Occupy Central

We discussed this quite a bit in class on Tuesday, though since then it appears the protests in Hong Kong have escalated, with the protesters now demanding the resignation of the city's chief executive, Leung Chun-ying. Leung is recognized as being a Pro-Beijing politician in Hong Kong, and has also been accused of being a member of the Communist Party, despite being officially nonpartisan, If Leung does not resign, the Occupy Central movement will occupy main government buildings in the city. Also, while the movement itself is being praised throughout the Western and democratic sections of the world, the response of the Chinese government has so far been mostly an appeal to stability, with a few carefully worded and vague threats sprinkled into the official language. Another interesting dynamic is that today, October 1st, is National Day, the founding day of the People's Republic of China. It presents an interesting contradiction between the protests in Hong Kong, with its democratic legacy from British rule (Macau also has a similar system as Hong Kong, following the transfer of power from Portugal to China in 1999). One possible affect could be a spillover of these protests into Macau or mainland China, though right now that appears unlikely, though if the protests continue to grow over the next few days all bets would be off.