HONG KONG: Nearly three months after police cleared away the last of Hong Kong's pro-democracy street protests; lingering anger is stoking a new front of radical activism that has turned shopping malls and university campuses into a fresh battleground.
While still relatively few in number, a cluster of outspoken groups have staged small but disruptive protests in recent weeks targeting mainland Chinese visitors - tapping a seam of grassroots resentment to call for greater Hong Kong nationalism and even independence from China.
More than 100 such activists descended on the New Town Plaza, a mega-mall a short train ride from the border, on a recent Sunday to harass the day-trippers who stream across daily to shop, eat and sight-see.
The mainlanders - 40.7 million of which visited the city of 7 million last year - spur the local economy, but also exasperate locals by clogging streets and emptying store shelves of cosmetics, baby formula and other essentials.
"Away with the locusts and barbarians," read one banner as protesters roved through the bustling mall tailed by police.
"Go back to China," protesters shouted at visitors, including an elderly Chinese woman who fled with her trolley load of shopping. "We don't want you!"
Shops were closed and police pepper-sprayed some activists amid chaotic scenes and made several arrests.
A pro-Beijing newspaper, Wen Wei Po, thundered that the "radicals", some of whom waved a British colonial flag, were "inciting the foul culture of Hong Kong independence".
The financial hub reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, under a "one country, two systems" formula that gives it substantial autonomy and freedoms, with universal suffrage promised as an "ultimate goal".
The idea of Hong Kong independence is anathema to Beijing, which fears any separatist or sweeping democratic demands spilling into China to undermine its rule.
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