I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”.
I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective.
This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes.
The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.
I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective.
This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes.
The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.