In Chinese Shadow, Hong Kong Fights For Its Future

HONG KONG (AP) — As skyscrapers around Hong Kong harbor erupted into a reverie of laser beams and giant digital displays during their synchronized nightly light show, one innocuous 28-story building near the water's edge had stayed dark for months, clad in bamboo scaffolding for a face-lift. Tens of thousands of people had turned out days earlier for an annual vigil to commemorate victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, while an unprecedented policy "white paper" declaring Beijing's irrevocable control over the territory had generated furious debate about Hong Kong's future. From the bustling streets of this legendary port city of 7.2 million people to its air-conditioned offices in sleek towers high above the harbor, Hong Kongers are indeed picking sides in a looming battle over what's to come. [...] Hong Kongers say the soul of their society is coming under attack as they grow wary of the Communist Party's rising sway with top officials and see the flood of cross-border Chinese shoppers (dubbed "locusts" for their voracious buying habits and supposed bad manners). [...] his report said "mainstream opinion" wanted the elite committee to again pick candidates, setting the stage for a confrontation with democracy groups, who vow to freeze the financial district with protests if the public isn't allowed to choose candidates free of China's vetting. Most newspapers no longer run stories critical of the Chinese government, and even multinational banks HSBC and Standard Chartered recently raised suspicions by pulling advertising from the city's sole pro-democracy newspaper, the Apple Daily. In a report released this month, Hong Kong's journalists' association called the past 12 months "the darkest for press freedom for several decades," citing among other events a cleaver attack in February that left an outspoken former editor at the Ming Pao newspaper in critical condition. Trying to calm the lawyers' concerns, Hong Kong Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said the white paper wouldn't require judges to make any "political or other inappropriate" considerations while deciding cases. The poll found that the share of adults who said they felt proud to be a Chinese citizen sank to only a third, while the proportion who had a negative view of the central government's policies on Hong Kong rose to its highest level since the survey started in 1999. "The younger the respondent, the less proud one feels of becoming a Chinese national citizen, and also more negative about the central government's policies on Hong Kong," says pollster Robert Chung. The most visible pro-democracy group — a loose coalition that calls itself Occupy Central with Love and Peace — plans to rally at least 10,000 people to blockade the Central business district in its push for democratic reforms that meet international standards. Some foreign business chambers and the Big Four accounting firms have voiced their opposition with newspaper ads, but a small group of finance workers support the movement, saying that Beijing's influence is undermining the economy of this Asian financial hub. In one sign of Beijing's sensitivities to Hong Kong public opinion, the People's Liberation Army stopped flashing its name across its building after the test run in June prompted worried headlines and online outcry. For Roger Chen, who moved from the mainland to Hong Kong a year ago for a job at a hedge fund, Hong Kongers are only feeling insecure in the face of China's booming economy, which has eclipsed the territory's importance as a commercial gateway to the mainland. [...] Chen said, he was confident China would become more like Hong Kong and adopt more of its liberal policies, rather than the other way around.