[Rejn]

I never said that there was universal suffrage. I don't even think there is significant support for universal suffrage in Hong Kong anyway. I know that the election committee consists of representatives from special interest groups, but the fact (as you say) that Beijing has been choosing them is news to me.

[benpenguin]

Well Rejn, universal sufferage has overwhelming support in HK. That's the whole point of the protests.

The current HK right's problem (Pro BJ camp) is that they are overly obedient to Beijing, disregarding the needs of citizens. They support every single policy that the governmet churns out, and has no leader that is charismatic enough to rally/mobilize their support base. Most of the time they resort to measures such as free trips/meals for elderly, which can be interpreted as bribes for lots of people. They are also involved in other, much less savory tactics such as triad involvements, media censoring and such. The left has no need to do any that because they have a powerful base of students, lawyers, educators and media figures anyway.

I thought about stuff in Hong Kong a lot lately. It's unfortunate that Beijing proposes "pre-screened elections" so late, because the damage by the right+government has been done. If it has been proposed in 1997 or at least after Tung Chee Wa's adminstration, there would have been much less problem, as the Chief Executive will need to appease BOTH Beijing and the public in order to win his seat.

Beijing started trying a semi-formal election in 2012, but it was sloppy. Both candidates are very unattractive, with bad public speaking skills and scandals all over them. They went ahead and proposed "pre-screened elections 2017" anyway.

All these still wouldn't have accumulated to a full blown protest if the HK government didn't try and supress and censor the initial protesters. But since they invited the bad rep with tear gas and pepper spray, combined with a little help from our CIA friends, now everybody is up on the streets. Everybody is no longer apolitical and has become emotionally involved. Damage done and irreversible. Good job government idiots.