Opinion | It’s easy to play the blame game. It’s harder – but necessary – for Carrie Lam to restart dialogue and negotiate Hong Kong’s future

Whatever you think of their actions, a good number of young Hongkongers feel their options have been exhausted. It’s time for political moderates who have Beijing’s ear to step up and broker dialogue between the administration and protesters

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Chinese characters reading “add oil” from one angle and “Hong Kong” from another are displayed on a road during a protest in Hong Kong on July 1. Both the Hong Kong and Beijing governments should see that continued unrest is in nobody’s interests. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:30am, 4 Jul 2019Updated: 6:32am, 4 Jul 2019

The eruptions of violence in Hong Kong have put the future careers, prospects and welfare of many youths at risk; the unnecessary, engineered skirmishes between police and the public have threatened to divide the hitherto largely unified opposition to the extradition bill and, worse, narrowed the room for negotiation and compromise between the administration and the public.

The blame game has started. The government, which has been most inadequate in political communication over the past two years, pointed to the violence of the protesters as the root of the problem. Moderate pan-democrats have blamed the administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor for not responding in time to protesters' demands.

Protesters said the administration’s silence left them with no alternative. What is particularly worrisome is the fixation with condemnation: protesters have been condemned as a mob, legislators for being ineffective, and the entire protest against the extradition bill as being disruptive to society.

To focus on condemning and attributing blame is to miss the point: the escalating violence is in nobody’s interests. For Beijing, continued unrest would undermine Hong Kong’s status as an important financial hub, and call into question the tenability of “one country, two systems”.

As for the protesters, they would be compelled by the logic of social movements to stand on the front line and risk their own mental and physical health. For the wider public, there might be a growing sense of apathy or defeatism, and a fear that politics is too high-stakes for many. Finally, for legislators on both sides of the political divide, the escalating violence might limit the extent to which they can manoeuvre and negotiate with the administration.

Violence has no intrinsic appeal: it is not a natural option for most individuals, and they do not employ it lightly. The administration, along with all other parties involved, must take a serious look at how its governance has gone wrong.