Interesting to contrast this with popular demonstrations in US or France. No windows broken? Burnt city infrastructure? No beaten up police? All so quiet.
In the Chinese media the violent part of the protest is what they mostly talks about, although I do believe most protestors are peaceful. Funny enough most western media don't talk about that at all, despite that they broke into the legislative assembley and beaten people from mainland China, and HK police of course. Isn't media great these days
It's hard to do that delibrately right? I think this is an accident(I could be wrong). On the other hand, in the Chinese media they report some protestor bite a police officer's finger off.
They didn't report the first half of the story: "police"(without any ID) suddenly charged into a mall filled with retreating protestors and common folks. One "police" poked the said protestor's eyes. The protestor instinctively bit back.
They seem to have spared private property, but windows were broken, city infrastructure was damaged (e.g. LegCo, police stations), and police were beaten up.
It's like in all countries. Some protests/protesters are peaceful, some are not.
The edgy protesters are specifically targetting the government, the police who is acting on behalf of the government, and sometimes things associated with the CCP/PRC (e.g. PRC flag).
Some of their actions have caused trouble for others, but in general, they are not interested in pure destruction.
Of course there are exception cases, I'm speaking of the situation generally.
I'm from China, I'm actually shocked to see people in the US or France do that all the time. Usually, it seems private properties are destroyed during the process.
But why? If it is the government people protest, but why do people break shop windows and burn someone's car all the time...
It seems to be a lesser kind of terrorism for me: they don't like a country, they hurt properties instead of people.
Well if you look at French media, you will believe French protesters are just there to break everything. If you look at Chinese media, you will believe Hongkongers are just there to break everything.
If you actually go to a protest in France you will realize it is pretty much the same as what is described in that text, just people trying to protest but met with unbelievable violence from police.
I come from Europe, and every time someone brings up the protests to me, all I can say is, this is nothing compared to what happens in Europe. Not to downplay what's happening, but I think in general HK people are not used to violence, it's incredibly rare to see any physical altercations. I've been in verbal arguments here before, and once people see you won't back down, or you're willing to escalate, they'll quickly back off.
That's why now you see the slog "HK police is attempting to murder citizens", even though nobody has been close to dying. It's just that they perceive violence on a different scale, and people being beaten up (not even severely) is enough to claim they're trying to murder people.
