OSAKA -- According to Ezra Vogel, a prominent American scholar with East Asia expertise and deep ties with Hong Kong, what is happening in the territory is utterly depressing. He finds the standoff between the Beijing government and pro-democracy campaigners to be irreversible, telling the Nikkei Asian Review that "I don't see a happy ending" to the ongoing conflict.
In an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review, the 89-year-old professor emeritus at Harvard University says, "It's hard to imagine now, at this point, that we could have a really good solution... I see a terrible social situation underlying the political struggle." As a sociologist, he believes Hong Kong is facing a sociological problem.
