The protests in Hong Kong have been going on for a while now but I feel like I'm learning something new about it everyday. Just today, I heard a new perspective on the protest which I believe is actually quite true. It is the view that the protests are not just about fighting for democracy but that it is also about fighting for the right to preserve a difference in culture. Hong Kong politics right now is extremely complicated. Its political system and education are not those of "western democracy" (sorry if I'm not being politically correct here ahaha not really sorry). Therefore for those that are arguing that America is trying to push their democratic ideals into Hong Kong, I would tell you that that isn't true for a multiple of reasons. I don't really feel like explaining the basic principle behind the protest again but this new perspective that I heard today emphasizes the fact that Hong Kong people want to maintain not only their independence from China but also their culture. I'm not sure how many people in Hong Kong right now support the democratic ideals of this protest but I know almost all of them want to keep their identity as "Hong Kong" people rather than "China's" people. They want to maintain their own language, their own education system, their own culture and their own political system. I think this is also another reason why Chinese people from mainland in fact are against these protests. They despise this difference that the HK people are trying to maintain. There is a widespread mentality in HK people that they are superior to mainlanders. I don't agree with this mindset but I am not going to deny that this is happening here. There is nothing wrong with maintaining a difference but they should do this independently. Instead of saying they want to be different from China, they could instead say they want to maintain this, this, this or this aspects of their culture. This would reduce the friction between Chinese mainlanders and Hong Kong people and at the same time further the cause for HK people to be unique without having to put down Chinese mainlanders.
>>>Here's a song from the protest that I like