In Hong Kong, the protracted pro-democracy uprising has triggered a local economic recession, especially as businesses and Hong Kongers seek to boycott mainland Chinese businesses and products.
Continue reading “Hong Kong shoppers patronize “yellow” stores that support the uprising; while “blue” businesses that support the mainland are vandalized”
Tag: #612strike
Popular Chinese video game invites players to “hunt down traitors” in Hong Kong
“Fight the Traitors Together” (motto: “Hong Kong is part of China and this can’t be meddled with by outside power”) is a web-game that has attained new popularity in mainland China; it invites players to locate with caricatures of real Hong Kong protest leaders and slap them or pelt them with rotten eggs.
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After sweeping election victories, Hong Kong protesters stage massive demonstrations marking their 6-month anniversary
Today, 800,000 Hong Kongers marched through the city in a demonstration commemorating their six months of protests. Thanks to landslide victories for pro-Democracy candidates in last month’s election, today’s march had an official police permit — the first such permit issued since August.
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DC Comics kills Batman image because China insisted it was supporting the Hong Kong protests
The poster for “The Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child” features Batman hurling a molotov cocktail in front of the words “The Future is Young,” after DC Comics posted it to Instagram and Twitter, the image was copied into Chinese social media, where they sparked outrage among Chinese users who claimed that the subtext of the image was support for the Hong Kong protests.
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Great backgrounder on the Hong Kong protests: what’s at stake and how’d we get here?
Vox’s 9 questions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embarrassed to ask by Jen Kirby does an excellent job of sketching out the political relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China, the history that created that relationship, the political controversies since the handback of Hong Kong to China in 1999, the eruption of protests last spring, the state’s (mis)handling of those protests, and the political situations in both China and Hong Kong that led to the catastrophic failures in Chinese leadership. (Image: Studio Incendo, CC BY) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Hong Kong elections: overconfident Beijing loyalist parties suffer a near-total rout
Last week’s local elections in Hong Kong were supposed to be a pro-forma affair, reaffirming the dominance of pro-Beijing “loyalist” politicians; instead, pro-democracy parties swept every district save one — the rural Islands district, where seats are automatically handed to “pro-establishment rural chiefs.”
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Hong Kong protesters’ little stonehenges impede police cars
More tactical diversity from the Hong Kong protests: “trilithons” — little stonehenges made of bricks or pavers that impede police vehicles. (Image: thumbnail from Ryan Ho Kilpatrick) (Thanks, Jeff!)
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Hong Kong protests: “Might as well go down fighting”
Zeynep Tufekci (previously) has been in Hong Kong reporting on the protests for months, and she’s witnessed firsthand the failure of every prediction that the uprising would end soon — but despite the mounting numbers and militancy of protesters, she reports that the protesters are not animated by hope or optimism, but rather, a fatalistic understanding that they will lose eventually, and a determination to go down fighting.
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Banned from Youtube, Chinese propagandists are using Pornhub to publish anti-Hong Kong videos
China’s state disinformation campaigns against the Hong Kong protesters are unwelcome on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, with the mainstream platforms shutting down accounts that spread propaganda videos; but increasingly these blocked videos are available on Pornhub, something that has been jubilantly announced by mainland Chinese social media influencers on Wechat.
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Blizzard’s president apologized for suspending Blitzchung, but the suspension is still in force
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When Blizzard Entertainment president J Allen Brack opened this month’s Blizzcon with a carefully worded apology over the company’s suspension of Blitzchung, the Hearthstone champ who was punished for his in-game support of the Hong Kong protesters, what he didn’t say (the words “Hong Kong” or “China”) was just as newsworthy as what he did.
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