us. But I also understand the perspective of those who have built Hong Kong to where it is today, in spite of a previous generation of colonialists, and shudder at the thought of all that work being undone. So, is the student-led protest the right move for Hong Kong at this time? What about sitting back and doing nothing?

One dinner guest felt strongly that by not participating in the protests, you must be a blue ribbon supporter… maybe a bit strong, but it made me think, what is the other option? If not now, when?

Another friend recommended that the yellow ribbons consolidate to one occupy zone — this would help bring order back to the city and ideally end the violence.

A local friend stuck to his guns and commented that everyone just needs to go home. “You can’t win against Beijing, you’ve made your point, now go home.”

The unfortunate reality is, Hong Kong people are fighting Hong Kong people, and it’s hurting the city. Violence is not the answer, but is blocking the streets and shutting down our city? To end our dinner, we held a final glass of red in the air and yelled “yám bùi” (飲杯, cheers) and toasted to friendship, however divided we were.

At the end of the day, I’m really thankful to live in Hong Kong. I don’t want to see the city take the biggest loss, which I fear is the only outcome — everyone in Hong Kong will lose.

Neil is a Cantonese-speaking Canadian Expat who’s lived in Hong Kong for seven years.

As a twentysomething American, I take my Facebook newsfeed for granted.

The fact that one friend can link to an article criticizing US drone use in the Middle East below another friend’s posting of cats in costume below another’s picture of Hong Kong blanketed by protesters seems completely unremarkable.

But living in China can give you a new perspective on the things you take for granted.

~

I work for a sub-branch of CCTV geared toward international video news, and we have several TV screens in the office that run 24-hour feeds of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and others – ostensibly to keep up with the competition. But I returned from our canteen this past Sunday evening to find six or seven of my Chinese colleagues glued to a screen showing a live-feed from CNN.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something is happening in Hong Kong,” said one of my colleagues, a 25-year-old Chinese woman who studied English at a university in Wuhan.

Normally, my office mates, to put it politely, less than enthusiastic about keeping up with international news. Few scour the Internet during work hours to cross-check stories against international outlets, and even fewer read the news in their free time. So to see my friends avidly watching CNN while on the clock was decidedly out of the ordinary.

“You mean about the protests?” I replied.

“What protests?” called another Chinese colleague who wasn’t watching.

“Yeah, come see,” said the first girl.

A CNN reporter stood live from Central Square in Hong Kong amid a sea of students wearing plastic coverings over their eyes and mouths. I had kept up with the story, having seen pictures like this on my Facebook newsfeed for the past several days, mostly from Hong Kong friends who were proud of the protesters and shocked at the sudden intensity of the police response. But I realized this must have been the first time many of my colleagues had seen these images.

The CNN reporter then said, “Now we’ll turn to an elderly resident of Hong Kong who says that the movement reminds him of the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing…”

Suddenly, the screen went blank.

My colleagues and I blinked at one another. We all instinctively looked over our shoulders, toward the doorway, into the corners of the newsroom. Was somebody from the inner government here – inside the offices of our state-run enterprise – cutting off the feed?

Moments later, the picture returned. It was that same CNN reporter in Central, but clearly waiting in the silence that comes after a live interview has finished.

One of my other colleagues, a 70-year-old veteran journalist who was among the first Chinese to be sent abroad to study, a man who cut his journo teeth on assignments across Africa in the ’60s, said, “Headquarters! CCTV headquarters must be watching the channel, and they cut the feed as soon as Tiananmen was mentioned…”

After that, everyone became noticeably less engaged in the story. We had all been reminded that, despite the routine and normalcy of our daily work, the unspoken but widely understood guidelines as to what to write and what not to, we were still newswriting in a society where information can be dangerous, and something as innocuous as a TV interview can carry far-reaching consequences.

I went home decidedly fazed. Pulling up my Facebook feed and looking at pictures of the latest round of umbrella-carrying students ducking through tear gas, I felt slightly sickened — not just by what was going on, but by the very fact that I could see it, follow it, and form opinions about it. Every day, I consume vast amounts of information and knowledge with little thought that, in some parts of the world, information is as rare and precious a commodity as water in the Sahara.

J. Stevens is a philosophically-minded journalist in Beijing searching for glimpses of Daoism in the cracks of modern Chinese society. He lives in Beijing.