Reuters/DPA/AFP/Hong Kong

Hong Kong leader C Y Leung said yesterday that residents of the Chinese-controlled city should be more like sheep after a year he said was “rife with differences”, including months of sometimes violent pro-democracy street protests.
Leung was delivering a Lunar New Year message to mark the Year of the Sheep (or Goat, or Ram), in the Chinese calendar that is based around 12 animals of the zodiac.
“Last year was no easy ride for Hong Kong. Our society was rife with differences and conflicts,” he said. “In the coming year, I hope that all people in Hong Kong will take inspiration from the sheep’s character and pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong’s future.”
He described sheep as “widely seen to be mild and gentle animals living peacefully in groups”.
Chambers dictionary describes a sheep as “a creature that follows meekly, is at the mercy of the wolf or the shearer and displays tameness of spirit”.
The sheep is also commonly used to describe people who follow blindly.
“I don’t think he is saying we should follow like sheep. I think he refers to the virtues of sheep,” Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing was quoted as saying. “[But] then he himself is doing exactly the opposite to provoke so much confrontation and he is tearing the society apart. It’s very contradictory and duplicitous.”
Leung has frequently drawn ridicule – and anger – from Hong Kong’s vocal pro-democracy supporters for his pro-Beijing stance.
“Of course you’d like everyone to turn into sheep,” one netizen commented, using Leung’s local nickname of a “wolf”.
During the protests that brought thousands onto the streets to call for fully free leadership elections, Leung was frequently portrayed as the sheep’s mortal enemy – a wolf.
Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed the need for a harmonious society in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Hong Kong returned to China under a “one country, two systems” formula that gives the city more autonomy and freedom than the mainland and a goal of universal suffrage.
But Beijing’s refusal to grant a fully democratic election for the city’s leader in 2017 infuriates pro-democracy activists and politicians who blame Leung for not standing up for their rights
China insists that nominees must be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, a proposal that activists have slammed as false democracy.