I have a bad feeling about this:
Hong Kong police fired tear gas early on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of defiant protesters, some of whom had stormed and ransacked the city’s legislature hours earlier on the anniversary of the city’s 1997 return to Chinese rule.
Police arrived in a convoy of buses near midnight as about 1,000 protesters, furious at a proposed law that would allow extraditions to China, were gathered around the council building in the former British colony’s financial district in a direct challenge to authorities in Beijing.
You don't challenge or defy China's communist rulers, you either defeat them or disappear.
Here's another story. The legislation is still sitting there, and the Hong Kong protesters know it.
Unless China has the ability to unleash the secret police to deal with this quietly and stall the anger until it fades, I assume China is in the process of planning and moving People's Armed Police to Hong Hong to end this pretense of freedom once and for all.
The economic hit of such a move against the prize economic jewel in China's crown pales in the face of the political hit that accepting such defiance could deliver to the ruling class's monopoly of power.
That said, I hope those in Hong Kong trying to defend their time-limited freedom win this battle--for all time.
