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AsiaXPAT (Hong Kong) - The streets of Hong Kong have been mostly quiet except for a major burst of protest activity on New Year’s Day. Mass weekend confrontations between black-clad protesters and the HK police involving violence, tear gas and pepper spray have stopped; protests targeting shopping malls including Times Square in Causeway Bay and Elements in Kowloon have petered out since the Christmas holidays.
The daily lunchtime protests in Central have been reduced to a trickle. Today, no protesters were present in Central or the IFC Mall.
So have the HK protesters given up their fight? Is this crisis over? Or are the protesters changing tactics?
It would appear that the protesters are moving on from extreme violence now that they have driven off both overseas and mainland Chinese tourists. If the goal has always been to force Carrie Lam and the HK government to grant their ‘Five Demands’ by attacking the Hong Kong economy then this has been accomplished. The HK economy is in a shambles.
Now the protesters are taking this attack on the HK economy a step further by using apps that identify businesses that support the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong, and those that are Pro-Beijing. Protesters and their passive supporters in Hong Kong turn to these apps and decide where and where not to spend their money. Some business in the Pro-Beijing camp are experiencing dramatic collapses in revenue.
The scope of this campaign aimed at destroying businesses that do not support the HK protests is massive with one app alone registering nearly 200,000 followers.
This leaves HK business owners with stark choices. You either ‘Stand with Hong Kong’ or you take no position on the protests. Maxims Group (operator of Starbucks in HK) has found out the hard way when the Founder’s daughter Annie Wu criticized the protesters who responded by black listing all restaurants and cafes owned by the group and destroying dozens of them.
Meanwhile, if the HK economy does exhibit signs of recovery, one cannot help but wonder if the protesters will rally the troops with a Telegram message urging them to return to the streets to sow more chaos, and trample any green shoots that might take root.