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Patrick Boehler

Many of Hong Kong’s recent migrants from the Chinese mainland are struggling with mixed feelings as they witness massive pro-democracy demonstrations sweep the city.
“I have mixed feelings,” said one Baptist University student from the mainland. “I very much support the Hong Kong people in expressing their concerns. I both admire and envy them for having the ability to do so, but, on the other hand, I’m pessimistic about the outcome.”
The student, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions in the mainland, echoes a dilemma articulated by many recent migrants from the mainland the South China Morning Post has spoken to: sympathies for the demonstrators’ demands for political reform, and pessimism over their effects on Beijing’s mind and on Hong Kong’s political future.
Interest in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement has been widespread in the mainland despite record censorship efforts by officials.
Many who wrote about it online linked the protest movement with the Tiananmen student protests 25 years ago. Some even articulated calls for further political reform in the territory and wider China.
At least three people have been reportedly detained in the mainland as of Tuesday evening for posting such messages online.
“This is parallel to what happened 25 years ago in Beijing,” said one Hong Kong-based scholar, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They see it as a continuation of that struggle, the main objective and the government in Beijing has not changed.”
Censors rushed to delete far more social media posts on Sunday, when demonstrators clashed with police, than on any other day this year, according to data aggregated by the University of Hong Kong’s Weiboscope project, which monitors online censorship in China.
Hong Kong was a leading trending conversation on Chinese social media over the weekend until censors restricted mentions of the city and the sharing of photos of protests in the city.
Hong Kong has a large and steadily growing population of recent migrants from the mainland.
Some 19,067 study visas were issued to mainlanders last year, according to figures by the Immigration Department, 16.3 per cent more than in 2012.
They accounted for two-thirds of the territory’s new external students.
Some 8,017 new visas were issued for mainland citizens under the “mainland talents and professionals” scheme last year, slightly less than a year earlier. Many more from the mainland work in Hong Kong with ordinary employment visas.
More than 40 million mainland Chinese visited Hong Kong last year overall, boosting the territory’s retail and tourism economy, but also fostering anti-Chinese sentiment.
That sentiment, often articulated by critics of the government in Beijing, has in turn caused alarm and resentment among new migrants.
Ariel Lee, a student from Heilongjiang, said mainlanders were often wrongly viewed as representatives of the government in Beijing, which they did not choose and don’t represent. “We are cursed and blamed,” she said. “For us students from the mainland, we often get embarrassed lately, because if we have different ideas about Occupy Central, we can not express them like other Hongkongers because it may make us look like [we are] pro-government.”
The “Hong Kong Drifters Circle” WeChat account, popular among community of recent migrants from the mainland to Hong Kong, invited its 50,000 subscribers on Monday to share their thoughts on the civil disobedience movement under the hashtag “I am in Hong Kong and have something to say”.
The dozen people who initially used the hashtag posted photos of themselves while holding banners spelling out their opinions on Occupy Central.
Most of them indicated opposition to the movement with slogans such as “Keep calm and carry on” or “I want to go shopping in Temple Street”, the location of a popular night market in Kowloon near the protest zone in Mong Kok.
The WeChat post that launched the campaign was deleted on Tuesday, as the mainland’s censorship on Wechat caught up with deletions on Weibo, China’s other major social media platform.
WeChat only allows sharing of information among friends, while Weibo makes it possible to share outside such circles.
Student Alexis Huang, who joined the protests herself, said even though many had shared information online about the protests, they would not actively participate for fear of repercussions in the mainland.
“It is nearly impossible that [the people in] the central government would change their mind,” she said. “But people should speak out and fight for their basic rights.”
Baptist University student Lee said she opposed the protest even though she was sympathetic to its goals, because - she said - the outcome was certain failure. “I really don’t think Beijing will change its mind because of Occupy Central,” she said. “It really may anger Beijing, that’s the thing we worry about the most.” 


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Pedestrians look at notes posted by pro-democracy activists onto a passenger bus that was abandoned due to protests in Kowloon on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

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