“The whole world ought to be concerned”: HK lawyers on Beijing’s “clarification”
qz.com
qz.com
Boycott Chinese goods? That would entail massive economic pain.
Do a UN resolution? China is a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power.
Launch a military intervention? This would make people wish for a low casualty war like WW2.
Secretly arm a Hong Kong insurgency? No matter what arms Hong Kong has, China could destroy the rebellion with an army armed only with sticks due to the massive population difference.
There honestly is pretty much nothing Hog Kong or the rest of the world can do except whine.
We should calmly and firmly articulate our objection to the Beijing's hardball tactics. This interpretation, like PRC behavior in the South China Sea, represents further evidence that Beijing has little regard for rules that constrain their power to act. If the international system has an investment in rule of law, we should see these actions as evidence that China is an unreliable partner in a rules-based order. We should be wary of including China in liberal institutions that are at the core of that order. Nations around the globe should adjust their relations with China accordingly.
A good start would be public statements supporting rule of law and respect for the use of the judicial system to resolve issues questions of legal interpretation. Foreign businesses with significant operations in Hong Kong should take note that Hong Kong is at risk of becoming more like mainland China (i.e. weaker courts, stronger political control), and consider moving operations if this would impact their operations or bottom line.
Should we see China as a reliable partner in the South China Sea? (No.) What would a regional economic order look like under China? (Maybe TTP isn't so terrible.) Should companies continue to use Hong Kong as a base for legal operations in China and SE Asia? (E.g. Singapore is looking better and better for arbitration.) Certainly, Taiwan should take note what any promised autonomy would look like if China offers a grand bargain to reunify.
Countries should see how China acts, note it, and behave accordingly.
Well the answers are clearly: "No" and "A lot" respectively. If you think the world needs the US of all countries to trumpet that fact, you're delusional. The problem there is that they see how we act too, and they're probably not so dim that they can't appreciate why we get off on pointing fingers at "bad guys".
This just in: We're the bad guys too... we're all pretty bad guys in direct proportion to the power we wield, and in inverse proportion to our accountability. China, Russia, the US... lots of power, virtually no accountability.
A strongly worded statement is just a bad joke that people see through these days.
What you suggest for a good start is a last chinese warning of a sort.
I find this ironic.
Not everything has a individual analog, Unless you are calling for war, which would be the closest thing to 'calling the police' that exists.
Call your local Communist Party office. They will tell you how to proceed.
Oh you wanted rule of law and freedom of expression? Move somewhere that respects it.
The Chinese government gives approximately 0 shits about Hong Kong's silly foreign ideas and just wants to extract as much wealth from the area as possible before redwashing it. Their days of freedom were numbered from the day the Brits took over.
Your contempt for those people who are fighting for their freedom in their own country is astonishing.
I'll all for standing up to the man, but let's get real, this battle is unwinnable. Even if all of Hong Kong decided to really start fighting to preserve their way of life, China would just declare martial law and that will be that.
I am pretty sure you had no idea about the mass protests[1] that are ongoing in the past few years either. How can you look at this crowd of several hundred thousand protesters and claim that they are powerless?
Another Tiananmen square probably can't happen again in the digital age. Or maybe it can, but only due to our defeatist indifference.
If it starts to look like they're getting uppity, they'll get a visit from their local Party leadership and gently encouraged to stop their foolishness. Escalate as appropriate.
Defeatism is precisely appropriate here. You have to ask yourself how badly you want change. Enough to put your family's livelihood at risk?
Nothing here is worth fighting a war over, and that's what it would take to meaningfully change the way politics is conducted in China. Everybody's best bet is to just fall in line and hope the Party doesn't totally bungle this five year plan.
If you were concerned about being governed by Communists, you had 13 years to get the hell out. And if you weren't concerned about being governed by Communists...well, you clearly hadn't been paying attention to history. Tiananmen Square (1989) alone should have been a wake-up call to China's future subjects.
This doesn't make what's happening now less appalling, but HK residents had ample opportunity to avoid the inevitable. Compare that to other dictatorships that sprung up relatively overnight; in Turkey, for instance, Erdogan has been president for little more than 2 years.
This is exactly why my father-in-law sent all 5 of his kids to the US for college. All 5 now have US passports and can leave Hong Kong if and when it becomes worse than they can stand. So far, 2 of them have made the move.
Good luck with immigration. Britain certainly didn't want to let many of its former subject leave.
To add, I don't know much about Hong Kong, but it's pretty difficult to leave Turkey if you're a citizen, not many countries want to give you a Visa meaning only the educated, upper class, is able to leave. If you're proposing a solution you should propose one which doesn't leave behind all the poor.
As an aside, the United States alone has brought in more than 7 million immigrants from all over the world, in just the past decade.
I am genuinely curious.
Right now, Hong Kong is way too valuable as an economic engine, but the political dangers are more pressing to the CCCP. So the government will clamp down on freedoms as best they can until the citizens can't take it anymore, then keep beating the horse until it's dead.
You should read the book The Dictator's Handbook if you want to understand it better.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
It is easy claim that China is autocratic therefore it must do X bad things
If you read the book you wouldn't need the articles because then you'd understand how they work.
A good China-specific book to read is:
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp...
It doesn't deal with corruption per se, rather how China has been operating politically and economically for the last few decades. The gist of it is, so long as you play ball with the CCCP, then you can enrich yourself. But the second you step out of line, officials will happily confiscate your life's work and tell you you're lucky you're not in jail. And the only reason you're not in jail is because as long as you can make wealth that they can take, you're more useful to them free than imprisoned. If that changes, a life behind bars awaits you.
What you can do in China, any autocratic regime really, is precisely what the local thugs will allow you to do, or what you can get away with outside their attention. They may not be as smart as you, but they are more numerous and have the legal system on their side.
To complete your political education, this book will fill in the gaps between dictatorship and the kind of democracy that Anglosphere nations enjoy:
https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Pe...
This book will show you the conditions in which freedom develops and really makes you appreciate the United States, tempered of course by the lessons in the Dictator's Handbook that tell how democratic regimes are, in general, not the forces for good in other countries that you'd like to believe they are. Would-be freedom fighters are fighting forces so much larger than they are that success or failure is entirely out of their control. Either the conditions are ripe for revolution or they aren't.
Barring some massive worldwide event, Hong Kong's future is dimming by the day. The Internet was supposed to be that event, but autocrats are more than capable of suppressing freedom there too, up to and including just shutting the whole damn thing off.
Author shows poor understanding of real world politics and cheap writing. The type of people who read such books are ones who read The Prince and believe themselves politically educated.
Bringing the matter to the public stage and attempting to hold Beijing accountable is the best available option.
Will this influence Beijing? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Will 10 or 100 instances like this, or disputes in the South China Sea identify Beijing as a bad actor? Yes.
I don't disagree with where you are coming from, but it sounds like you are endorsing giving up.
Matters such is this will take decades, now is not the time to give up for the Hong Kong or Chinese citizens that seek freedom.
We live in an inadequate world.
(See also: ongoing US election, or Erdogan's purges in Turkey)
I'd argue the third option, which I proposed, is adequate, and the best if only because it includes hope over the long-term.
In decades Hong Kong as we know it won't exist anymore. In a century, maybe China will have it's Magna Carta movement. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction right now.
Hong Kong is an amazing city, international and self-governing, competitive and self-funding-- in almost every way, it seems like a glimpse of the future; Tomorrowland.
However, its leverage to fight for its own sovereignty (or the rest of the world's leverage to fight on its behest), is extremely weak, and unable to grow. I fear that Hong Kong is a lost cause, which is extremely sad.
...In any case, I hope the idea of Hong Kong lives on, and we see more cities like this as we progress. One city isn't worth fighting a war over, especially because the lessons Hong Kong taught us show that we can make more Hong Kongs in the future.
Preserving emigration rights for HK citizens seems the most practical way to keep people safe.
That's why it must be crushed and CCP members' families flayed alive before them.
A full scale airborne landing from Japan and Korea on Beijing. Finish them!
What concerns the HK situation. There are only 4, possibly 3 proper military garrisons in immediate vicinity of HK. Only one hosts a modern and trained mechanised force. In case of mainlanders pulling the trigger, striking that garrison before forces stationed there will be mobilised will leave PLA with nothing that can strike on day one other than lightly equipped forces on machine gun equipped apcs/armoured cars. This will leave defenders with three threats on day one: guys with assault rifles trying to swim across from the new territories, air bombardment and assault from sea. Air attacks are inefficient in densely built up areas with reinforced concrete buildings. One can simply run into any multi-storey concrete building to hide, anything below a 1 tonne bomb can't outright destroy it.
The naval landing will remain a threat. Yes, even if PLAN will send disembarked ship crews alone without marines it will be enough to outnumber defenders and overwhelm them without use of heavy weaponry. PLAN does train ship crews to double as a landing force. The likeliness of Beijing ordering the navy to capture HK using what ever means possible, at any cost is high if their land forces will be rendered impotent. The above scenario of disembarked crews being used as a land force was simulated in recent military exercises.
Here, a third force intervention is definitely needed to prevent this outcome. With a cooperation of the defenders and a third party, HK will be able to stand for 3 days for sure.
High displacement ships (read a big frigate sized and above) can't navigate close to the shore all around HK island except for the West Lamma Channel between Lamma and HK island. A capable pilot familiar with local hydrography can get close to land in the region of Shek O village, but the likeliness of that is low and the locations is strategically unfavourable for naval landing. This leaves the control of waters south to Bluff Head as the main concern. There, scuttled civilian ships can be used to block access to the Lamma channel and provide radar clutter to disable enemy long range anti ship weapons. A defender allied ship, can then hide in the channel behind the cover of scuttled ships to prevent landing from smaller crafts.
Hong Kong may be a part of China but China does not own the people of Hong Kong like some sort of property.
Really HK should have become independent, but no doubt China would still claim it as theirs.
Well, both yes and no. That's kind of the problem. China and HK is kind of a bit like the US and Puerto Rico, except that all the details are different, obviously.
Bilbao is a part of Spain, Barcelona is a part of Spain, Seville is a part of Spain (Spain has had to deal with a lot of pro-independence populations), Donetsk is a part of Ukraine, Grozny is a part of Russia, London is a part of the UK (they did seem pretty unhappy about the vote...), Lhasa is a part of China, Taipei is a part of China/Taiwan (unique in currently being independent), Quebec is a part of Canada, San Juan is a part of the US.
If a city doesn't want to be part of its encompassing political state, then it absolutely has the right to treat with rest of the world in an attempt to realize those goals. And the rest of the world has a right to respond however they feel appropriate.
Hillaty Clinton has stated that she thinks the SCOUTS decisions in Citizens United and Heller v. DC were wrong. She wants do-overs on them both, and will nominate only justices who will reinterpret the laws as she sees fit.
I'm no Trump supporter but that is scary. Inasmuch as we have a constitution that means anything, it means the rights so protected by that constitution can't be just interpreted away by nine men and women who don't think you should have them anymore.
And no, Citizens United isn't about campaign finance or "getting the money out of politics". It was about a corporation paying for their own movie to be distributed and advertised with their own dollars. The movie could be wildly inaccurate and needlessly fearmongering -- and probably is, I've never seen it -- but the First Amendment should nevertheless forbid government from banning private entities from producing or exhibiting it, or the amendment has not very much meaning at all.
I think it is unfortunate that Hillary made that statement about SCOTUS, but at the same time it is not unprecedented for SCOTUS to reverse itself. Look at Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. There are many others as well.
Also, it seems disingenuous to call out Hillary for this and not Donald Trump (and many more republicans) who only want to nominate SCOTUS justices who will strike down Roe v. Wade.
Every election, the boogeyman of a Republican-stacked SCOTUS tearing down Roe v. Wade is brought up. There have been five Republicans in office following the ruling (Nixon [in office at the time], Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43) and it has yet to happen, under far more conservative atmospheres.
I don't buy the fearmongering on this front.
In the past, the supreme court wasn't the political football it has become today.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/19/trump-ill-appoint-supreme-cou...
I believe Republicans want to campaign on overturning Roe, and do want to chip away at it in ways which don't completely overturn, but that they want to be able to continue campaigning on overturning it, forever.
They're not idiots. They know they have a topic that gets a lot of single-issue voters to go out and cast ballots every election. And they know public opinion is overwhelmingly against fully overturning Roe, so if they ever succeeded they'd be in trouble: a lot of the country would be against them, and the single-issue hotheads would no longer have a righteous cause to motivate them to vote.
So what they want is the campaign issue, not the reality of actually overturning it.
Are they politicians?
More seriously: Obama said a lot of things that didn't come to pass. Was he lying? Clinton has said a lot of things on the campaign trail: is she telling the truth on everything?
How much is truth, and how much is pandering to the target audience? Are candidates from the different parties held by a different standard in this regard?
Oliver Wendell Holmes issued his famous "shout fire in a crowded theater" quote in a majority opinion in which the Supreme Court upheld a law forbidding people from criticizing the draft. That was a dark time for free speech in America and I'd rather not see us return to it.
I've criticized Trump on that and many other issues, but Trump is not likely to be elected. Hillary is.
Suppose I'm a shareholder in a corporation. That corporation has some legal duties with respect to looking out for my interests; can I use that to force the corporation to engage in political speech? If the corporation backs a candidate who will negatively impact shareholder value, or insufficiently supports a candidate who will increase shareholder value, should I be able to sue the corporation over using its "free speech" right inappropriately?
You can sue whoever (or whatever corporation) you like. There's no such thing as a "free speech" defence against a private lawsuit.
(I think the Massachusetts court made the wrong decision in that case.)
So money is no more speech post-Citizens United than it was before; i.e., inasmuch as it costs money to produce television, film, or video.
I'm a bit surprised that liberals think the First Amendment's right to free speech cannot be exercised collectively, whereas the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms can only be exercised collectively. Bit of an inconsistency there.
There's really nothing to stop the Supreme Court from being wrong, from making bad decisions, from having a makeup which does not reflect the liberal/conservative makeup of the US public, and from making rulings down party lines. All of which will cause it to fail to correctly interpret the constitution.
Pretending that none of those things can happen and that the court is infallible for all time is a far more scary thing. Unless you want to bring back Prohibition?
We're talking about two very dubious rulings here, which are in need of being revisited and there's absolutely no harm in doing so. Indeed it is quite normal to do so; the court has reversed many incorrect decisions in the past. They've also upheld decisions. What matters is not that a decision is reached but that the right decision is reached. Unless you think it doesn't matter whether or not the constitution is correctly interpreted?