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(DW) In fact, it seems like a trivial match in a trivial tournament: On July 27, Hong Kong and China will play in the East Asian Football Championship hosted by Japan. However, over the years, whenever the two teams clashed, things were not simple, and the political implications behind it were too great.
For example, in November 2015, the job email list Chinese national team played against the Hong Kong team at the Mong Kok Stadium in Hong Kong. At the time, Hong Kongers still had fresh memories of the pro-democracy protests that were eventually suppressed. From September to December 2014, in the so-called "umbrella revolution", hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to call for democracy and more transparent elections in Hong Kong. When "March of the Volunteers" was played at the Mong Kok Stadium as an anthem of the two teams, many Hong Kong fans turned their backs to the stadium in demonstrations and booed. The act was more sensational than the event itself, which ended in a 0-0 draw.
Four years later, a similar phenomenon reappeared. In November 2019, Hong Kong fans booed again during the national anthem. It was between Hong Kong and Cambodia, and it was Hong Kong's last home game before the Covid-19 pandemic. The background of the "booed protests" is the growing tension between Beijing and Hong Kong. In 1997, sovereignty of the former British colony returned to Beijing.