Anyone who believes that the Chinese Communist Party and its minions still represent the working class and peasants is living in the wrong century. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive C.Y. Leung, talking to foreign media in his colonial-era building stated:

“If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month,” Leung said, according to reports from invited print outlets. “Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies,” he continued.

This type of inequality talk is exactly what the Occupy Central protesters have been raging against. And it is enough hypocrisy and horrible statesmanship to make any expatriate living in Hong Kong, paying taxes in Hong Kong, and working in Hong Kong to wonder if Hong Kong has deluded itself into being anything but a weak ghost of what it could become.