In the face of Hong Kong's discontent, is waiting it out Beijing's best choice?
Kerry Kennedy says much will depend on the image China wishes to project to the rest of the world
Occupy Central as a formal movement was buried before it had a chance to start. Instead we have Occupy Hong Kong.
People are angry - with the police who used pepper spray and tear gas against unarmed student protesters, with the government that seems incapable of reading public feeling and responding to it, and with the central authorities in Beijing who constantly apply a "one country" approach to a "two systems" city.
Citizens can only take so much, and now they have had enough.
At the very heart of the problem is the decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee to offer Hong Kong a limited form of universal suffrage. But the Hong Kong government was not an innocent bystander. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and his colleagues should have worked harder to avoid or at least ameliorate this situation. They should have worked both behind the scenes and publicly in order to be seen to be working for Hong Kong people.
It still may have not achieved what many, although by no means all, Hong Kong people wanted.
Yet, at least it would have been seen to be working for Hong Kong rather than Beijing.
