Shoppers of the world, unite!
In a novel twist to influencing politics through commerce, Hong Kong protesters are going shopping to spread their pro-democracy message. Carrying the bright yellow umbrellas symbolic of the movement, they are marching through shops and driving away tourists.
“It’s part of the civil disobedience philosophy of taking resistance to everyday life,” said Sebastian Veg, director of the French Center for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong. “You don’t have to be camping out in front of a government office, but if you have an hour after you leave work you can set up a shopping group, chant or sing for universal suffrage and make life hard for the police.”
As Hong Kong prepares for the influx of Chinese tourists coming for the Lunar New Year holiday next week, the protests might curb sales at retailers already smarting from falling revenue in December last year.
Annual retail sales in Hong Kong declined last year for the first time since 2003 as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) campaign against corruption and extravagance crimped spending. Luxury goods were especially hard hit, with sales slumping 16.3 percent in December. The holidays this year start on Wednesday.
The holidays typically see an influx of Chinese tourists, who last year bumped up retail sales by one-third, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce chief economis David O’Rear said.
Last year, the territory was the most popular destination for Chinese tourists with 47.2 million visitors, though the pro-democracy movement that occupied parts of downtown cast a shadow.
“Hong Kong will pay a heavy price,” unless it does more to cater to Chinese who are increasingly headed to other destinations for shopping and sightseeing, warned a Jan. 26 editorial in the Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated People’s Daily.
Protesters had occupied swaths of Hong Kong last quarter to demand that China lift a demand to screen candidates for the 2017 chief executive election. After the police evicted them from the streets in December, some of the activists decided to take to the shops.
Nearly every night, anywhere from a handful to a few dozen activists can be spotted holding yellow umbrellas in shopping districts, including Mong Kok.
They were partly inspired by Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s (梁振英) appeal to help retailers affected by the protests by going shopping, said Amos Ho, a 37-year-old clerk at a power company, who joined some of the tours.
The other inspiration came from an earlier televised interview of a Chinese tourist at the protest zone who when asked why she was there said she was shopping, Veg said. Her mispronunciation of the Cantonese phrase for shopping was then picked up by pun-loving Internet users who transcribed it with a vulgar term referring to the male anatomy.
The protest are loosely organized via social media or fliers on the street.
“Actually this shopping protest is very funny,” Ho said.
For many, though, shopping is serious in Hong Kong. Society pages feature as many red carpet store openings as charity balls. Hong Kong is the world’s biggest importer of Swiss watches. Fully 8 percent of the luxury goods sold by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA are paid for in Hong Kong dollars.
New Year’s eve events planned next to two major Hong Kong shopping districts were canceled after the protests began.
“The point of this is since all the occupy sites were removed, the people feel like nothing was achieved,” said James Bang, a 28-year-old who lost his job after he took too much time off to join the street protests. “The people feel like nothing was achieved, no concessions, no negotiations, nothing at all. We feel we have to make a statement and go out there so people see us every day.”
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