Fabulous interview.

“I don’t think the student leaders have any say about how this movement will end. If the goods are not delivered, this movement is not going to end. These kids are fighting for their own future.”

“I’ve been working in the media for so long, so I’m supposed to understand the people. But I tell you, I don’t. I don’t understand them. Their potential power and fighting spirit is something I’ve just discovered. It’s amazing.”

When Lai asked his son why he and his Western university educated friends joined the street occupation in Mongkok, his answer was simple: ‘for us it’s very simple. We only have one choice: either we fight until the last breath we have, and keep this place our home, or we emigrate.’”

“These kids …” he said, trailing off.

“They were born with Western values, grew up with Western values, and act and understand the world through Western values,” Lai said. “They’re not answering to any leader, but the desperation in their hearts.”

He added that their values—freedom of speech and thought, open government, transparent dealings—could just as well be called universal values.

“The mainland values, mainland controls, political mechanisms—they can’t accept that political system. They can’t accept the mainland value system. They can’t accept the way that things function in the mainland. They just can’t.”

“All the momentum and power rests with these students. A lot of people think that after a while it will peter out and thin down, but the reverse is true: the more we fight, the more people understand the ideas and get affected and moved by it, and see the possibility.”