Radical protesters in Hong Kong block a road and assault police on Sunday. Their behavior was widely condemned. Photo: Fan Lingzhi/GT
In response to
Hong Kong rioters who vandalized the entrance of the liaison office of the central government in Hong Kong, mainland netizens flooded social media with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's comments on the management of the region and pictures condemning the violence of rioters.
Talking about management of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region , Deng predicted that disturbances may happen in Hong Kong and the central government should not fear to intervene when the disturbances caused harm to fundamental national interests.
Deng also stressed that a limit and standard for Hong Kong residents to manage Hong Kong on their own is their love for the region and the motherland.
Zhou Nan, who was the delegation head and main representative during China's negotiations for the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain, was quoted as saying by Hong Kong-based The Bauhinia Magazine on Monday that Deng had recognized that disturbing factors existed inside and outside Hong Kong society during the process he solved the Hong Kong problem. Deng asserted the central government should make beforehand arrangements based on this assumption.
"One country, two systems" has taken root in the Hong Kong region and would not be broken by some disturbances, Zhou noted.
"It is ridiculous that some rioters want to mess up Hong Kong region and then China. They underestimate the Chinese nation's determination to safeguard national sovereignty and unity," according to Zhou.
Zhou believed that the region can overcome any difficulty under the support of the motherland.
After some rioters defaced the national emblem of China outside the liaison office of the central government in Hong Kong on Sunday, many Chinese netizens spread Deng's predictions on social media and strongly condemned the violent rioters.
"The Hong Kong region has been allowed high autonomy, but that does not mean they can challenge the bottom line," Du Zhenhua, a user of Diba, China's largest online forum, posted on Tuesday.
From 8-10:30 pm Sunday night, about 12,000 Diba users bombarded the Facebook pages of organizations that supported the protests such as the Civil Human Rights Front with comments warning Hong Kong against independence.
National dignity is inviolability, read a post Du sent to the Global Times.
The hashtag "Central authority is inviolability" was viewed nearly 450 million times on Sina Weibo as of press time.