As expected, a major theme in the chief executive's policy address this year is support for youth. As students played a leading role throughout the recently concluded Occupy protests, it would indeed have been remiss of Leung Chun-ying not to address their concerns.

Post Occupy, many suggest we have lost an entire generation. Have we really lost an entire generation and, if so, would support in the form of matching grants for young entrepreneurs, advice on "career and life planning", more opportunities for internships and visits to mainland China be of adequate comfort to our "lost" youth？

Young people did play a prominent role in the protest but it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that all of our youth were as angry and as determined to overturn the establishment as the diehard Occupy participants. The political orientations of our youth are as diverse as their socio-economic situations.

Very broadly speaking, those engaged in gainful employment, whatever the wage level, might have sympathised with the Occupy activists but they steered clear of the protests.

Like others whose daily lives were affected, they quickly grew angry at having to get up at least one hour earlier to beat the traffic and wished life would return to normal as soon as possible.

The top 0.1 per cent of our young people aged 18 to 25, who had the best parental care, the best education and their future laid out for them, were largely unmoved.

They are the children of our top professionals, academics, senior civil servants and business leaders, who are being groomed to take over the reins. As plans at the top are unaffected by high-decibel protests on the street, life goes on for Hong Kong's privileged few.

Some well-educated young people in coveted professional jobs, including many overseas-returned professionals, were moved by the vision of the Occupy leaders and took to the streets for a few days. After they woke up to the reality that street protests were unlikely to bring about positive change, they returned to work.

The question that remains is what drove a minority of bitter, hard-core protesters to engage in the equivalent of city guerilla warfare with the police for weeks, braving pepper spray and batons, and the likelihood of an irremovable blot of criminal convictions？

One sobbing protester told a TV interviewer that she took part because "Hong Kong has nothing to lose".

Yet, Hong Kong lost heavily as a result of Occupy. Its reputation for peaceful demonstrations was shattered, its rule of law lay under siege for weeks, and its relations with mainland China - the people, not just the central authorities - hit a new low.

Post Occupy, the chances of a consensus on the chief executive election in 2017 seems more elusive than ever.

Chats with the protesters and the media profiles of some of the most flamboyant participants - the young man dressed as Captain America and another cross-dressed as a self-styled "Princess of Brightness" - reveal a common pattern. Other than those firmly committed to the "true democracy" ideology, many followers of the movement were engaged in manual jobs earning less than HK$14,000 per month, with little prospect of a significant raise, let alone a chance to own a home or even relocate to a public housing unit.

For them, the camps, which came with free power, water and often meals, offered much more freedom and glamour than their mundane daily lives.

Others found new influence by creating new personas on the internet. Suddenly, they found they had gained power by virtue of their ability to mobilise large numbers of people to demonstrate.

Contrast their lot with the Hong Kong youth who have made significant breakthroughs overseas by virtue of the global education they received.

Despite Hong Kong's general lack of interest in innovation and technology, a young Stanford University computer science graduate of Hong Kong origin (the son of a professor) has successfully set up a restaurant food delivery firm and is identified by Forbes magazine, along with his co-founder, as one of the "30 under 30" success stories in consumer technology.

Such success is attributable to a superior education, which equips young people with the skills to innovate and ride global trends, rather than to "genuine universal suffrage" or "full democracy".

These stories raise the question: which is more important in exerting a positive, transformative influence on ourselves and our society - more opportunities for a quality education, or more power to the people？

It would be difficult to find an answer to the above without further polarising our society.

But one thing is clear - the polarisation of knowledge and skills does translate into a polarisation of opportunities. There is a yawning gap in the transmission of culture, knowledge and skills in Hong Kong society, especially among our youth.

Bridging this gap is arguably even more fundamental to improving our long-term harmony and well-being than having more democracy.

Source: SCMP