...keep hope alive

Also from the International Herald Tribune for July 1:

Hong Kong - Despite sweltering heat and severe smog, hundreds of thousands of residents marched here on Thursday to demand democracy and - to an extent not seen in previous marches - to criticize Beijing. ...

Wearing white T-shirts that soon became plastered to their bodies with sweat, the demonstrators carried many placards with fairly broad slogans like "Democracy for Hong Kong."

But also visible were a variety of more controversial signs demanding, for example, "End one-party rule, establish a democratic China."

Lee Cheuk-yan, a lawmaker who helped organize the procession, said that more than 350,000 people had started the march at the palm-fringed Victoria Park, and that more protesters had joined along the route....

An 800-member committee of prominent citizens, many with investments on the mainland, now chooses the chief executive. The public will be allowed to choose 30 of the 60 members of the legislature in elections on Sept. 12; industries and professions, most of them pro-Beijing, choose the rest.

Many of the demonstrators on Thursday carried umbrellas for protection against the sun. Quite a few of the umbrellas were dark blue with "universal suffrage" in English letters and Chinese characters.

Mainland security personnel located the factory producing the umbrellas a month ago in nearby Shenzhen and shut it down. ...

China promised before the handover that it would allow Hong Kong to retain considerable autonomy for 50 years, but many here contend that this autonomy is being undermined.

My last post on the Hong Kong democracy movement was on June 1.