Knowing their limits

In response to Bruce Macfarlane’s piece (“If not now, when?”, Opinion, 16 October), I come from Hong Kong, and am now living in England. I’m one of the privileged who can immigrate.

People in the West (I’m generalising here) do not appreciate the value of freedom. People in mainland China understand the cost of speaking their minds only too well (they remember the Mao years) and have become so good at self-censoring that they often do not know that they are hiding their own thoughts. The Hong Kong people are afraid that this will happen to them and their children. I’m afraid of this too.

It is so very sad and unfair. Why do my children have freedom of speech, when my cousin’s children in Hong Kong do not?

Susan Fong
Via timeshighereducation.co.uk