A FEW DAYS ago, Huang Qixuan, a 21-year-old from mainland China who is studying accountancy in Hong Kong, was walking through his campus, talking to his father by phone. He passed a black-clad local student who was holding a placard in support of the pro-democracy unrest that has racked the city for nearly five months. “It’s chaotic,” he said to his father in Mandarin, the mainland’s common tongue. Incensed, the local shouted into Mr Huang’s face in Cantonese, the language of most Hong Kongers. “Liberate Hong Kong!” the protester kept on yelling as he followed Mr Huang. “Revolution of our times!” chanted passers-by, encouraging the pursuer.
Communist Party-controlled newspapers in Hong Kong say the city is in the grip of a “black terror”, a reference to the protesters’ adopted colour. Mr Huang agrees, and has plenty of evidence to confirm his anxiety. On WeChat, a messaging app used by many mainlanders in Hong Kong, who include around 12,000 university students, videos have gone viral of attacks on people from China’s interior. One such incident, on November 2nd, involved a woman who was accosted by protesters in a touristy part of the city after she allegedly took close-up shots of people in masks (the government recently banned the wearing of them by demonstrators). During the encounter the woman’s face was splattered with a sticky...
