Military response is not being considered.
Original Article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3019007/chi...
Original Article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3019007/chi...
I don't think a news story changes much.
They broke into the LegCo building on 1/July, if the police force hasn't withdrawn, probably lots of blood would have been shed.
Whether one agrees or not, many of the youth do not see much, if any, hope in Hong Kong under the current leadership.
These people would rather go "scorched earth" (well, probably not Syrian-style scorched earth, yet) than to be appeased with empty promises, again.
By "early Nazis"? No.
And the purpose isn't restricted to the people in them, it goes way beyond murder.
> While the separation of inmates into categories was merely a tactical-organisatory measure for the the purpose of administration of the camps, the arbitrariness of committal demonstrates the essential principle of the institution as such. The existance of a political opposition is just a pretext for the concentration camp system, and its purpose is not achieved when the population more or less voluntarily conforms as consequence of the most monstrous deterrence, that is, to give up its political rights. The arbitrariness has the purpose to deprive those under the totalitarian regime of all their rights as citizens, which finally become as outlawed [vogelfrei] in their own country as otherwise only the stateless and homeless. The deprivation of humans of their rights, the killing of the juridical person in them is just a precondition of their being totally controlled, for which even voluntary agreement is a hindrance.
-- Hannah Arendt
That was true in China even before those camps, and that people with a cartoon understanding of history, concentration camps, Nazism, just about anything related to this, roll their eyes at "making" someone a "villain" is as predictable as it's their own fault.
1. Tiananmen Square was a brutal massacre that gives a visceral reaction
2. The hunting of the Falun Gong practitioners seems insane. I had a friend in the US whose family members were disappearing and were being harassed in the US. They were getting phone calls with recordings of their wiretaps.
3. China is holding ethnocidal camps for the Uyghurs
4. China threatens war quite often, whether it be about disputed islands in the South China Sea or even whether China should get to artificially set currency exchange rates. (I understand that the US is practically speaking much more belligerent, though many US citizens may be blind to their own behaviors)
That sure looks like cartoonish villainy to me.
Another way to look at it. Imagine you're an amoral government bureaucrat ruling Xinjiang, and you're getting pressure from above about the terrorist attacks there (especially when Xinjiang residents are committing terrorist attacks in other provinces). Your KPI is to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to zero, and you have near unlimited funding. What's the simplest approach? Lock up anybody who has even the tiniest possibility of committing a terrorist attack, and institute the maximum amount of surveillance and monitoring that's technologically possible to identify any planned attacks. Also prevent your residents from going to other provinces, so even if they do manage to conduct a terrorist attack, it won't piss off anybody important (other province governors). That's the logic behind it.
I think you've misunderstood the nature of rhetorical questions. I'm not interested in the Chinese government's pretexts or rationalizations. The problem is the violation of the basic human rights of people who have done nothing to warrant it.
Thought stopping cliches will get pushed back.
Violation of human rights (if these are even recognised by PRC under your definition; they're not) are committed on both sides. Trying to weigh them is silly and does not make them any better. Measuring others by your yardstick is a kind of imperialism.
What cliches? You mean like the hypocritical and fundamentally dishonest nature of totalitarianism?
> if these are even recognised by CCP under your definition
They clearly don't recognize them because they are committing them.
> are committed on both sides
Two wrongs don't make a right.
> Trying to weigh them is silly
There is nothing to weigh. What the Chinese government is doing in Xinjiang is plainly wrong. Making excuses for it is silly.
One the other hand, military action could plausibly cause long-lasting international upset.
I don’t envy Xi Jinping’s position.
The PRC claims that Taiwan is a Special Administrative Region of the PRC while the ROC claims de jure sovereignty over all of China. There are significant political parties within Taiwan itself (the Pan-Blue Coalition parties) that support the One China policy.
If there isn't even internal consensus regarding independence in Taiwan, I think it's fair to say that the issue is a little more complicated than "China is sabotaging recognition of Taiwan's independence".
BTW, the ruling party of ROC was pretty authoritarian back then too. IMO, the contrasting political development of the ROC and PRC in the last few decades is worthy of further evaluation and consideration.
Edit: sorry for the country typo; Was thinking about a trip to visit my friend in Shanghai who lived there until moving to Singapore recently.
The US has agreed not to have official relations with the ROC, but the US has _never_ recognized the PRC's claims of Taiwan and the rest of the land controlled by the ROC.
This is false. The US has "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Strait since the 1970s, but it has never supported the notion that Taiwan (and Kinmen, Taiping, etc.) is PRC territory or that the mainland is ROC territory.
The feelings of Singaporean residents about the matter are not relevant to the discussion at all.
The US has never officially recognized that the island Taiwan as part of the PRC, only as part of "China", which is ambiguous because there are two nations calling themselves China (PRC and ROC).
Democracies tend to be more stable than dictatorships because there's a relief valve for massive public dissent - ie elections. Dictatorships often meet their end suddenly, because a revolution is the only mechanism they have to change things. It's therefore better to quell a rebellion violently and cover it up later, than risk the spread of discontentment.
The reason it's not being put down bloodily (as is typically the case) is because it's an issue confined to Hong Kong with a low chance of spreading. If it dud spread over the border, things would be different.
Present-day China, however, actually has a very efficient mechanism (relief valve) for dealing with massive public dissent, which is their largely hierarchical governance model (township -> county -> prefecture -> province -> central government).
When citizens have grievances, it's often against policies perceived to be imposed by local government officials. If the unrest becomes serious enough, many times these grievances are actually brought to the attention of the central government who then have an opportunity to step in to save the day and fire/replace all of the local officials involved (to the satisfaction of the mob). A surprising number of mass protests have been quelled peacefully in China in this way, over the years.
And, the CCP has a very hard time convincing the people of Hong Kong they won’t be prosecuted for dissenting speech after the Causeway book sellers were kidnapped.
Their release valve has hit a bit of a snag here. Democracy is tried and true though, maybe they could give it a try in Hong Kong?
The tactics you describe to quell protests would definitely work in her hometown and 90% of all other population centers in China. The other 10% are doing great and don’t feel like protesting the smaller issues.
A cold, rational CCP wouldn't have gotten itself into this mess. Hong Kong was popularly pro-China before the extradition bill. Re-integration in a few decades would have gone smoothly. But someone got impatient and jumped the gun.
Depends. For economic co-operation or dependency, probably yes. But Hong Kong people has very little faith in the Chinese legal system, most of us know it's a facade, from the grass-root to the super-rich.
That's why, by pushing for the extradition law amendment, which, if passed, would allow the Chinese government to extradite "criminals" from HK based on their laws, the HK government has kicked the hornet's nest.
You over-simplify the integration of a region which has its own strong identity, liberal rules and culture. One can't tell which measures will lead to strong resentment and which will get accepted - among the many that will eventually be needed.
It's probably gonna get worse unless China itself opens up. But in any case, it seems fairly evident that Hong Kong will have to fight this fight alone and the rest of the world will merely watch.
> It's probably gonna get worse unless China itself opens up.
Agreed with both points.
> One can't tell which measures will lead to strong resentment and which will get accepted - among the many that will eventually be needed.
In fact the public opinion was clearly against the extradition bill, but the government has a record of passing bills against strong public opposition (e.g. the High Speed Rail and its Juxtaposed controls).
> But in any case, it seems fairly evident that Hong Kong will have to fight this fight alone and the rest of the world will merely watch.
Not quite. In this fight, Hong Kong has got support from Britain [1], Europe [2], the United States [3], among others. The most powerful one is the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019” [3], a bipartisan bill introduced by US Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Marco Rubio. The bill would put real pressure on China (and pro-Beijing officials) to choose between worse financial access and democracy for Hong Kong.
[1]: https://www.theepochtimes.com/outgoing-uk-prime-minister-the...
[2]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/18/european-parliament-de...
[3]: https://time.com/5607043/hong-kong-human-rights-democracy-ac...
You wouldn't need military intervention to make Hong Kong buckle.
You'd just fake some water and food situation, and cut it off. In this heat, they'll start rationing water within days.
I'm old enough to remember the water rationing under the British colonial rule, and even then, that was the tail end of it.
Hong Kong was in British hands throughout last century and has an active memory of how things used to be before the handover. Also, they remember Tienanmen. There are numerous ties to the outside world in Hong Kong as well as to the rest of China because of family ties, trade, local freedom of press, etc. A military intervention would be impossible to hide domestically. Spin off protests in e.g. Bejing and other Chinese cities are at this point unlikely but not unimaginable if they don't contain this. Even if this doesn't happen, the mere possibility of this might be enough to weaken the current leadership and the fear of that is very much informing current actions. Tienanmen remains a taboo topic in China out of fear of something like this happening again. The last thing they want is this spreading.
They don't fear revolution as much as political leadership change. Xi Ling Ping's grip on leadership is being weakened by this. He and the people he put in positions of power need this to go away. The sooner the better.
So, what I expect is the Chinese finding a creative way to de-escalate this such that Hong Kong goes back to business as usual. It will probably involve a way of sacrificing Carrie Lam, who at this point is the very definition of a lame duck and the focal point of the protests. Speculation of her stepping down has been rampant for weeks. Probably they are slowly coming to the conclusion that keeping her around is not helping the situation. Removing her would allow the protests to calm down and allow business as usual to resume. I imagine business as usual sounds pretty good in Bejing at this point. I'm guessing that as this drags on, they are warming to getting rid of her sooner rather than later. I'd be very surprised if she's still around a month from now.
So, I'm predicting they will seek to remove the problem a bit sooner and ms. Lam seems like she's expendable, politically dead anyway, and a big part of their problem.
If they have a new CE come in, fully drop the bill, and actually set up an independent investigation into police brutality, it would take a lot of wind out of the sails of these protests before people dig their heels in on other issues (abolish the functional constituencies, establish universal suffrage, etc.)
I agree with the suggestion that the Chief Executive will not resign right away, as does some rumor [1].
> The Umbrella movement in 2014 had greater participation, attracted much more international media attention, subsequently wreaked much greater havoc in the territory, and lasted much longer than the current protest.
However, I disagree that the Umbrella movement had greater participation, nor attracted much more international media attention. For one, due to timing and other factors (such as the extradition bill concerns foreign diaspora in Hong Kong, and the ongoing trade tariffs and “new cold war”), this protest coincides with more media attention and actual international actions, in particular the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019” [2], which could put real pressure to get a response from China.
[1]: https://shanghaiist.com/2019/07/16/hong-kong-chief-executive...
[2]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/12/hongkongers-us-launch-...
This is the only bone I have to pick. Hong Kong has a short memory of how things used to be. People around 30-40s won't remember a thing when the colonial overlords rule with an iron fist.
There's a reason why generally, there's a rift of opinion between the young people, and the older generation.
Because many of the older generations had even worse memories from PRC and the civil wars. Yes, the British ruled with an iron fist as well, for a large part. But livelihood was generally improving for most (which may or may not [entirely] be due to something that the British did) during the run-up to the handover.
But yes, business as usual sounds pretty good to Beijing for now.
BTW, it's Xi Jinping or Xi Jin Ping.