Hong Kong Protests: Leader Warns Protesters Not to Endanger City’s Future

City’s leader warns protesters against challenging Beijing.

The embattled chief executive of Hong Kong warned that the antigovernment protests that have roiled the city for two months sought to challenge Beijing’s authority in ways that were “very dangerous” and would ruin the semiautonomous territory’s future.

In a news conference on Monday, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, condemned the increasingly confrontational tactics of protesters in recent weeks and vowed to restore law and order in the financial hub.

“This is the time for us to rally together, to set aside differences and bring back order and say ‘no’ to chaos and violence,” Ms. Lam said as the city was brought to standstill on Monday during a general strike and demonstrations that interrupted the morning commute for millions of people.

The mass demonstrations started in early June over an unpopular extradition bill but demands quickly expanded to include calls for greater democracy in the territory — a reflection of pent-up anger and frustration with the rapid erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong under Chinese rule. There is a widespread perception that the territory’s political elite, represented by Mrs. Lam herself, is more beholden to Beijing than to local residents.

In recent demonstrations, a core group of protesters have tried to surround the central government’s representative office in the city, taunted mainland Chinese shoppers and traders, and over the past weekend threw the Chinese flag into the Victoria Harbor in a move that was swiftly condemned by Beijing.

“Some people have tarnished the national emblem and even removed the national flag and thrown it into the sea,” Mrs. Lam said.

“In recent days, what we can see are obvious and willful statements of ‘Restore Hong Kong, revolution of our times,’” Mrs. Lam said, citing a slogan from a pro-independence movement that has re-emerged in recent protest chants.

“We can see some actions challenging ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and the country’s national sovereignty, and if I can even speak more boldly, they want to topple Hong Kong, to thoroughly destroy the livelihoods that 7 million people cherish.”

The demonstrations began this summer initially as a way to protest a bill that would allow residents and visitors to Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China for trial. Ms. Lam repeated her stance that the bill was “dead,” and said the city should not let the protesters use the cause as a pretext for pushing against Chinese rule.

“If we continue to allow these violent protesters to make use of the Fugitive Offenders’ bill and these demands to conceal their ulterior motives, that is going to push Hong Kong to the verge of a very dangerous situation,” she said.

Strikes ground planes and delay public transit.

Hong Kong, one of Asia’s most important transit and financial hubs, was brought to a standstill on Monday, as more than 200 flights were grounded and protesters disrupted commuter trains as a citywide strike and demonstrations roiled the territory.

At the height of the morning rush, protesters blocked the doors of subway cars leading to delays throughout the system and delaying millions of people from getting to work.

The disruptions were the third time in three weeks that protesters have interrupted train service.

Dancus Au, 24, who works at a security firm, said he had been stuck at the Tai Wai subway station since early Monday morning but he blamed his inability to get to work on the city’s leader’s refusal to withdraw the extradition bill.

“My post is crucial because a security firm requires a lot of people to support its operation,” Mr. Au said. “Carrie Lam has caused my absence today. She should have said ‘withdraw’ at the beginning of this fiasco. She is part of the root cause while Beijing is another part of it.”

“I think the general strike is one of the last resorts that the protesters think are possible to express their views. I don’t blame them,” he said, adding that he was considering attending a protest rally.

At least 200 flights were canceled, most of them aboard Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific.

‘Disappointing!’ one pro-establishment politician says of city leader’s speech.

Prominent lawmakers across the political spectrum criticized Mrs. Lam, the city’s leader, saying her remarks in the morning about the protests provided no solutions to the political crisis that has roiled the territory for two months.

Claudia Mo, a lawmaker in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislative minority, called Mrs. Lam’s administration “morally bankrupt” for failing to take responsibility for the unrest.

Mrs. Lam said on Monday that protesters had recently started to chant a slogan that challenged Beijing’s authority over the territory. But Ms. Mo said the slogan alone — “Revive Hong Kong, revolution of our times”—- did not prove that protesters were demanding independence.

“A slogan is a slogan is a slogan,” Ms. Mo said. “If she thinks that is a problem, what is the solution to it? Well, we’ll advise her: Try democracy.”

Ann Chiang, a lawmaker from Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, also criticized Mrs. Lam’s performance.

“Carrie Lam raised many questions at the news conference, but where are the solutions?” Ms. Chiang wrote on Twitter. “Disappointing!!!”

Antony Dapiran, a Hong Kong-based lawyer and the author of a book about dissent in Hong Kong, called the news conference a “disaster,” in part because it included no concessions and came before the public turnout of Monday’s general strike was fully apparent.

Mrs. Lam has presented no clear way out of the crisis, he said, while the protesters have become increasingly confrontational.

“For me the most alarming thing is we’re kind of on a knife’s edge here — open disrespect for the police, police stations being targeted,” he said. “We are on the cusp of what could be a general breakdown of law and order. It hasn’t gotten there yet, but the government hasn’t done anything to stop it.”

Joseph Wong, the former head of Hong Kong’s civil service, said he had not even bothered to listen to Mrs. Lam’s speech because he had lost faith in her. Mr. Wong said that instead of condemning protesters, Mrs. Lam should act on their demands — for example, by formally withdrawing the contentious extradition bill and commissioning an independent inquiry into the police response to recent mob attacks in a Hong Kong metro station.

“The Chief Executive has the responsibility to set a good example by complying with the rule of law,” he added. “Many people doubt the chief executive herself is doing precisely what she keeps on preaching to the Hong Kong people.”

China calls on Hong Kong public to “stop the violence.”

China’s state-run media denounced the resurgence of unrest in Hong Kong, portraying the demonstrators as lawless and warning that Beijing would not tolerate a descent into chaos.

The People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, on Monday recited a long list of supposed offenses committed by the protesters, including insulting the Chinese flag — an apparent reference to protesters who threw a Chinese flag into the harbor on Saturday.

The newspaper called on the Hong Kong public to rally behind the local police and to “stop the violence,” saying the protesters wanted to end the “one country, two systems” arrangement that has governed the territory since its handover to mainland China in 1997.

“They simply want to push Hong Kong into chaos,” the editorial said of the protesters.

The Global Times, a hawkish tabloid, also raised the possibility of intervention by the mainland authorities in Hong Kong, a position embraced by some Chinese nationalists.

“The central government will not allow the complete fall of the rule of law in Hong Kong,” the newspaper said in an editorial on Sunday. “A few mobs can confuse Hong Kong for a while, but they absolutely cannot overthrow the order of Hong Kong completely.”

Chinese news stations showed footage of protesters inside Hong Kong subway cars, trying to argue, without evidence, that they had lost public support.

Skipping work to join Monday’s strike carries legal risks, experts say.

Hong Kong is a financial hub with an international reputation for efficiency and order.

Not surprisingly, the city’s government offers limited protections for striking workers.

Ahead of Monday’s general strike, some employers signaled that they would tolerate workers’ absence, including the Catholic Diocese and at least two local universities.

But because the general strike is a political action and not a labor dispute, scholars say, workers who take part in it would not be covered by the limited protections offered to workers under Hong Kong law.

“Anyone on the general strike can be counted as being a brave person,” said Rick Glofcheski, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “In the current political mood, there are millions of them in Hong Kong. But basically you don’t have any protection.”

Maggie Chung, a 32-year-old accountant who attended a protest rally on Sunday, said that she would strike anyway, even though she had not yet passed the probationary period of her new job. “If I lose my job, I can find another one,” she said. “But if Hong Kong is lost, it’s gone forever.”

Protesters are nimble and unpredictable.

One emerging feature of the civil disobedience gripping Hong Kong: Protesters are increasingly trying to keep the authorities guessing their next move.

Over the weekend, groups of black-clad protesters appeared with little warning in neighborhoods across the city, in some cases blocking roads and vandalizing police stations. And in many instances, they disappeared before police could tackle them to the ground or disperse them with tear gas and pepper spray.

“We are not as well equipped as the police, so we have to be as fluid as possible,” one protester, Jason Law, 19, said on Sunday night.

The flash-mob-style tactics continued on Monday morning as protesters briefly occupied metro stations and roads across the city, including in the satellite town of Yuen Long, the site of mob attacks against demonstrators last month.

Many protesters have linked the tactics to the phrase “Be water,” a reference to a line uttered by Bruce Lee, the actor and martial-arts icon. The Hong Kong native uttered the phrase in a 1971 episode of the American television series “Longstreet.” The protesters say the phrase captures their strategy of trying to outrun the authorities by swiftly changing tactics and targets.

Reporting was contributed by Mike Ives, Austin Ramzy, Tiffany May, Ezra Cheung, Russell Goldman and Gillian Wong from Hong Kong, and by Javier Hernandez from Beijing. Elsie Chen contributed research from Beijing.