This article immediately caught my eye mainly because of its relation to recent events here in the United States. However, the two countries protesting differs in the reasoning behind it. Since we all know the reasoning behind the American NFL players kneeling for the anthem, I’m going to focus on the reason the Chinese were booing their national symbol. For starters, it wasn’t the players that
“committed the crime” in the Chinese eyes, but rather the fans. Some people starting booing while others simply turned their backs to the flag while the anthem while the anthem was playing. This becomes controversial because the Chinese government considers this a criminal offense punishable by jail time, but recently Hong Kong’s government also adopted the law. Some people are upset because Hong Kong’s government is dominated by politicians loyal to Beijing and residents of Hong Kong are fearful that their freedoms are going to be curtailed. They are predominantly worried about their freedom of speech, because they view their booing of the national anthem was an exercise of that freedom. The problem is that over time, a wider gap has formed between the Beijing loyalists and the upcoming generation of democracy advocates. I would not be surprised if in the future, we see an increased interest from the citizens of Hong Kong to become independent from China.
