Hong Kong’s district council election results were demoralising for “Robert”. The Hongkonger works as a property consultancy executive in Shanghai, and for him, the pan-democrats’ landslide victory was disappointing.

“I feel terribly sad about the results, and some of my [Hong Kong] friends here feel the same, because the winning candidates didn’t denounce the protesters’ violence,” said the 47-year-old, who has worked in mainland China for more than a decade.
He said he could not openly discuss how he felt about the November 24 elections because he feared a backlash, and that Hong Kong – where he was born and raised – was not the place it once was.

“Hong Kong used to be a pretty safe city and inclusive of different opinions. But now if you say you support the police or the Communist Party, you could get beaten up in the street,” the real estate professional said.

For the past six months, the city has been gripped by protests sparked by a now-withdrawn extradition bill. These have since broadened into an anti-government movement calling for greater democracy, which has seen increasingly violent clashes with police. Seen as a de facto referendum on the protests, the polls saw the pro-democracy camp win control of 17 out of 18 district councils, all of which previously had a pro-establishment majority.

Hongkongers like Robert who live and work in the mainland are finding themselves saddened by the events back home, and caught in the middle between their friends in the city and those over the border.

There are no official figures on how many Hongkongers work and live in mainland China since their travel permits allow them to freely move across the border. But the number is estimated at 100,000 in Shanghai alone.

Most of those who spoke to the South China Morning Post asked for their names and companies to be withheld because they feared for their safety and that their Hong Kong offices could be targeted.

Another Hongkonger, who leads an architecture firm in Shanghai, was also concerned about the protesters’ use of violence, saying it would not resolve the situation.

“I have sympathy for the grass-roots people who have to deal with all the chaos and damage brought by the rioters, while the rich can just leave Hong Kong for a while,” said the architect, who is in his 50s and has worked in the mainland for 15 years.

Other Hongkongers based across the border have lost friends over the protests. In Beijing, 27-year-old investment analyst “Alex” said some of his friends in Hong Kong stopped talking to him when they found out he did not agree with them on the protests.

“Some of them argued with me and some even deleted me from their social media contacts. We clashed over topics like the behaviour of [Hong Kong] police officers, and who was right and who was wrong – the officers or the rioters,” he said.

“So recently when I got together with Hong Kong friends for dinner, we just avoided these topics altogether.”

Alex’s relationships with his mainland friends are better. He said many had studied overseas and used virtual private networks to access international media reports on the Hong Kong protests, many of which are blocked in the mainland. Those who read only local news, which is tightly controlled, wanted to know how Hong Kong had turned so chaotic and violent. “I explained the whole situation to them, and our friendship has not been affected by this issue,” he said.

Terence Lin, the 30-year-old founder of an internet company based in Shenzhen and Xiamen in Fujian province, is also trying to keep his mainland friends informed about what is happening in Hong Kong.

“I tell them the situation is not as tumultuous as the reports suggest, that the protesters announce where they will go before each protest,” he said.

Lin noted that mainland media reports were aimed at deterring readers from sympathising with the protesters. He said the protests were a result of “political and economic structural problems”.

Mainland China beckons

Over the border, work opportunities and the economy are big draws for Hongkongers. Robert noted that the mainland economy had seen rapid growth over the past decade while Hong Kong was sluggish.

Hong Kong’s gross domestic product grew about 2 to 3 per cent annually over the past five years, compared with the mainland growth rate of 6.6 to 7.8 per cent in the same period.

But he said although the economy and innovation was thriving on the mainland, Hong Kong still had the advantage of freedom of speech.

“At least we can use Facebook in Hong Kong,” he said.



Alex said he was drawn to the mainland after he graduated in finance from a US university three years ago. Working in financial investment in China, where the market is promising and there are many start-ups, was an obvious choice and he wanted to try somewhere new.

“When I started working in Beijing, I was surprised by how hard-working my mainland colleagues were. Compared to them, many young people in Hong Kong tend to complain a lot,” he said.

Many young Hongkongers held negative views of mainland China, he said, seeing it as a place where people were poor and not well educated, and many – especially those who supported the protests – had not been over the border.

“Mainland tourists have been flooding in to Hong Kong over the past decade, but when they behave in an uncivilised way, like the nouveaux riches, it doesn’t help to improve impressions [of mainland China],” Alex said.

He also said he believed mainland China was too big for democracy to work.

“I do actually understand [Beijing’s] rationale. There are 1.4 billion people in China – if it is as free as Hong Kong it will be doomed,” he said.

Property executive Robert agreed that Hong Kong people did not have a good understanding of mainland China.

“I think an important factor behind the protests is that many Hongkongers don’t understand China. They didn’t learn much about Chinese history in school,” he said.

Internet company founder Lin said he hoped Beijing would reflect on the results of the district council polls.

“The Hong Kong government is the rich people’s government and I am totally disappointed with it,” he said. “My hopes are pinned on the central government to launch political and economic reforms in Hong Kong. I also hope the central authorities can think about why the majority of Hongkongers voted for pro-democracy candidates in the election.”