{"id":4197,"date":"2019-07-23T01:49:12","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T16:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jul\/22\/why-hong-kong-thugs-may-be-doing-the-governments-work"},"modified":"2019-07-23T15:20:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T06:20:12","slug":"why-hong-kong-thugs-may-be-doing-the-governments-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=4197","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong: why thugs may be doing the government\u2019s work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday\u2019s assault was blamed on criminals, but there are signs of links to pro-Beijing figures<\/p>\n<p>At a pro-government rally on Saturday, one speaker made a disconcerting proposal for disciplining Hong Kong\u2019s young protesters. \u201cDo we have canes at home? Bring out your canes,\u201d said Arthur Shek, a co-founder of the Economic Times newspaper. \u201cFind a long one to beat your son. If you don\u2019t have a cane, what do you do? We can still go to a hardware shop to buy a 20mm PVC pipe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The next day, dozens of men in white T-shirts and masks descended on a railway station in Yuen Long where they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jul\/22\/where-were-the-police-hong-kong-outcry-after-masked-thugs-launch-attack\">beat commuters with long bamboo rods and pipes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jul\/22\/why-hong-kong-thugs-may-be-doing-the-governments-work\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday\u2019s assault was blamed on criminals, but there are signs of links to pro-Beijing figuresAt a pro-government rally on Saturday, one speaker made a disconcerting proposal for disciplining Hong Kong\u2019s young protesters. \u201cDo we have canes at home? Brin&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":278,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,48,80,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-hong-kong","category-protest","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4264,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4197\/revisions\/4264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}