Love? Please define

There is nothing more distasteful than the way “love” has been commercialized and politicized in China and, increasingly and inevitably, Hong Kong.

Businesses from banks to cooking oil manufacturers make TV commercials which associate their services or products with love. Worse still, China and Hong Kong propagates love – love of the country, the region, the Communist Party, the people. What is this love anyway? The commercialized love lures you into spending your money. The politicized love lures you into sacrificing your life and, worse of all, even the lives of others. But what sort of love does the deeds of those in power demonstrate? Is their action compatible with their words?

Amazingly, though, many people buy this – people who, I believe, do not understand love; people who either have not loved or been loved.

One country, one system

A BBC article today, called China suicide blast man's 'act of desperation', reported how a wheelchair user blew himself up in a government office in Shandong using home-made explosives, injuring six government workers. According to his brother, the 49-year-old man had been paralysed following an accident at a building site almost 20 years ago. He couldn't make ends meet and had petitioned officials for years, seeking more compensation than he had already received.


The following are some observations made in the article:
The case is a graphic illustration of the social tensions that have been felt across China.
There has been a growing number of attacks on local officials in recent years.
There are thousands of protests every month.
Many people are angry about official corruption and abuses of power.

Ironically and worryingly, these phenomena in China have become perfectly applicable to the situation of Hong Kong today, although they are amplified in different forms here. Social tensions, protests and attacks on local officials (strictly confined to verbal attacks in the case of Hong Kong) have become the order of the day, and these are caused by many people's deep-seated anger about official corruption and abuses of power.

The evidence for the contamination of Hong Kong's way of living following the tighter and tigher grip and more and more naked intervention of China couldn't be more obvious.

God is smiling

The hunger strike of three students in protest against the government’s plan to implement the controversial National Education curriculum ended prematurely after the blood sugar level of one of the students was found to be very low. The hunger strike, which was supposed to be for 72 hours, ended at midnight after having gone on for 56 hours.

The student whose health condition was at stake was apologetic, saying that she would have liked to persist until the last moment as she had pledged.

Tears welled in my eyes as I saw her say that on TV. I don’t know whether they were tears of sympathy or tears of shame. As I said in an SMS to a friend:

“Those Scholarism [the student activist group to which the three students belong] kids deserve our utmost respect. For them to sacrifice themselves like that is both heart-rending and soul-searching. Shouldn’t we adults be ashamed of ourselves?”

A positive development is that ten citizens, ranging from tertiary students to retirees, have now gone on their hunger strike and taken up the fight with the government.

At the venue of yesterday’s assembly, which was reported to be attended by 40,000 people, a double rainbow stretched across the sky. Obviously, it was God’s way of giving the movement His encouragement and approval.