HK activists tiresome

Your June 30 Editorial, “China must stop meddling,” is a misrepresentation of today’s Hong Kong.

How can we ask China, the mother country, to stop meddling with Hong Kong which is a part of her territory. What promises have Beijing backtracked on? “Patriotic national education” is now proven necessary when protesters are waving British flags and chanting for independence.

The “communist brainwashing tool”, as alleged by the editor, is outdated propaganda against China used by Western media.

There is no misunderstanding by the business world or “identity crisis” of Hong Kongers as the editor has suggested. Business people understand that Hong Kong is fully backed up by China under the “one country, two system” policy and is ruled by basic law.

They like to see a stable Hong Kong joining the fast train of China to more prosperity, and condemn those protesters who want to wreck the ship by occupying the financial central district and Mon Kok by force a couple of years ago.

These social unrests brought by student activists have not only eroded the financial competitiveness of Hong Kong, but also brought down the ranking of several Hong Kong Universities, the breeding ground for many of these protesters.

I am qualified to give a better picture about Hong Kong because I was born there, received my education there with Queen Elizabeth as the symbolic head, and I had also witnessed the return of Hong Kong to China.

I have relatives born in the 90s who sympathise with the activists because of growing job insecurity, high property prices, and the nuisance caused by rich mainland Chinese flooding into the island. However, these are administrative and economical issues that the Hong Kong government has to tackle and has nothing to do with democracy.

The majority of Hong Kong people are revolted by the childish conduct of those activists named in your editorial.

They are advocating an independent Hong Kong with the backing of the Americans or a group of people revolving around Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, who himself was not elected to office but appointed by the British Crown.

They are pawns in a game that the West try to use to destabilise China. The kind of “moral” support given by your article will only lead them eventually to prison under the Treason Act.

There is a bottom line to national security that no sovereign country can tolerate, and President Xi explicitly announced that in his recent visit to Hong Kong.

YINGWAI SUCHAOVANICH