Why can't Hong Kong vote for independence?
Culture: From what I understand, China sees itself not as a nation-state, but as a civilization-state. The government has a desire to unite all Chinese people together in a single nation. This is why they still claim Taiwan as part of China. Letting Hong Kong be independent is a step back from that goal.
History: During British colonial rule, China opposed all attempts at introducing full democracy to Hong Kong. It doesn't have strong democratic institutions in the way that you might expect. Yes it has a legislature, but half of the seats are essentially reserved for businesses (called 'functional constituencies'). The head of state is chosen from a pre-selected group of people who are loyal to Beijing. So even if the people all agreed on independence being the best path (and that isn't something that people agree on, as best I can tell)
Geography: Hong Kong is a relatively small geographic area with a very large population. It doesn't have the means to support itself. For example, most (all?) of its fresh water comes from mainland China. A lot of food comes from the mainland too. If Beijing doesn't want Hong Kong to be independent, they could simply stop supporting it with it's infrastructure.
Economic: Hong Kong has a thriving economy, and it's history has left it with a special economic status in several countries (including the USA). This makes it very useful to Beijing. They can skirt trade laws and funnel money through Hong Kong as needed. An independent Hong Kong could make this more difficult.
Hispanic people are more likely to attend religious services at least once week and to pray daily: https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/racial-an.... Hispanic people strongly support school choice: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/school-choice-strong-.... Hispanic people list preventing terrorism as a top priority, alongside education and higher than healthcare or immigration: https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/02/23/latino-priorities-for.... Among Democrats, Hispanic people are much more likely than whites to list the economy as the issue that "matters most" and much less likely to list the environment: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/business/economy/black-de....
Another key issue is aging. The median age for Hispanic people is 28 (squarely millennial), versus 42 (later side of Gen X) for non-Hispanic whites. That means, to a significant degree, the more liberal attitudes you see for Hispanic people as a group are a function of age and generational membership. Everyone gets more conservative with age, and you will see that same trend among Hispanic people.
Trump managed to get 28% of the Hispanic vote, despite running on an aggressively anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant platform: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/24/2020-hisp.... His approval rating among Hispanics is now 35-45% depending on the poll. Greg Abbott won re-election in Texas with 42% of the Hispanic vote. Due to the various factors discussed above, I think the increasing Hispanic representation in the Texas vote is going to have much less of an impact than people assume.
Texas was a reliably blue state until Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 without winning Texas. Before that it was thought no democrat could win without winning Texas. Democrats stopped spending money in the state and George W. Bush became governor in 1994. Republicans have controlled both houses of congress and every statewide position since the 90s.
There's a chance Trump might change that as he is less popular among republicans in Texas than he is nationwide.
2018 Texas governor election:
4.65 million (55.8%) votes for the Republican Abbott, to 3.56 million (42.5%) for Valdez.
2018 Texas Senate race:
4.26 million votes for Cruz vs 4.05 million for O'Rourke. That's with the left pouring enermous support and resources behind O'Rourke. Cruz raised $37 million, O'Rourke raised $80 million.
2014 Texas Senate race:
2.86 million (61.6%) votes for the Republican Cornyn vs 1.58 million (34.4%) votes for Alameel.
Republicans are still winning the popular vote.
I understand the Civil War happened and all that, but it was a different time and hopefully the Western world works on better principles now. If the USSR had let Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia free to chart their own destiny, maybe it wouldn’t have eventually collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy and lies.
How do you figure? I don't think any mainstream view of 'self-determination' and certainly not Wilson's just up and grants national sovereignty for the asking. Texas is plenty autonomous.
Texas is a well-defined territory with a well-defined set of cultural characteristics. Its population has as much of a right to self-determination as Catalunya, Scotland, Croatia, Slovakia or Kosovo, should a consensus emerge in the region. This is hardly controversial.
If you want to discuss why Texas does not meet parameters for independent statehood in your opinion, I'm happy to listen; but you cannot unilaterally say an unexplained "no" without looking very clearly tyrannical.
I'd like to think that's not the case. The proof is that we have states that, if it were only due to pure power, would have no business existing (the Baltic ones, Singapore, most Caribbean ones, etc).
I am not so silly to think that might is not a factor in international relations, but I also think we must strive to be better every day, resolving our problems in ways that don't always boil down to pure power. Otherwise we're just left with tribes and spears.
> Catalunya
> Kosovo
I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that it is non-controversial that Catalunya or Kosovo can secede and then using that to argue that it is non-controversial that Texas can secede?
Catalunya is still a bit fresh, but I think it is uncontroversial to say that quashing such demands has historically resulted in bad things happening that we probably wouldn't want to see happening again. In the age of the internet, you don't increase legitimacy by deploying batons.
I say this as a natural anti-independentist - I think the real challenge of our time is scaling government up, not down; and when one starts dividing and drawing lines, one is playing an extremely dangerous game that might well end up in Balkanization, ethnic cleansing included. But it is a fact that not all nation-states are as cohesive as France, and self-determination demands are legitimate when they reach certain numbers. The nation-state itself is a concept borne of very different times, which might be nearing its sell-by date. It shouldn't be scandalous to concede that a line on a map could be thicker in one place and thinner elsewhere, if that means a more peaceful existence and better cooperation at a higher level.
> The US deployed weaponry to...
Is an admission that an position is controversial enough that a major world power thought it prudent to enforce that opinion with violent force or the active threat of force. "Kosovo je Srbija" is still an opinion you’ll find expressed in earnest.
Would it be controversial for Texas to have the right to secede? Given internal (racial, economic) divisions within Texas, I’d say yes. Secession can also cause violence by removing a hegemon who enforces peace among different groups.
But that is the point of Wilson's: the US will (or rather should) back the right to self-determination. That has been the case for a century, and completely doing away with it (or witholding it from its very own citizens) would be a regression.
> Secession can also cause violence
Absolutely, as we've seen in the Balkans. And that's why I'm not a fan of independentist movements, in general. I just don't think one can sustain Wilson in some scenarios and not in others, as a principle. One can calculate pros and cons and allow secession only if certain conditions are met, but we cannot dismiss it with prejudice.
Indeed. There are powerful institutional reasons why the US does so, including the desires of the American electorate and the structure of US commerce.
> I just don't think one can sustain Wilson in some scenarios and not in others, as a principle. One can calculate pros and cons and allow secession only if certain conditions are met, but we cannot dismiss it with prejudice.
Right, but primary among those conditions must be the power forms of power that could be brought to bear. This is more complex than "If the US 7th fleet were to sail to Hong Kong, it could be sunk by the area-denial power of the People's Liberation Army Navy." because power is more complex than that. But the fact that the PLA could invade Hong Kong is a significant weight on the scale. And so any exercise of power in order to back Hong Kongers right of self-determination is going to have to be more skillfully constructed than anything I could come up with. and it might not be possible. It depends partly on how subtle and skillful the diplomats serving under Trump administration can be.
And the results of that are not going to be consistent with the results of trying to support the self-determiniation of Estonians breaking away from a collapsing USSR. After all, the US didn't succeed at supporting the self-determination of Estonians prior to the 80s.
why does it need to be an overwhelming majority (what does that even mean exactly?) and not a simple majority? In case a non overwhelming majority of Texans wanted to secede, should their will be thwarted by a minority of their compatriots? It does not sound very democratic.
51% on a binary choice for huge constitutional change is simply not an unequivocal result; it's well below the margin for error/fraud and reduces the legitimacy of the choice pretty dramatically. Obviously every group is free to set the rules it prefers, but taking a massive step on such a tiny majority is a recipe for strife and division. On such a small margin you can rule for a few years, not take decisions that are supposed to be set in stone and affect everyone forevermore.
Realistically, if you have more than 40-45% of the country opposed to a massive constitutional change, you are probably not getting enough legitimacy to make the process fully democratic in nature. There are further tests down the line, but a large margin is the very first one to meet if you really want to find "the will of the people" (which in itself is a troublesome construct, but that's another story). Once you get close to "2 in 3", then it's harder to argue.
The electorate don't want it and the politicians can't get the votes to pass the withdrawal treaty.
The failure of Versailles to fairly apply that rule (and later, of Germany and USSR to respect it, before and after WWII) resulted in tragic events that I hope nobody wants to see repeated. The model for a modern approach should be the Chzech/Slovakia divorce, surely, rather than e.g. Chechenya?
Examining the question “can Hong Kong meaningfully vote for independence?” inherently requires examining the power relationships involved: Who has power? How do they view themselves? What incentives constrain/impel their actions?
If enough people want it, yes it does.
> inherently requires examining the power relationships
Indeed, but no country exists in a vacuum, not even a superpower like China. The world has a role to play.
No it doesn't. Thats like saying that if you spend enough money, you can produce housing. That is only true in a world where money allows you to incentivize and organize a group of people to assemble housing. (A significant chunk of HN does not live in that world)
Likewise, if enough people want a thing, that allows some group of them to build a power structure which is able to incentivize some of those people to make the thing happen. But it is a fundamental law that in order to do any kind of work over time, you need to exert power.
2. Last time the people tried to do organize a vote, China performed the largest DDoS attack at the time, trying to bring down the vote system backend.
3. Also most Hong Kong people don't want independence. Most just want CCP to keep hands off.