Hong Kong fury

Whatever the authorities in Beijing say, the anger on the streets of Hong Kong isn’t synthetic, nor is it stirred up by ‘foreign forces’. The serious, dedicated atmosphere of 2014’s umbrella protest, which lasted 79 days, is back, only this time with more violence.

Of course, the vast majority of Hong Kongers won’t be personally threatened by the passing of the extradition law — which allows Beijing to try suspects who, as matters stand, cannot be rendered across the border — but legal changes like this eat away at everyone’s security. At first, no doubt, those extradited to the mainland will be rapists and murderers. But later the prime candidates for extradition will be people who have infuriated Beijing by their public statements.

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No one in Hong Kong has forgotten the case of the five Causeway Bay booksellers whose shop stocked a lurid paperback about President Xi Jinping’s private life. Under Hong Kong’s laws this was perfectly acceptable; yet they were kidnapped, taken to China and given a hard time. The new legislation would codify and legalise that sort of danger.

So even allowing for a certain amount of wishful inflation by the protest’s organisers, a seventh of Hong Kong’s entire population of nearly eight million has been turning out for the demonstrations; and the average age has been estimated at 23. In most countries this would at least make the government reconsider. But for Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Hong Kong’s chief executive, who spent her early career working for the British administration, backing down without Beijing’s specific agreement isn’t a choice she is free to make.

Vast crowds protesting in the streets is Beijing’s abiding nightmare. Thirty years ago, a million people took over Tiananmen Square, and although the crowds shrank dramatically over the following weeks, the authorities shot the remaining protesters down rather than negotiate with them.