Your article is a pretty good 'street-level' view of Hong Kong politics. However you have casted the two sides as the smarmy Hong Kong people vs the maoist suits from China. Actually the most important constituents of the pro-Beijing side is the business/corporate sector in Hong Kong. All the business tycoons tout the pro-Beijing line and work with the SAR's agenda. The DAB/ Ma Lik can be thought of as the Pat Robertson/ Rush Limbaugh red-meat contingent here in the US. They make loud ugly noises, but the real power of the Right actually resides with the Wall St white table-clothe crowd.

The collusion in Hong Kong between property developers, tycoons and the HK government is a story that really needs a separate article to tease out--I deal with the subject a lot in the articles on my blog, and you should also take a look at two excellent recent books, "We Deserve Better" by Hemlock and Alice Poon's "Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong".

But even taking the tycoons and power elites into account, I still think that universal suffrage is the most critical issue on the table here, for it represents the only hope that Hong Kong people have of breaking the stranglehold of the local cabal.

Finally, let's be real about who holds the power here. Do you think for a minute that if Beijing decided it was time to open the ballot box in Hong Kong that any tycoon would be able to stop this? In the Death Match between Hu Jintao and Lee Ka Shing, I know where I'd put my money

Thanks for the book recs- I'll check them out. And I agree with your points about the importance of universal suffrage and the role of the puppet-master.

BTW I just spent about an hour reading your excellent blog. What a excellent, winding narrative of language, culture, and politics! I had seen your blog linked to from ESWN, but hadn't had a chance to check it out until now.

Thanks very much for the kind words--hope to see you over there again sometime...

By the way, I just noticed that the hyperlinks I tried to make for those two books don't work. But both titles are easy to find on Amazon, and if you're in HK, Dymock's carries them too.