Hearing your answer I understood the problem of Hong Kong . I met my Hong Kong friend at a nightclub in Barcelona and we started talking about politics. I told him that I had visited Hong Kong a couple of years ago. What fascinated me the most then was that, just as I arrived in the city, I found a demonstration in my face. I had spent months working in mainland China as a journalist and seeing a protest across the street was an absolute novelty for me. It seemed that he had entered into another reality.

My friend explained that I was going to study at an elite business school in Barcelona. He also told me that he had participated in the 2014 Umbrella Revolution and that he feared for the future of Hong Kong. We were staying on a regular basis.

Once I asked him a trick question: "What is the difference between young people in mainland China and those in Hong Kong?" I expected him to say that the young Chinese were absorbed by propaganda, or that the Hong Kong people were more aware of liberal and democratic values . But what he answered made me see Hong Kong from a new perspective. It was a hard and realistic response: "They have much more energy than us. For years now it seems that we are paralyzed. They have ambition and we have stagnated."

It has been months. Now my friend sends me whatsapps and videos from Hong Kong, between demonstration and demonstration. It is one of the hundreds of thousands of young people protesting in the city. It is also the loser of a geopolitical change to which Hong Kong never prepared realistically.

And it is that the protesters who protest, destroy and shout there are not so different from other phenomena that are happening around the world. Trump's America, Brexit or so-called populisms are all reactions to changes in the distribution of world power, which no longer resides exclusively in the West. The clear hegemony of these centers of power was being questioned by countries that are growing rapidly and want to reach the West. Some even overcome it. The same thing is happening to Hong Kong. Its main competitors are the leading cities of mainland China .

In 1997, when Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony and became part of China again, the situation was different. He had developed living standards, and his way of life and economy were the envy of cities in the rest of China. In fact, many Chinese have already migrated to Hong Kong since the 1980s as cheap workers. Their Hong Kong employers benefited and so did they: they could earn much more than anywhere in China. Maoism was not that far away. Clothes, leisure and music dazzled them. The city was an image of the future that China aspired to .

Now the situation has changed. China has become the second world power and an economic colossus . The big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Shenzhen or Hangzhou are its engines. And they don't have much to envy, economically, to Hong Kong. Some of them already have more dynamism, international influence and human energy. If one visits Hong Kong and then Shenzhen, neighboring cities, futuristic dreams will assail him when he walks through the second.

Hong Kong's comparative advantage over the rest of China has been blurring over the years . This not only has economic importance: it also affects the democratic autonomy that it has maintained since 1997. The model of a country, two systems was a great boost to companies in Hong Kong, which could benefit from a friendly and take-off economy like the China - and its cheap labor force. But now the situation has changed. Hong Kong negotiated its autonomy from a position of strength : it was an advanced and western nucleus against a developing country that emerged from decades of catastrophes. Now, however, Hong Kong has a superpower ahead.

The conditions are not equal, and neither is the pulse and the benefits between the parties. It is not realistic to believe that Hong Kong can defend its autonomy in the same way it did in 1997 . The percentage of the Chinese economy that the city assumes is much smaller. It has internal problems of poverty, exorbitant prices in housing and lack of expectations of improvement among youth. Hong Kong is no longer on the crest of the wave and sees how in front of its noses there has been a huge geopolitical change - the rise of China - that does not know how to manage. That causes frustration. That causes protests.

Most Hong Kong people would want everything to stay the same. The same rights, little influence of Beijing and maintain their special situation. Protesters have adopted the resistance tactic. But the direct confrontation with China cannot be won. Some think that tense the situation with more violence the US or the United Kingdom will intervene. It is an illusive assumption.

The tension in Hong Kong shows the disorientation of a city that has failed to adapt and negotiate with the Chinese rise. That is, a city that has not looked at the harsh reality from the front and has closed its eyes to its own future. Hong Kong people should think and negotiate a new relationship with China - something nobody is seriously doing. You must imagine a new role and a new role with respect to China that justifies maintaining its autonomy. It cannot be the same as it was 20 years ago. Some will say that is not fair. But that's how the international arena works .

If the Hong Kong people do not try to take the initiative in the negotiations to adapt to the new geopolitical situation - and only resist and protest -, in the end it will be Beijing, by pure political, economic and military weight, who will impose them. The main task of the Hong Kong people should be to imagine a realistic future for their city , in which their autonomy can fit into the Chinese rise. It is an imperfect and not very sexy proposal. But this is usually the case.

Javier Borràs Arumí is a journalist.

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