My Take | HK eyes open to real China after fall of Western-allied opposition

Far from being afraid, Hongkongers now do what sensible people would have done long ago – dine, shop and play on the mainland

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Hongkongers head to Shenzhen via Lo Wu station during the National Day holiday on October 1, 2024. Photo: Eugene Lee

Published: 9:00pm, 6 Jun 2025

Going by some past Western media reports, China tried to ban Christmas. Ironically, though, many Hongkongers chose to celebrate last Christmas on the mainland because of attractions such as special festive events at giant shopping centres as well as superior services and affordable rates at top hotels in Shenzhen and nearby cities.

Last Christmas Eve alone, more than 289,000 Hongkongers crossed into Shenzhen. But that wasn’t unusual. Nowadays, people dine and shop daily, and do much else, across the border. So much for our supposed fear of a “totalitarian” mainland! Has China suddenly become the land of the free, or are people starting to realise the communist bogeyman has been a figment of their own imagination, spoon-fed to them by our Western-funded opposition?

For the better part of two decades, many people sadly bought into the myth sold by the opposition that any mainland activity and policy in the city had a nefarious design.

In 2017, a joint customs and immigration checkpoint being set up at the West Kowloon terminus of the cross-border high-speed rail was denounced as spelling the end of “one country, two systems”. Supposedly, mainland agents stationed there would detain Hong Kong people and they would disappear at will!

In 2018, the opposition and its semi-official mouthpiece, the now-defunct Apple Daily, absurdly rounded on People’s Liberation Army soldiers for helping to clean up massive debris left by a particularly nasty typhoon, in empty country parks, not in crowded districts!

Any commentary, however mild, from Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong was criticised as interfering in local affairs. However, the same opposition leaders routinely went to Washington and other Western capitals to lobby them to sanction their own city and officials.

If you really want to understand the anti-government riots in Hong Kong in 2019, you have to appreciate the anti-mainland public sentiments that were carefully cultivated by the opposition and its Western backers over many years. Of course, local grievances, such as dissatisfaction with the Hong Kong government, also fuelled public anger. But that’s little different from similar riots that periodically plague major cities in Britain, France and the United States. The only difference is that China didn’t exploit such foreign disturbances to try to infiltrate their opposition and destabilise their governments.