One of the best (and worse) things about blogging is it opens up a world of self-publishing potential to a lone poster with a computer, an internet connection and - hopefully - something to say. It is in this spirit that Capitalist Solutions in Hong Kong seems to be covering the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in the city. It is usually the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation end of the spectrum that does the better job of organisation demonstrations, and so it would appear to be in Hong Kong.
The author, Simon Patkin, looks rather lonely in the pictures with his "We Love Hong Kong, We Love Free Trade" banner. Presumably, the other free traders were all busy free trading.
There have been protests on the other side, but nothing comparable to events in Cancun in 2003 or Seattle in 1999. A group of 2,000-4,000 South Korean farmers protesting against agricultural trade reform that they say will see them forced out of business by cheap imports clashed with police as Pascal Lamy, the WTO's director-general, opened the talks. Another detachment jumped in the Victoria harbour. But this is hardly on the scale of other meetings.
A Flickr stream from Hong Kong has photographs of some of the protesters waving banners and banging drums (and an entirely unrelated but appetising picture of a plate of scallops). The Junk WTO blog is putting itself forward a central spot for "news and resources" for the Hong Kong meeting, though does not appear to have been updated for a while.
A report in today's Guardian suggests that an "anti-anti mood" is developing in Hong Kong and it may be tamer than other WTO host cities. There are two reasons for this. First, as a city, it has done spectacularly well out of free trade. Second, it is under the sway of Beijing.
A cut-out-and-keep guide quoted in the article "from what passes as Hong Kong's alternative press" suggests rock throwing will make life harder for the hundreds of thousands who marched this month for democracy when the WTO has gone.
