Not sure what the HK protesters endgame is here. It's unthinkable that China would step down. If anything, they are forcing China to take direct action, because if they let HK do its own thing, it won't end there for China.
China will probably crack down on them anyway, but they could still reinforce the vast number of regional separatists present in various areas of the nation, and sooner or later they could bring down the whole despotic government (or not, but it's worth trying).
In January the Presidential election will also take place in Taiwan.
And, of course, there is also the tense situation between China and the US at the moment.
We can imagine a lot of scenarios and competing interests at play here.
Forcing China to take direct action may indeed be the goal of some of these interests, and China knows it.
I listened to a commentator over the weekend talking about this whole business. He said that China have very many economic levers they can apply to HK to get their way and that military force is still a very distant option. The first thing that will happen is that Carrie Lam will be pushed aside and replaced with someone more hardline. They won't do it now because it would look like a victory for the protesters.
Maybe we’ll see a unilateral declaration of independence.
Not that it will save the HK they live in.
> Under the principle, each of the two regions could continue to have its own governmental system, legal, economic and financial affairs, including trade relations with foreign countries.
Yet they're trying to pass a law that essentially allow China to extradite people in HK to mainland China, for any reason mainland China makes up. That is not 1 country, 2 systems as the legal system in mainland China can dictate what people they want extradited from HK. Even the EU have made a formal complaint against the law.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-extradition-eu/e...
The extradition bill would allow mainland China (and Macau and Taiwan) to request HK authorities that some accused of having committed a crime there to be extradited. The request would then be examined by HK courts as is the case in extradition cases.
I understand that HK people don't trust mainland courts and perhaps also that they don't fully trust their own, but this is not about allowing anyone in HK to be sent to the mainland.
Mainland China has extradition treaties with some western countries, by the way.
The keyword here is examined, not trial.
They are not trials. They are meant to decide whether the person should be extradited following a request to do so from another country.
I would imagine they would do it gradually like they're doing now.
So by forcing this law, and forcefully silence the protesters it will be clear that they're not going for the 1 country, 2 systems; but rather 1 country, 2 systems except for ... until it's just 1 country.
French revolution was a blood bath, soviet union collapsed after 80 years for economical reasons (among other things), and i don’t know of any independance gained without some kind of military conflict involved.
My best bet for HK would be if someone living there could release massive financial information about china’s largest companies proving most of them are fraudulent (if that’s the case), and cause a major economical meltdown ( hoping for a regime change in china itself)... But that means aiming for the head, which means you only get one chance.
EDIT: Besides that, I am pretty confident that the media makes it look a lot worse than it actually is too.
I've been to China and Hong Kong. In China people looked relaxed, spent time relaxing in parks and socialising. I went to Hong Kong and it was unbearable crammed, people were stressed and over worked and there was no escape from the hamster wheel. No wonder mainland Chinese have little sympathy for HK.
I don't follow. If life in China is so nice and life in HK is so stressed and unbearable, wouldn't the people of mainland China have more sympathy for HK?
I assume you did not visited Xinjiang where Uyghurs are not really relaxing in parks.
Letting China get away with dominating Hong Kong isn't going to do them 1 tiny iota of good long term, if they ever hope to make a stand, the time is now.
Luckily how? They’re going to lose. If they want freedom they’re going to have to leave China for it, emigrate. All the protest isn’t going to buy them victory. The CPC isn’t going to allow Hong Kong to publicly defeat it; that would be domestically politically disruptive. They’d rather abrogate the one country two systems agreement and just abolish the SAR’s freedoms altogether.