Opinion | Hong Kong protests will not fizzle out on their own – Beijing needs to rethink its approach

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has achieved little with her wilted olive branch of withdrawing an extradition bill previously pronounced “dead”. The mass protests she helped to spark, now in their fourth month, rage on.

The protests have become matters of sovereignty and security, therefore a national issue, Lam previously said, in effect washing her hands of the crisis. She also said Beijing is willing to play the long game.

Any view that the protests will fizzle out, like with the 2014 “umbrella movement”, could be a miscalculation. If this is Beijing’s view, it has been misled. Hong Kong’s administrators and others who advise Beijing are clueless about public sentiment.

Lam’s attempt to amend the extradition law is a prime example. Similarly, over a month ago, Maria Tam Wai-chu, deputy director of the Basic Law Committee under the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, said the protest “flame is dying down” and that hopefully, the protests would flag once schools reopen. Look at what is happening now!

The protesters are determined to fight for their cause. This spirit was conveyed to me by Demosisto leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung, and founder of Hong Kong National Party Andy Chan Ho-tin in separate conversations nearly a year ago. Then, pro-democracy campaigners were languishing after the Occupy Central fiasco, and the government had banned Chan’s pro-independence party. While their goals do not match, both Wong and Chan expressed a similar spirit.

Chan said the trend for “a separate identity” for Hong Kong “will continue until the goal is realised”. Wong, who seeks not independence but Hongkongers’ right to self-determination and the election of lawmakers and the chief executive by universal suffrage, said that “for Hong Kong to gain real democracy, it may have to wait until Xi Jinping steps down”. He and his supporters, he said, were prepared for it.