Notes from the Street

Evan Fowler | 19 August 2014 | Asia Sentinel

The Anti-Occupy Central Demonstration and its Contradictions

Two days ago a group calling itself the Alliance for Peace and Democracy staged a march in Hong Kong against Occupy Central with Love and Peace, which has threatened to occupy the streets of Central as an act of civil disobedience if the Hong Kong government does not propose to Beijing a model of democratic reform that meets “international standards” and is representative of the views of the Hong Kong people as decided by a referendum.

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Thousands in HK Say ‘NO!’ to Occupy Central

Chen Yajiao, Wu Hanqi | 17 August 2014 | Asia Sentinel

But there are questions whether lots of them were manipulated

Thousands of protesters opposed to plans by pro-democracy advocates to attempt to close down the center of Hong Kong later this year assembled in the city’s Victoria Park to march to the center of the city to show their support for the government.

The orderly crowd was composed mostly of elderly marchers, many of them carrying umbrellas to guard against the blistering sun. Although organizers numbered the marchers at 120,000, an independent count by Hong Kong University researchers estimated that between 79,000 and 88,000 people took part. By contrast, organizers of the July 1 march said that more than half a million took part.

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‘White Terror’ Behind Hong Kong Web Closure?

John Berthelsen | 7 August 2014 | Asia Sentinel

Mainland pressure felt but rarely seen by local media

Somebody or something scared the shit out of Tony Tsoi Tung-ho. On July 20, he suddenly shut down House News, the most popular stand-alone Chinese-language website in Hong Kong.

The two-year-old website, modeled on the phenomenally popular US website Huffington Post and featuring an amalgam of columnists, journalists and observers who were often critical of China, had 300,000 unique viewers per day and was growing fast. It had garnered Hong Kong’s big luxury car dealers BMW, Mercedes and Audi as advertisers. It was reportedly on the edge of a tie-up with the Wall Street Journal.

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