As Hong Kong’s anti-government movement continues to rage, RT looks into what sparked the unrest, the dire social inequality problems that fuel it, and how forces in Washington exploited this public discontent for their own ends.
Having personally witnessed brutal clashes and spoken to key figures on both sides of the barricades, RT America’s Michele Greenstein paints a comprehensive picture of the protest’s origins and handlers.
The contentious extradition bill, which was the catalyst for the uprising this summer, served only as a pretext, while its nature was grossly misinterpreted. It doesn’t mean that the islanders – suffocated by prosaic issues like high prices, poor housing conditions, and declining employment prospects for graduates, rather than a lack of ‘democracy’ – have nothing to be angry about.
Also on rt.com Hong Kong police secure THOUSANDS of PETROL BOMBS, GAS CANISTERS & CHEMICALS as PolyU campus standoff endsYet the demonstrators never challenged Hong Kong’s own authorities over this social inequality, directing their rage solely at mainland China – all while destroying their own city and virtually begging the US to sanction it, just to hurt Beijing.
With young and progressive leaders of the Hong Kong uprising cheered as noble ‘pro-democracy’ warriors and welcomed in the US with open arms, Washington isn’t even trying to hide the fact that the protests have been hijacked to demonize and destabilize its main economic rival – China.
“The original movement has been eroded. Now it’s just about opposition to Chinese government and the subversion of state power,” says Stanley Ng Chau-pei, president of the Federation of Trade Unions, the largest labor and political group in Hong Kong.
It’s a ‘color revolution’
WATCH the full reports by RT America’s Michele Greenstein:
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