Are there any econometrics published from before the protests started that would indicate an economic cause? I haven't seen any but I also haven't looked hard enough to reject the premise.
The 3 narratives I see are
1. the organizers are sell-outs to the US and the followers are just stupid. Western imperialists want to split China again.
2. the protestors are rioters, violent mobs, essentially a zombie horde not a movement with demands that can be met.
3. the stated reasons for the protests aren't the real reason. the real cause is economic. (subtext: freedoms and democracy is intrinsically a Western thing and Chinese people asking for it are denying they're Chinese)
1.b The protesters' demands are all about changing the behavior of the local government. They have no reason to split from China unless the mainland government intervenes to prevent that change. As a bonus, consider that the current Hong Kong government is only in power due to the election system with functional constituencies put in place by the British to secure their grip on the city. In a way, China simply replaced Britain as the colonial power rather than freeing Hong Kong from colonialism. (On the other hand, this argument can backfire since Hong Kong would be even worse off if all former British institutions were replaced by their mainland equivalents.)
2. If all protesters were violent rioters, they'd have conquered Hong Kong by now. But the majority are peaceful and have even less power to stop the rioters than the police; whose indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber bullets has hurt people who were either participating peacefully or just happened to be in the area. That's why they want an independent investigation of the police.
3. The economic situation may make them more likely to protest, but what they choose to protest is still something they care about.
Consider the protests that erupted at Nanjing School of Applied Technology in April [1], at Beijing Normal University's Zhuhai branch in June [2] or in Wuhan's Xinzhou district also in June [3]. Were those all for economic reasons? Also ask whether they were aware of these or any other protests.
[1] https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/4/28/n11220048.htm
[2] http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/6/11/n11315690.htm
[3] https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/19/7/4/n11363038.htm
(I'm linking to Epoch Times articles, but in each case you can find raw footage on YouTube searching for "南应", "北师珠", "武汉阳逻")
Finally, you should know that there just as you are here asking for help arguing with your Chinese friends, so are Chinese people asking on Zhihu for help arguing with their Western friends.
Well the more the merrier. So long as the discussion is in the basis of sound arguments and not who can spam/upvote more, adding more people will only increase the quality.
In fact I wouldn't even call what I am doing arguing, as I haven't actually offered any position of my own on the protest and therefore have nothing to defend (yet). I guess you could call what I'm doing "hypothesis testing the Chinese state media narratives" (aka "calling bullshit").
Thanks for the links and ideas.
It is definitely a problem in Hong Kong and the rise of real estates prices definitely factors into that but isn't it partly also the Chinese government's fault which has increased immigration from mainland China to Hong Kong resulting in much higher real estates prices since the supply is constrained due to the small area Hong Kong occupies?
However, a lot of people protesting are also professionals who are making a decent living and are not only doing it for economic reasons
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/2174006/...
I legit don't know. I tried to find out just now and ended up on this wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...
This data set has a lot of N/A in it. I end up relying on the CIA estimate for basically all of them because no other column has data. Just for the sake of fair (albeit unscientific comparison) I'm picking out the stats from random first-world countries as I scroll through the list. I am using the second list titled "Population living below national poverty line"
Canada: 9.4%
Denmark: 13.4%
France: 14.2%
Germany: 16.7%
US: 12.3%
Japan: 16.1%
Hong Kong: 19.9%
Taking the data at face value, HK does seem to be above average in poverty, but likely within a standard deviation. HK is also unique in this list because its a de facto city-state. Perhaps when we break those other countries down per city we get similar results?
I'm not satisfied with the poverty line explanation. The protestors don't look to be poor people and we don't see such a degree of protest in other places with similar amounts of poverty.
They are in the same position, - Colonized by a European country and then returned to China, - Under one country, two systems - Speak Cantonese
but Macau’s GDP per person is almost double that of Hong Kong.
There are no protests in Macau.
- GDP: Hong Kong 341.4 billion USD, Macau 50.36 billion USD
- Population: Hong Kong 7,392,000, Macau 622,567
If the answer is GDP growth rates, Macau has an insane boom-bust cycle with -20% growth in 2015. Why wasn't there civil unrest there in 2015?
If the answer is a more complicated combination of indicators and trends, you're going to have to spell it.