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Lasers are swarming these days in Hong Kong, as here facing the space museum during a demonstration, Wednesday, August 7. REUTERS / Thomas Peter

At a meeting in Shenzhen on Wednesday, August 7, the director of China's Hong Kong-Macau Business Bureau publicly called the two-month-old protests that have been shaking the " color revolution " special administrative region. Sign that the threat has become existential for Beijing.

With our correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde

The accusation is serious and this time comes from the highest communist leader in charge of relations with Hong Kong. For Zhang Xiaoming, the anti-government movement in the special administrative region bears " the obvious characteristics of a color revolution ".

An allusion to the uprisings of the 2000s in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East (Georgia, Ukraine, Kirgiztan Biellorussia, Lebanon, etc.) partly supported by the West.

For the director of the Hong Kong and Macau Liaison Office of the State Council, " the most urgent task today is to put an end to the disorder ", an important term also in communist jargon. " This is to prevent Hong Kong from falling into an abyss. "

The weight of words

The choice of words has consequences. According to the sinologist Willy Lam , who spoke in an interview with Radio Free Asia on August 6, the qualification of "revolution of color" would have been decided by the central government last June when the demonstrations began.

This would explain the refusal of any concession on the part of the Hong Kong executive. The extradition bill , the driving force behind the protest, was suspended but not abolished as the protesters demand.

The final step, before Beijing decides on a possible military or police intervention continental, could be to describe the situation in Hong Kong of " dong luan ", "chaos", as it was the case in One of the Daily of the people a few weeks before the Tiananmen crackdown.

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