Word: honge
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...five flagpoles that stand in front of the Star Ferry terminal at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula in Hong Kong have long been a popular meeting place. It was at this familiar spot 20 years ago that democracy advocates sold commemorative items to raise money for the victims of the June 4 crackdown at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. I bought one: a four-inch plastic replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that had been erected at the square. For a 9-year-old trying to make sense of the world, that keepsake was a concrete link...
...Hong Kong encourages an astute sense of politics among its residents, who are, by Chinese standards, well informed, not least because they enjoy unrestrained access to global news and political commentary. That Hong Kong was, in 1989, an undemocratic British colony with a seething communist giant as a neighbor merely taught people to pick their battles carefully - in itself a valuable political skill - and they saw Tiananmen as a cause worth the agitation. The principal of my primary school, who addressed us soon after the Tiananmen drama unfolded, warned us to ignore the protests and the marches, saying...
...Today, Tiananmen seems forgotten in mainland China, or else it is seen as a blip on the march to prosperity. In Macau, the annual remembrances are almost invisible events (only 70 people attended last year's gathering, which jointly commemorated Sichuan earthquake victims). Only in Hong Kong are the killings still openly observed and debated by large numbers - a tribute to its unique status as China's freest society, and a reminder of the widely held view that China can truly move forward only when the 1989 protesters have been rehabilitated. "We have been China's conscience," said journalist Ching...
...speak up they do - as pro-Beijing commentators are quick to point out. "Where is the threat?" asks Lau Nai-keung, a Hong Kong journalist with ties to Beijing. "People here can express their feelings." Indeed, when the city's chief executive, Donald Tsang, recently downplayed the anniversary to legislators during a legislative council debate, he was met with fierce opposition and forced to apologize. When Ayo Chan, a student leader at Hong Kong University, suggested pro-democracy protesters were to blame for the 1989 crackdown, angry students moved to vote him out of office. And, unlike the uprising...
...Asian miracle, of course, is not just limited to the two north-east Asian giants. It extends to Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, all of whom have been able to give their people high levels of prosperity, health care, and education. None of those societies had easy births. In the 1950s, Singapore was a backwater of the British Empire. Taiwan was deeply divided, in the years after the Communist party took control on the Chinese mainland, between exiles and locals. The spectacular growth of Hong Kong between 1950 and 1980 (Arab states would do well to remember) was fueled...