Ying-yi Hong, now of the Chinese University in Hong Kong, continues to measure people’s attitudes, and did so during the protests. Her latest conclusion: young Hong Kongers will have confidence in their local government if they see it as “relatively autonomous,” she said last week. “However, if they think that the mainland government is interfering with the Hong Kong government, it plummets.”
For years, Hong Kongers have feared becoming, as a common saying goes, just another Chinese city. In Beijing, that description is regarded not as pejorative but, rather, as the natural order of things.