The costs of having the Fortune Global Forum go like this. The media are full of portentous twaddle for a week. All kinds of strange groups come to Hong Kong in the hope of attracting attention and having some portentous twaddle devoted to them. The police force then falls into a kink in the space-time continuum and is transported to 1984, both literally and literately. Large swathes of Hong Kong are closed to their normal users so that the sundry bigwigs in attendance can move about the place without being assassinated, obstructed or confronted by a strange group pursuing some pathetic minority preoccupation like the notion that people should be able to choose their own religion.
Some presidents are funny about demonstrations.
But then elephants are said to be afraid of mice. There is no logic to these things. The Director of Immigration develops a sudden aversion for middle-aged ladies with a taste for meditation and spiritual exercises. All this gives rise to comment. And the comment in turn provokes a series of reminders that ours is not a government from which you would wish to buy a used car.