On July 1, residents of Hong Kong turned out in historic numbers to protest the country's lack of democracy.

Over 500,000 people are said to have come out to mark the 17th anniversary of the handover, which ended Colonial rule of the country, and gave power back to the mainland.

So how did Chinese media respond?

On the cover of China Daily, the event was marked as a "celebration" of the handover.

Despite 510,000+ #July1HK protesters in streets, China Daily promotes "handover celebrations" A1 & inside pages today pic.twitter.com/NgBNB2EI3i — George Chen (@george_chen) July 2, 2014

But even more funny was the commentary.

Writing in China Daily, the commentator Lau Nai-keung wrote a piece titled "What a crowd during the annual July 1 march!" (Via Marc Andreesen).

There's so much that's hilarious in the piece, it's hard to know where to start, but we can start where he says it's all good, because the walking around is good for the sex lives of Hong Kong residents:

On the bright side, the 20 rallies per day provide Hongkongers the opportunity to walk for an extended period of time. Walking has tremendous health benefits, and is a gentle, low-impact form of exercise that is easy, free and suitable for people of all ages and most abilities. Scientists have found that 30 minutes of walking per day helps deflect diabetes, soup up sex life, and prevent dementia, osteoporosis, and even cancer. That may be the reason why despite all the pollution, stress and negativity, Hongkongers are still outliving the rest of the world, giving our Financial Secretary John Tsang the “aging society” headache.

Then he says a lot of the protesters were there against their will:

The first group of people interviewed by the Post after the march started at 3 pm included the Shum family, which comprises a couple with two daughters — aged five and two. “My older daughter didn’t want to come as she said it’s so hot today but I tell her we have to come to protect our city,” Mr Shum was quoted as saying. Then the Post mentioned that the Shums “were spurred to attend by the proposed new towns development in the New Territories.”

That is to say, in this group of four, half was underage and was brought against their will, all in the name of democracy. And the Shums weren’t even there really for democracy — at least not the “civic nominations” kind of democracy, as in the slogan of this year’s July 1 march. They were concerned about new towns development in the New Territories.

Then the column characterizes the protests as just a jolly and general airing of grievances:

The Post’s live feed also showed a photo (taken by Bryan Harris) with the captioned “Tom Lam, a tour guide who speaks seven languages, rails against corruption in Hong Kong’s courts.” If we read the words on Mr Lam’s placard carefully, we will find that his grievance has nothing to do with the popular narrative of the city’s “threatened judicial independence”. In fact, he was complaining about being denied legal aid and judicial review by our legal system.

All these amply demonstrated the fact that the July 1 march is now an established tradition, where people went for a walk and voiced various grievances. It is a jolly good thing to let it all out once a year.

And then when you think the piece couldn't get more surreal, it ends with a big analogy to the Transformers movie:

In the morning before the march, up to 20 members of the League of Social Democrats called for open elections and burned a copy of Beijing’s white paper outside the flag-raising ceremony in Bauhinia Square. Holding banners, they chanted “We do not fear the white paper.” The words remind me of what Optimus Prime said in the latest Transformers movie: “Humans asked us to play by the rules — but now the rules have changed.” Substitute “central government” for “humans”, and the League of Social Democrats might have a much better slogan. But have the rules been really changed?

The new Transformers movie also mentioned that “The central government will fully defend Hong Kong.” And when the alien spaceship appeared hovering over Hong Kong, one Hong Kong policeman told the other “I am going to inform the central government.” Has the movie undermined “One Country, Two Systems”? Does the League of Social Democrats fear the Transformers? If not, will they march and chant “We do not fear the Transformers”?

Amazing.