There's an old Chinese saying, "it's easy to conquer the nation, but difficult to run it".
Before the CCP came to power, people too held great hopes and back then they were much, much more enthusiastic than today's Hong Kong people. Millions sacrificed their lives in the process, until the last moment of their lives they still believed that they died for the right cause--to build a better China, a better future, a communist utopia that's free of hunger, exploitation, corruption, warlords, and full of happiness, joy, fulfillment.
I think what happened after that is very familiar to us. That utopia didn't come, instead it was pretty much the opposite case.
It took an entire generation people's suffering, a catastrophic political disaster, and some luck combined with Deng and his peers' vision, to save China from the shithole it was in and moved towards the right direction.
The same story has happened again and again and again, even today, even before our very own eyes. It is always easy to summon people under a righteous cause, "in the name of freedom and democracy!", they said. As if these slogans are magic words that somehow promises a better future. Based on past and recent experiences, I highly doubt so.
Look at Libya. Look at Egypt. Look at Tunisia. Look at Russia after the fall of the USSR. Look at the Eastern European countries. Look at Taiwan.
Taiwan is probably a better case. It, too, was one of the most promising economies in the world, and one of the envies of Asia before the democratic change. Four Asian tigers, remember? When people elected Chen Shui-bian, he was once the "son of Taiwan", then what happened? Huge corruption. Fraud. Tried, jailed.
Then there came Ma Ying-jeou. But today as I browse through Taiwan's forums, there's NONE praising him. Some even said they were "blind" enough to vote him and felt ashamed.
Almost 20 years have passed. Taiwan's economy is still stagnating. Young people's pay isn't rising, but everything else is increasing. When I was in Taiwan last year, my guide was telling me with a very worried face, "we could only choose the less evil and corrupt from the two evil and corrupt." It took the Taipei City's government to build 4km of metro lines in 8 years. While during that same amount of Time, China build 10,000 km of high-speed rail and thousands of kilometres of metro lines all over the country.
Look at the US. Obama came to presidency with his famous slogan "YES WE CAN". Where's the change he promised?
Don't get me wrong, I can fully emphasize with the ordinary HK people. Today's protests aren't just a protest to fight for "democracy" and "freedom", it is a protest for hundreds of thousands of HK people to vent and express their anger and frustration, and to fight for better future--or at least as they would imagine so.
I'm neither bashing democracy. This system has many many good points and I think all governments of the world need to ultimately become one that's based on democratic principles.
What I'm saying is, do the people of Hong Kong really understand and know what they're fighting for? Is there a clear plan, or strategy, that's carefully and thoroughly crafted, that suits the realities of Hong Kong and anticipates changes in the world, that will make ordinary Hong Kong people's lives better?
Or do they simply want democracy and true universal suffrage for the sake of it, but unsure or unclear of what to do next? And just believe that somehow, in one way or another, HK's economy will revive, and ordinary Hong Kong people can finally afford a proper apartment after "true democracy" is established?
