Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Mainland Chinese Sneak Into Hong Kong's Protests-to Support the Cause

More than one million people have moved from mainland China to live, work and study in Hong Kong since 1997, when the U.K. handed over the city's sovereignty to Beijing.

Mainlanders living in Hong Kong have also experienced ostracism from friends back home who see the protesters as a violent fringe, especially after they beat up a pair of mainland citizens in a melee at the airport.

Every year thousands of mainland students come for schooling to Hong Kong, where many have their political views remolded.

In 2014, students led a protest that occupied downtown Hong Kong for 79 days, an action that would have been unthinkable in China.

Many Hong Kong students said mainlanders were brainwashed intruders and called them locusts, sentiments that have persisted over time.

A 47-year-old housecleaner with the surname Lam, who came to Hong Kong 15 years ago from southern China, never went out to march.

Betty Xu, a mainland citizen who has stayed on in Hong Kong since graduating from a local university this summer, has joined several protests and posted photos of them on the Chinese messaging service WeChat.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/mainland-chinese-sneak-into-hong-kongs-proteststo-support-the-cause-11566986403?mod=hp_lista_pos1

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