The Siege of Carrie Lam
(For context — am an expat living in HK.)Living in HK the last few months has been frustrating for me, primarily because of growing spread of misinformation and the untrustworthy reporting on the situation. It's getting hard to know what information to believe, and that's even for myself living here, who has seen all of it from my own eyes. How could you expect anyone reading the news or social media from a foreign country to be reacting to valid information?The western media is making it sound like Hong Kong is Syria. Protester private channels makes wild unfounded claims about mass-scale executions and rapes. Chinese media makes it sound like HK is under siege by terrorists. SCMP's reporting is increasingly suspiciously lacking and pro-establishment. The government is entirely untrustworthy and straight up lying about everything and anything.There are a few people doing good work (e.g. OSINT HK), but it's not enough to rise about the noise drowning it all out.Of course the real situation is more nuanced. It's also all entirely pointless, with no hope for de-escalation or positive resolution.That said, it's also not nearly as dramatic and disrupting to daily life as you'd expect. Living in HK is still far safer than in downtown San Francisco (or anywhere in the US for that matter). For those wishing to stay out of it, avoiding protests is fairly easy (I mean — unless you live in Mong Kong or Prince Edward). The handful of times I ended up right in the middle of it, nobody really cared to bother any bystanders.The government seems to be on a mission to do anything in its power to make things worse, from repeatedly escalating the situation through violence, inflammatory policy, and generally being a party-pooper and cancelling all ordinary celebrations (e.g. Halloween).Today, walking down the street in Sai Ying Pun, I observed workers replacing the wooden paneling they've been installing in front of the mainland Chinese banks to protect them from the thrashings with welded metal paneling. It was somewhat of a sign that they're getting ready for this to continue in the long term.