Shenzhen (China) (AFP)

So close and yet so far ... At the gates of Hong Kong, the Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, watered by the propaganda of the communist regime, has little sympathy for the demands of the protesters in the former British colony.

"He is just shooting himself in the foot," says a taxi driver in Shenzhen, who prefers to keep his name, about the protesters who for more than two months have been challenging the pro-Beijing executive of the other side of the border.

"What will they do when the economy is on the ground and no more tourists will go there?" He asks, while military police men, backed by trucks and armored vehicles, are massed in a stadium in the city, 7 km from the border.

Even though Hong Kong was surrendered to China in 1997, the territory remains separated from Communist China by virtue of the "one country - two systems" principle: it retains an autonomous government, its currency, its border and unknown freedoms on the territory. Continent like that of demonstrating.

Chinese people from the People's Republic can not enter Hong Kong freely: they need a special permit and the length of stay is limited.

- Foreign plot -

Shenzhen remains inside the "Great Wall of Computing" imposed by Beijing, which blocks the entry into China of information deemed undesirable by the authorities.

The state media, which portray Hong Kong protesters as violent, anti-Chinese, separatist and even "quasi-terrorist" riots, is therefore the city's almost unique source of information.

"Young people do not think, they are too spoiled," said a resident of Shenzhen, who prefers to remain anonymous as often in China when addressing a political issue.

While Beijing lets the specter of an armed intervention hover over the unrest, another resident of Chen remarks that "the Communist Party is not afraid of unrest".

Many people even add to the theory of power that the demonstrations are the result of a conspiracy from abroad - the United States not to name them.

"The Americans have surrounded our country," said a man named Feng. The demonstrations are "undoubtedly the result of foreign influences: they pay the students and the unemployed so that they create problems and go to protest," he thinks.

"This is the result of the Taiwanese, American and British influence", abounds a migrant worker named Chan. "It seems that we give them up to 10,000 yuan" (1,275 euros) per event, he reports.

- 20 minutes -

Shenzhen was only a modest fishing village when it became in 1980 a "Special Economic Zone" to attract investment from Hong Kong, still under British administration.

Nearly 40 years later, Shenzhen has become a metropolis at the forefront of modernity and has 12.5 million inhabitants, far more than the Hong Kong neighbor (7 million).

Despite their different views, residents of both cities are closer than ever. A fast train launched last year now connects the two cities in less than 20 minutes.

But even among those who claim to understand the demonstrations for democracy, the fear of the protesters seems strong, especially as it doubles as a linguistic division between Cantonese, spoken in Hong Kong, and Mandarin, the majority in Shenzhen.

"They must be able to" defend their rights, says about the protesters a worker who says he has been traveling for 20 years between the two cities.

"I wanted to go to Hong Kong to see the protests, but I'm afraid they are attacking people who speak Mandarin," he says.

© 2019 AFP