Walking among the protesters clogging Central and Admiralty in Hong Kong, I have been struck – like every other observer – by the civic-mindedness and discipline of the student activists.
From the girls spraying me with water to cool off the heat to the boys collecting rubbish – from the twenty-something announcing recycling procedures over the tannoy to the high schoolers turning cardboard slogans into art – I saw an entire generation of Hong Kongers that are polite, energetic, work well in teams, and committed to achieving something bigger than themselves.
In short, I found an entire coterie of people who embody many of the qualities on the CV that employers claim to prize.
The protest movement may have originated with middle-aged lawyers and old-school activists – the Occupy Central crowd. They never enjoyed all that much popular support. But once the police began pushing the students around, sentiment changed. The students are the ones who have dominated this movement, and if that’s the future of Hong Kong, I’m optimistic about the place, regardless of whatever political arrangement prevails.
I am assuming most of these youngsters are from the middle- and upper-class families, and enjoy stable homes. A colleague informed me today that 1.9 million Hong Kongers live below the poverty line. That is a shocking figure. Poverty breeds social problems; political protests tend to be the provenance of the better off.
At the risk of being crude, employers in financial services, law, media, hospitality, logistics, product testing and other competitive industries that thrive in Hong Kong are going to be drawing from people sufficiently advantaged to get a good education. I would reckon a large proportion of that cohort of young Hong Kongers have been participating in the so-called Umbrella Revolution.
And like their activist brethren from 1968 in the West or 1989 in China, many of the kids occupying downtown Hong Kong this week will turn their skills, drive and intelligence to commercial pursuits. They will be tomorrow’s technology gurus, venture capitalists, NGO leaders, public defenders and investment bankers. And they will bring with them the civic values forged in this week’s action.
So as you in Hong Kong look to mentor interns and hire juniors (or if you work outside of the territory but find a Hong Konger applying for a job), find a tactful way to see what role, if any, they played in the Occupy movement. The Umbrellistas have demonstrated they have the chops.
