OPINION - Politics
Perspectives on Politics
The outburst of the antiextradition bill protests in Hong Kong has brought international attention towards this small yet significant international trade center, yet it is impossible for non-locals to see the full picture, to understand the protesters and how their beliefs are shaped merely through the numerous headlines and sound bites provided by the media. One of the biggest misconceptions to people outside Hong Kong is that the protests are led and participated by only teenagers, that this is a fight of the youth, but this is far from the truth. Certainly, almost all teenagers of Hong Kong either support the protests or are already protesting, but so are a few different generations. As
the protests bring out different interesting social phenomena worthy as case study material, this article will explore how the different growing environments of the five currently existing generations of Hongkongers shape the strongly contrasting materialistic and post-materialistic values that predominate their standpoint in this historical social movement. Those who live in Hong Kong presently can be roughly separated into five generations, the first being the oldest generation who flew from mainland China and sought refuge in Hong Kong. This generation is mostly 70 to 90 years old right now and are mostly abstaining from either
side of the protests as they lack the energy and motivation to take part. What characterises this generation is their pragmatism in daily life and a general apathy to politics, as they had lived most of their lives in constant fear, without guarantee of basic survival needs. Even after they arrived in Hong Kong, they lived in poverty and to them politics is a field of elitism, unrelated to them unless it occasionally affects their daily life, and the progressive values that found the protests are unknown to them previously, thus insignificant and unimportant. Furthermore, even if they are somehow capable of understanding and demonstrating support towards these values, they would have passed away by the time any actual
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