the interesting thing about the protests in Hong Kong is they’ve taken on a life of their own as the illusion of government control of the situation has been punctured by the sheer number of people on the streets; the original goal of pushing back the extradition law has already been achieved, now the protests are against police brutality and are being countered with… more police brutality, sustaining the rage.
but it’s difficult to see how the government can back down on this one; presumably they would try to wait out the protests and announce some kind of placeholder investigation into police behaviour run by a sympathetic bureaucrat who is going to deliver a vague waffling report in 18 months by which time everything will have long blown over, but if the protests dig in and push for Lam to step down then things get messy.
can Beijing stomach pulling Lam out? blame the problems on her without conceding any ground to the public action? it just doesn’t seem like something they would be willing to do, it’s too obviously allowing public unrest to challenge top down leadership, and where would it end?
where indeed.