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Comment by wiggler00m | Hacker News Reader

I asked a Hong Kong lawyer this week about the proposed extradition law. In particular, of the following, who would it apply to:

a) Chinese nationals; b) HK nationals; c) foreign nationals.

He advised it would apply to all three.

Edit: he also said it's not impossible the bill will be withdrawn.

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Yes, it is true. It is confirmed by pro-China lawyer in HK local newspaper. The prosecution of Huawei CFO make China targeting foreign nationals in Hong Kong for revenge.

Moreover, the issue is not only about politics, but also economic. The most concern is about how China could use this to threaten any person including foreign nationals in Hong Kong. Have a business disputed with some Chinese business while in Hong Kong? Then, you could be extradited to China any time soon. It is not safe to do business in Hong Kong anymore. If this bill is passed, then it is expected Hong Kong would be completely replaced by Singapore within some time of period for foreign companies in Hong Kong to leave.

The writing is on the wall for Hong Kong even within China, as other cities have caught up economically.

Hong Kong still has a huge advantage compared to mainland cities with respect to its liberties and legal framework, making it often the better place to do business than say Shanghai or Shenzhen. However, the CPC is quickly eroding these advantages.

These help a lot to be sure, but the city has gone from having an economy that was almost a third of the mainland's in 1993, to a fifth at the handover, to less than 3% today.[0] It is still important but no longer crucial to China. In a generation or so, it will be just another city among dozens.

The idea that rights and liberties are absolutely essential is a nice bedtime story we can tell ourselves, but if there weren't multiple paths towards economic development, then China would never have risen to the current level. Even in the West we probably only got those rights because it made economic sense to have them with the way we developed over time.[1]

[0] http://www.ejinsight.com/20170609-hk-versus-china-gdp-a-sobe...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-39706765

> These help a lot to be sure, but the city has gone from having an economy that was almost a third of the mainland's in 1993, to a fifth at the handover, to less than 3% today.

That is because of China's growth, not Hong Kong's loss. China was just way way behind in 1993.

> The idea that rights and liberties are absolutely essential is a nice bedtime story we can tell ourselves, but if there weren't multiple paths towards economic development, then China would never have risen to the current level.

Frankly, just being able to access gmail without using a flaky VPN is a huge boon to many when doing international business.

Well, China of course can make Hong Kong "a city among dozens" if it tries hard, but today a citizen of Hong Kong has an average income of $46 000, while a Chinese citizen only $8 960 [1]. For comparison, in Korea an average income is $28 000 and in Japan it is $38 000. But I agree that Chinese government definitely is able to lower the income of the citizens to Chinese average within 20 years.

> The idea that rights and liberties are absolutely essential

First, they are absolutely essential for higher quality of life. You cannot measure it with just GDP per capita or income per capita. For example, Middle Asian oil-selling countries might have high income, but life is not very pleasant there, especially if you are a woman, a gay, a journalist or part of any other minority.

Also, it is more difficult to make business in authoritarian countries because of excess control over any activities which creates opportunities for corruption. For example, in China to release a mere smartphone game, the developer first has to approve the scenario and characters in the government (yes, they really have such requirements). Of course, officials have no motivation to hurry because it is you who is losing profits, not them. And you have to repeat the procedure when releasing an update.

Also, in authoritarian countries the government typically tries to gain control over any large enterprise, and after that the profits are going to nobody knows where (but the friends and relatives of officials supervising the enterpsie suddenly become successful eneterpreneurs) and the losses are compensated from the budget.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nomi...

Despite all of these absurd constraints on business, companies are bending over backwards to establish themselves in China, because the market is that huge and profitable.

All of these points are great, but HK became wealthy as an intermediary between Asia and the West. Now it is losing what remains of that role. They will lose their high salaries not primarily because of the mainland's interference (although I'm sure it'll be huge factor) but for the same reason that wages are stagnating or dropping in the West. As time goes by there are fewer and fewer clear reasons why the average HKer will be worth a higher salary than so many other nations.

Nobody is bowing to your tyrannical world view. It stops here.

We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not exactly sure what your comment is even supposed to mean, but I'll bite. Maybe my predictions will turn out to be dead wrong, but as it stands it's unlikely that anyone is willing or prepared to stop what China is doing, and it's unlikely that Hong Kong is going to last very long because they have less and less power as time goes by. I personally am a lot more sympathetic to HK's struggle, and I encourage people to take to the streets because it is very likely to be their last stand. They certainly have more balls than I do. But life isn't like a movie and I'm pretty pessimistic about their chances.

If there is tyranny, it's just that it always comes down to power in the end. Freedom and the rule of law work well because they have made it easier for a society to flourish over the long term, but if conditions change so can their effectiveness. I wouldn't be surprised if human rights disappear like a puff of smoke if the 99% lose their bargaining power because of automation.

This is kind of a childish comment. What authority do you have to stop someone from freely expressing their opinion?

Actually, the fake news these days make me re-think the concept of `free speech`.

Firstly, More free speech sometimes means more fake news. Creating and spreading false or biased news are so easy, as the society goes, the problem we deal become more and more complicate, if we cannot get the right info and we do not possess the right mind how come expect us to make a ration decision, we all know what happened to Galileo, can anyone say what they did to Galileo is undemocratic.

Secondly, the common crowd are not that care about the truth, i discussed with a few people lives in HK through the internet, they actually do not know anything about the extradition law, and they still went to the protest. This is why I do not believe in any form of direct democracy.

Does China still have enough to gain, to make it worthwhile to destroy such an incredibly valuable asset?

I can't really rationalize why China would throw stone on its own feet, but there are two reasons I could think of.

One reason could be president Xi just can't back off because Xi is like Kim Jong-un in China. Xi has killed some of his political enemies and throw many of them to jail. If Xi shows any weakness to his internal enemies, he could not live long because he is playing too tough. It's like how a mafia boss works.

Another reason is taking back some US dollar from HK reserve. China is facing insufficient foreign currency for importing goods for production, or even food in trade war with US. One example is pork production, which China has large export in the world, but it relied on corn imported from US, so facing increased tax harm pork production in China a lot, and added up with African swine fever, the situation is even worse.

So, how would extradition law help? Basically there are some list of merchant in the hand of China who leaves China due to business disputed, bankrupt or any economic related prosecution. In China, they could start the court even with the absence of suspect. So, the court could proceed anytime and enforce any punishment without a lawyer to protect the suspect right. Without extradition law, it doesn't matter if the suspect left China. After the extradition law is passed, China would extradite those wanted list. And those wanted list could pay back some foreign currency in exchange.

Though, it is really just sacrificing long term advantage for short term benefit. Both reasons are really dumb but they can't stop. Chinese using nationalism to justify the party existence, since the party make China a strong country. But if it is not, then the party would start falling apart.

>Basically there are some list of merchant in the hand of China who leaves China due to business disputed, bankrupt or any economic related prosecution

With so much news around this bill, surely they would have fled before this bill was passed?

It was a valuable asset, 20 years ago, but the CPC has developed enough other cities to be large and rich. There are some excellent graphs if you search that show the relative % of the Chinese economy that HK was in 1980 vs now. Now it is a much smaller portion of the total economy. The CPC is now considering that HK might be sacrifice necessary to maintain their authoritarian control over China because they cannot allow the ideas of human rights to spread to the mainland china population.

At least some portion of HKG’s loss will be the mainland’s gain, so there’s that to factor in

> incredibly valuable asset

Is it though?

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