Hurricane China as Viewed from Hong Kong
kalunite.net
kalunite.net
*Now let’s look at IT in general. When was the last time you heard about or used some really good software library or application developed by a HK company or a bunch of HKers? Exactly. We’ve done fuck all in IT. Do we have programmers and software engineers in HK? Sure we do! But even in IT, we’re just consumers who use the awesome tech developed by people and companies in other countries, to make yet another CRUD or to develop high frequency trading systems so we can pretend to be creating value. In contrast, you see Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, bilibili, and ant.design ranked among the top 100 organisations on GitHub, based on the number of stars on git repositories. They have contributed to the world widely useful software libraries such as arthas, weui, ncnn, rapidjson, ijkplayer, flv.js, DoraemonKit, and ant-design.*
But the issue with the young generation in HK is somehow they are "content" with the reasons over results bullshit, and content "feeling good" by pretending "China so evil", and playing some fake victim fantasy, they are content with this, rather than going, "How can I get results? How can I make my life good? How can I build up HK?" I think probably a lot of people realized "Oh, shit we can't 'compete' anymore, we're no longer the star child" so in the trope of sibling rivalry (even tho it's China-HK are not brothers, more like family), they just gave up, defeatist attitude, and found some weak and pathetic and twisted (and evil, look at the violence of those 'terrorist protesters' during the unrest) way to pretend they're better than China now. Now, all the poor HK kids have been misled by this bullshit, and they're all addicted to this idea that China so bad, because they've got nothing else to contribute, and it's the only thing they have left to feel "good" and deal with the fact that they're no longer number 1. Rather than lift themselves up, they wanna try drag no. 1 down. It's so sad.
Man I wish I didn't see the place I love come to that, but it has. Good article, I wish more HK young people could listen to you about this, but they are too closed minded. They don't want to hear. If you say ideas like this, then they just want to fight (or set you on fire), and react and not listen. I get why. It's too painful to listen. To face the fact: You're not number 1. It's on you. It's no one else's fault. It's your responsibility. No one's coming to save you. It's your responsibility to "make HK great again".
Hard truths to hear, so they stuff their ears and chant "songs of freedom". I'd laugh if it wasn't so real and if I didn't love that place. It's tragic. Oh well, at least China has stabilized HK for now by putting their foot down.
According to Human Rights Watch, already in 1997 (at the time of handover by Britain) prisoners were required to work. (HRW considers that a good thing because it keeps them "occupied", but notes that the pay is "minimal".) https://www.hrw.org/legacy/research/hongkong/hk-work.htm
Besides, that's exactly the kind of thinking that makes people stuck: when all you can think of is how your hard work will benefit The Man, when instead you could be benefitting yourself and society as a whole, regardless of what The Man gets from it.