VANCOUVER—“Do you want to beat me? Come here then,” says one man in a group of young people who were caught on camera tearing down messages in support of Hong Kong protests that were posted outside a shopping mall in Richmond, B.C.

After a heated exchange, a Cantonese-speaking man then walks up to confront one of the people tearing down the posters and in response, the Mandarin speaker pushes him back. People from Hong Kong generally speak Cantonese, whereas in mainland China, most people speak Mandarin.

Several videos showing the Tuesday altercation were posted onto Twitter.

Richmond RCMP spokesperson Dennis Hwang said officers were on the scene in the Vancouver-area suburb and made no arrests. The tense interaction happened on Tuesday, the 70th anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China.

There have been several confrontations between pro-Hong Kong and pro-China supporters in the Vancouver area this summer. One August rally saw hundreds of people attend a rally near city hall where police were forced to intervene in order to keep the two groups apart.

This kind of conflict will likely happen more frequently as rising tensions in Hong Kong continue to spill over into the Vancouver-area, says Yves Tiberghien, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of British Columbia.

At one point in the confrontation this week, two men continued to tear down posters from the “Lennon Wall,” balled them up and threw them at people while jeering at them.

Inspired by John Lennon, and first seen in Prague in the 1980s, Lennon Walls are made up of small creative posters and messages and have been an emblem of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement since street protests in 2014.

Hong Kong is now in its fourth month of intense protests that were triggered by a now- withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.

Also on Tuesday, about 100 students attended a pro-Hong Kong rally outside of the student union building at the University of British Columbia. Several other students saw and then confronted the Hong Kong supporters, said Tiberghien.

He said these kinds of confrontations among young people in diaspora communities are not uncommon when a divisive event is happening overseas. And with tensions in Hong Kong rising, the large diaspora communities of both mainland China and Hong Kong immigrants in Vancouver likely won’t hold back in expressing their anger, said Tiberghien.

“There will be more,” he said. “You have super high stakes back home and you have the two sides present here and they have lots of connections. They go back and forth, they have relatives, they have friends. The tension is bound to come here.”

And that tension is increasing, both in Hong Kong and here in Vancouver, he said.

“It is a feeling of life and death back home. The stakes have become enormous right now. Both sides feel that it is about survival.”

Tiberghien, who lived in Hong Kong for several years and studied the 1997 British handover of its former colony to China, said he thinks some of the actions by China supporters are reactive and spontaneous, not necessarily organized by any government influence.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“My own observation is, given how intense the feelings are, it will happen even without government nudges.”

Hwang said Richmond police are well aware that events in Hong Kong could trigger incidents here in the Lower Mainland.

Police are prepared to deploy both undercover and uniformed officers “to make sure everything goes smoothly,” he said. “In Canada, you are allowed to protest peacefully. So our primary concern is public safety and that is the bottom line.”

Meanwhile, there has been an outpouring on social media from members of the Hong Kong diaspora in Vancouver expressing outrage following Tuesday’s events.

“They got nothing better to do in their life than destroying the Lennon Wall made by people who are standing with Hong Kong. I am disgusted,” said a Twitter user, whose bio describes them as a “proud Hong Konger.”

Read more about: