Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

A bunch of jawjacking in this thread about how the US should "intervene", whatever that means.

He's a quick rehash of what the American military has been up to for the last 2 decades:

* Fighting a failing (read: failed) counter-insurgency, that has surely atrophied the necessary skills and experience of field-grade and above officers needed to fight great land and sea wars

* Mopping up the mess left from the above

I don't doubt the fighting ability of the line infantryman (I was one), but this idea that we could do anything about Hong Kong without engaging in a full-scale war is ludicrous. It ignores a) the actual military engagements this country has gotten into for the last 20 years, and b) the actual geo-political situation in the region. Perhaps consider what strategic interest to the United States Hong Kong represents before advocating that we get into yet another endless war with nebulous objectives and mystical thinking about how easy it would be.

> this idea that we could do anything about Hong Kong without engaging in a full-scale war is ludicrous

Fighting a land war against China for Hong Kong is ludicrous. Making a second Tiananmen Square painful for Beijing is not.

From sanctions, to weapons sales to Taiwan et al, to providing protesters and resistance pockets with intelligence, there are options. Whether they’re worth it is the question.

I mean, we're already in a trade war with them. I'm struggling to understand why, after 50+ years of trying the same thing over and over again and seeing downright horrible results across 3 continents, people still advocate the tried and true method of "just send in CIA".

American medias have been singing the power of the US for so long now that their population really believe they are capable fixing everything with their hammer.

We don't know what would have happened without sending in the CIA.

Maybe the USSR becomes the global superpolice...

It doesn't matter how bad its economy is if it controls all the militaries and secret polices!

/s

Sanctions didn't work for Russia.

7 millions people in Honk Kong cannot win against 1.3 billions of people from main land, no matter how many weapons you provide.

"Making a second Tiananmen Square painful for Beijing is not" could be a good strat, but something tells me they learned from that one and have a plan for it this time.

> Making a second Tiananmen Square painful for Beijing is not

That would be in no-one's interests.

Immediately after the Tiananmen Square events in 1989 the US sent a high ranking general to Beijing to reassure the Chinese that this changed nothing.

The situation has changed because now China is seen as a real rival but the US and the West still have zero interests in going down that route. Not least because China is not a small country, it's the second economy on Earth.

I think the events in HK are being spinned and that some people are really losing their sense of proportion.

Bluntly speaking: The events in HK are irrelevant globally and are regional news at best. They are not a global issue that deserve international involvement.

At the same time, it is very difficult to understand the message and aim of the protesters, and their violence made them lose a lot of credibility.

Wouldn't China being the second largest economy in the world make it more interesting to make a second Tiananmen Square costly? Because democracy is very important for the stability of the West and having a powerful dictatorship steamroll a democratic movement while we just watch looks really bad for us and the credibility of our governments.

And, it also gives the West less credibility internationally. The US has been very clear that it was behind "one China, two systems" since the 80s a dramatic policy change would make every other country think "ok, so why should we expect that any treaty we or alliance we form with the US will hold?". If countries don't trust the West they stop working with the West and that reduces its power by orders of magnitude.

"One country, two systems" is a domestic policy of China. It's not any other country's business.

People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover. Violating a treaty with another country makes it an international affair.

> ”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover.

That agreement was predicated on a belief that over time, China would open up and become more democratic and Hong Kong would smoothly merge cultures.

Unfortunately, that assumption was entirely false. It's been 20 years since the handover, and China has not at all moved towards freedoms generally considered a pre-requisite to social society in the west.

Hong Kong has completely different values than mainland China. Even if the current events fade away, they are on an unavoidable collision course.

Absolutely, I would say they’ve already collided, and I’m arguing it’s time for the West to acknowledge that fact and act, such as making Tiananmen Square 2.0 more costly in order to protect our core values such as rule of the people and fair trials. I think that would be well within our interests.

I’m Swedish, a person with the same passport as me was kidnapped from Thailand and imprisoned in China probably after hours of torture because of something he published and his democracy activism in Hong Kong. The sentiment in Sweden is that it would’ve been nice for China to not say that Hong Kong would be under ”one China, two systems” if that’s not how things would turn out. Kidnapping Swedish citizens in Thailand for something they are legally allowed to do in Hong Kong doesn’t look like a domestic issue to me.

The British handed back HK to China and China said they would keep it largely autonomous for 50 years.

That's what happening and I don't remember that the Chinese government tried to renege on this.

But again, ultimately this is a domestic issue. Britain is out of the picture.

When people can be extradited to the unfair, Chinese domestic courts or failing that kidnapped by the Chinese government I would say that’s not ”largely autonomous” anymore. There’s no way for the kidnapped Causeway books employees to use the HK courts to get them out of Chinese courts, even though they committed their ”crime” in HK.

The respect of ”one country, two systems” was something China promised the UK. The international community is absolutely remaining in the picture.

HK courts would have decided whether to extradite to the mainland in the same way they do now when deciding whether to extradite to the US or any other country HK has an extradition treaty with.

China has also extradition treaties with some western countries. Does that mean that e.g. France is no longer 'autonomous'?

This extradition bill does not impact HK's autonomy at all. This is very transparently a pretext.

One has to wonder who's behind all of this because this is really getting more farcical by the day.

It is also very interesting that western media tend to use the terms 'China' for the mainland in their reports on these events. Clearly this is not neutral and makes Western opinion believe that HK is not China.

> People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

If your core values are freedom, democracy, and the right of the people to choose who governs them, then it does not seem hypocritical at all.

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