Mainland Chinese youths launch Facebook campaign to support Hong Kong protesters
PUBLISHED : Friday, 03 October, 2014, 3:23pm
UPDATED : Friday, 03 October, 2014, 5:54pm
Chen Yifei and Raquel Carvalho
A screenshot of the facebook page of Mainlanders support Hong Kong.
A Facebook page was set up on Wednesday by a group of mainlanders seeking to support the ongoing "Umbrella Revolution" in Hong Kong.
Lydia Liu, one of the initiators and a former student in Hong Kong, said she had received 20 to 30 photos by Thursday.
“We persuaded people who are now on the mainland not to post their photos [of themselves]. We don’t want to put them in trouble,” she said. “People have been detained in Shenzhen for showing support.”
Liu is now studying abroad, “I may not have the guts to do it if I live in mainland,” she said.
“For us [mainlanders] living in Hong Kong or abroad, we won’t get arrested for showing our support, at least for a period of time. Mainlanders need to step up [to show our support].”
The page, called “Mainlanders support Hong Kong”, had gathered more than 1,500 likes by Friday afternoon.
Liu said photos were sent by people from a variety of walks of life, including students, finance professionals and musicians.
Support is not limited to providing a photograph, the page administrator will also share reflections on and analysis of the pro-democracy demonstrations.
Mainlanders support Hong Kong was set up initially in response to a photo campaign conducted on the Wechat account of “Hong Kong Drifters Circles” (Gangpiaoquan), an online community popular among recent mainland immigrants to Hong Kong.
The Gangpiaoquan Weibo account invited its more than 50,000 subscribers to share their thoughts on “What’s happening in Hong Kong” under the hashtag “I live in Hong Kong and I have something to say.”
An initial post that launched the Gangpiaoquan campaign showed a dozen people holding banners with slogans that read “I want to focus on study”, “Keep calm and carry on”, and “I want to go shopping in Temple Street”. The number of participants is unknown because Wechat only allows sharing among friends.
The post was deleted on Tuesday amid tightening censorship by Chinese authorities.
Liu said these slogans were indicating opposition to the Umbrella Revolution, and Gangpiaoquan had refused to post photos with messages of support that she sent.
An executive of Gangpiaoquan declined an interview request by a reporter from the South China Morning Post.
“Many mainland residents [in Hong Kong] are showing their support, and their voices need to be heard,” Liu said.
Liu’s words echoed those of some of the mainland immigrants the Post talked to. They sympathise with the demonstrators and their cause, and try to share photos and accounts from Hong Kong with friends in mainland, where mainstream media reports on the protest are rare and usually dismissive. Large scale censorship of social media in the mainland also prevents the sharing of information about the protests.
In fact, opinions on the demonstrations are severely divided in the mainland community in Hong Kong.
Some mainland students interviewed by the Post at the the University of Hong Kong said they would stay clear of the protest movement.
“We don’t want to join this type of political event. ... We don’t want to be related with those Hong Kong students,” said 23-year-old Melody Ling, “We prefer to focus more on our studies.”
Twenty five-year-old Anna Wu said she agreed with the Chinese government, “I think that democracy should be a process. Mainland China already gave a lot to Hong Kong.”
Nearly all the interviewees, supportive or not, were pessimistic about the movement’s future.
One 24-year-old HKU PhD student surnamed Wang said the “objective of the movement is good”, but he didn’t think the students would achieve their goals.
“They can hardly succeed,” said another, speaking on condition of anonymity. The central government would lose ground to protests in other parts in China if it gives in to Hong Kong, he explained.
Liu was more optimistic; “You need to fight and hope for the best,” she said.
“There are indeed concerns about a crackdown, but Hong Kong people have more experience in social movement, and they have a relatively sophisticated withdrawal mechanism,” she said. “When the rumour of rubber bullets spread [on last Sunday night], the organisers asked people to retreat. Their priority is peoples’ lives.”
Liu is not the first mainlander to openly voice support for the pro-democracy protests. A similar Facebook page was built on Monday. Photos posted on the page showed people in the mainland holding banners with supportive messages, some were covering their faces with the banners for fear of persecution.
