Aerial footage filmed by a drone shows the large number of people joining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Protest leaders have threatened to step up their campaign if the region’s chief executive does not meet them by midnight on Tuesday, after he insisted that Beijing would not retreat on limits to voting reforms Guardian
As our live blog coverage continues, here’s a summary of where things stand:
Crowds of protesters hunkered down under heavy rains in Hong Kong as they prepared to spend another night in the streets.
The protests continued as Hong Kong prepares to begin two days of public celebrations to mark National Day.
Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung had called on protesters to leave. “I’m now asking them to... stop this campaign immediately,” he said.
“We will not leave until Leung Chun-ying resigns,” a leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students replied.
But Occupy Central leaders acknowledged the risk of a backlash. “There’s a sense even with the organisers, that at some point they are going to have to leave,” the Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported.
Beijing said it supported the local government. “We fully believe in and support the Hong Kong SAR government to deal with this issue,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
There has been a “strikingly” low key-police presence since attempts to clear the crowds with tear gas and pepper spray backfired on Sunday night, Tania reports.
The Chinese government sent a letter to foreign embassies in Hong Kong Tuesday asking them to ensure that their nationals stay away from the protests.
Analysts say China faces a quandary as to how to protect Hong Kong’s economic vitality and global openness while reinforcing its own control.
The Taiwanese arewatching the Hong Kong protests with acute interest, writes the Guardian’s Jon Kaiman (@jrkaiman):
Residents of democratic, self-governing Taiwan have expressed solidarity with Chinese protesters, not least because Beijing yearns for the island to “reunite” with the mainland under the same arrangement that has polarised the southern city. Many Taiwanese look at the demonstrations, and see an alternate future for themselves.
Taiwanese broadcasters have been running near-constant footage of the protests since they began over the weekend, and hundreds of supporters have gathered in Taipei for solidarity demonstrations.
“Taiwan is a free, democratic society, and we hope that this can slowly influenceChina, and someday result in democratic reform,” said Chen Yaw-shyang, an assistant professor at National Taipei University. “So what’s happening in Hong Kong is extremely important — if the protesters are not successful, and they don’t achieve universal suffrage, then that would be a terrible thing for democratic development on the mainland.”
Pro-democracy protesters hold umbrellas to shelter from heavy rain in front of the Hong Kong government offices on day three of the mass civil disobedience campaign Occupy Central in, Hong Kong, China, 30 September 2014. Photograph: ALEX HOFFORD/EPA
...is true. The piece, a profile of Leung Chun-ying, is by Emma Graham Harrison, (@_EmmaGH), who writes that Leung “is a bland but ruthless Beijing loyalist, who is widely believed to have built his political career on membership of the underground Communist party:
The chief executive is still chosen by a small electoral college drawn largely from Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing elite. Leung won in 2012, after a dirty, turbulent campaign that helped earn him another unflattering moniker.
“People call him wolf; he’s seen as unprincipled and rapacious,” said Louisa Lim, a Hong Kong native and author of People’s Republic of Amnesia, a book about the 1989 Tiananmen protests.
The piece concludes:
“He is really a cipher in all this, a token representative,” said Philip Bowring, a Hong Kong-based commentator and former editor of the Far East Economic Review.
“His resignation in itself doesn’t mean anything at all, if what you are looking for is a pushing back of Chinese intervention in Hong Kong affairs.”
The Guardian’s Jon Kaiman (@jrkaiman) in Beijing has written a briefing to the protests – highly recommended for those just catching up to the story:
What’s the story?
Hong Kong, one of the world’s most important financial hubs, has exploded into protest. Since Sunday night, the so-called “umbrella revolution” has turned the city’s gleaming central business district into a virtual conflict zone, replete with shouting mobs, police in riot gear, and clouds of tear gas. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents – young and old, rich and poor – have peacefully occupied major thoroughfares across the city, shuttering businesses and bringing traffic to a halt. They claim that Beijing reneged on an agreement to grant them open elections by 2017, and demand “true universal suffrage”. Organisers said on Monday that the protest would not end until Beijing changes its electoral guidelines and Leung Chun-ying, the city’s pro-Beijing chief executive, steps down. Neither side seems prepared to back off, and nobody knows how the standoff will end.
Chan Kin-man, a professor of sociology at the Chinese University who has been on the frontlines of the protests, said he has a stack of envelopes containing death threats scrawled in Chinese characters, Reuters reports:
“I understood that once I joined this movement, they would attack me and treat me as an enemy,” Chan told Reuters, his head shaved in protest against Beijing’s decision to rule out free elections for the city’s next leader in 2017.
Chan is a co-founder of the “Occupy Central” group that wants to lock down the business district.
Another co-founder, Benny Tai, a law professor at the University of HongKong, said he had also received death threats, some addressed to “The Devil”, with one envelope containing a razor blade.
Five other academics told Reuters they had suffered intimidation because of their activism:
It was not immediately clear who was behind the intimidation or threats. Chinese officials, worried that calls for democracy will spread to cities on the mainland, threatening the Communist Party’s grip on power, have said the Occupy movement is illegal. But Tai doesn’t believe Beijing sanctioned the letters.
“For Beijing, I think it’s important to protect me,” Tai told Reuters. “If I am in trouble, the blame will be on Beijing.”
Water and facemasks are being distributed in Tsim Sha Tsui, in Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour from the protests in Admiralty. On most days it’s a touristy spot:
Writing in Comment Is Free, Lokman Tsui, an assistant professor of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, ties the Hong Kong protests to economic pressures on families and an all-time low in trust in government:
The current protests are as much about democracy as they are about growing social inequality. Students see their options shrinking in front of them. An apartment has always been expensive in Hong Kong, but it has become almost impossible for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder. According to a recent survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a family of four must pay 13 times their annual income to purchase a tiny 37 sq metres (400 sq ft) flat. To top it off, Hong Kong took top honours in the recent Economist crony-capitalism index, beating Russia to first place.
Unsurprisingly, trust in the government is at an all time low. This distrust has been building up for over a decade. In 2003, the public came out in massive numbers to protest against Article 23, a national security law that the government was trying to push through, and would have impinged on our freedoms. The protests were peaceful but persistent. To the surprise of many, the protesters pressured the government to shelve the plan indefinitely.
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