Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong
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Edit: Grammar
It's a rather remarkable difference at this point.
The US economy was 16 times larger than China at the end of 1989. Japan was nine times larger. China was only about 45% larger than South Korea back then.
China's military spending today is equal to at least a third the size of its economy in 1989 inflation adjusted.
There's a reason why there are no major protests occurring in the Middle East re Xinjiang. One would expect an enormous outpouring of anger and protest, boycott, mass demonstrations and burnings of the Chinese flag and Xi's effigy 24/7. They know it won't make any difference and it'll just anger China; they have almost zero influence to affect China's behavior. Most of the world feels that way.
Take Pakistan. It gets billions in military and economic aid from the west and does a lot of trade with the US and Europe, but protests against the west are common. I really don't get what it is about China that, in the eyes of the Muslim man in the street, gives it a free pass to mass intern and re-educate muslims into not being muslims.
That's not true. The US is susceptible to humiliation and reputation erosion when it comes to human rights. China, largely, is not. The Muslim prisoners - Abu Ghraib - being tortured wearing black bags, the infamous photos that were leaked (and sparked large protests across the Middle East), was an embarrassing scandal for years in the US and globally. It rather painfully tarnished the US when it comes to having authority to speak on human rights. And that's just one of several prominent examples from the past 20 years.
Obama promised to close Guantanamo specifically because of that type of reputation damage. Guantanamo is an issue about 1,000 times smaller in terms of impact, than what's going on in Xinjiang and yet it was a huge human rights scandal for the US that persists in tarnish to this day. It's routinely mentioned even now and the US gets lambasted for it. These things are a big credibility destroyer for a liberal democracy.
Go watch footage, or read polling/surveys, of what Western Europeans said and thought about the US from ~1948 to ~1991. Then compare it to today. That's the reputation hit the US has taken, the moral ground it has ceded. It has a tangible negative impact on the ability of the US to operate as a superpower, when your allies question your moral standing.
The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. The positive reputation gain that you acquire from doing something like that, is largely wiped out when you do something like torture Muslims in those infamous photos at Abu Ghraib.
China does not operate on any reputation basis when it comes to human rights. They do not depend on US-style allies, of which they have almost none. They almost entirely disregard such reputation concerns. Quite the opposite, they defend their authoritarian approach with direct threats to anyone that opposes how their government does things.
The sort of image the US wanted to project wasn't just for their allies but also for internal consumption. Remember that back then there was a PR war between capitalism and communism, as there was a real fear within the US of communism taking over. This fear was laid to rest when the Soviet Union fell apart and conservative interests won power within the US. As a result US authorities felt free to take the velvet glove off their iron fist.
The brazen exercise of raw power without apology has accelerated under Bush Jr and now Trump. Gitmo was an embarrassment to Obama who vowed to close it, but Trump has signed an executive order to keep it open and has vowed to use more torture.
Where are the consequences?
1. https://www.thequint.com/news/world/pakistan-pm-imran-khan-o...
The West has had decades of support for Israel (whose existence has been detested by most of the ME since pre-inception) and the decades-long struggle for ME countries to obtain ownership of their oil resources while white guys were in the country getting rich off it created has created a powerful and lasting image embedded into the culture (not least aided by lots of opportunistic ME politicians drumming up anti-West sentiment for decades in the same manner Western ones drum up anti-immigrant sentiment).
China is too new, even if they're actually a more appropriate target for wrongs committed in 2018-2019.
1. Local police was sent, it either did nothing or deserted
2. Troops from BJ itself were sent in, largely the same happened
3. Liaoning military region troops were called, they fared just a bit better than BJ troops, made few attack attempts, but nevertheless withdrew
4. Finally, as Beijing was getting more and more desperate, Shaanxi military region troops - "the primitives," were called and given a total cart blance. They made a blood bath
What then?
It has always been the case that the powerful squash uprisings by getting half the poor to kill the other half this has been the case regardless of the country for thousands of years, to think otherwise is naive.
> combined with all the cameras running
They killed protestors in Tiananmen square precisely because it was in front of cameras so the world would know the lengths they would goto in order to maintain power. China has never faced any negative consequences for the massacre because every one got the message.
Also, even they weren't particularly loyal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_dur...
I am sure they will go in, but I’m also sure they have more sophisticated crowd control methods available to them.
The self-censorship on the part of the Western heads of state thus far has been a testament of the PRC's clout unto itself.
It certainly looks bad. But let us not forget how the US treats our own "Tank Man", Chelsea Manning.
It's really hard to predict where the "fuck it, you've gone too far, we can't do nothing this time" line is. Remember, basically everyone else in Asia is rooting for the west to cut china off economically so they can fill China's manufacturing role.
I agree that unless the Chinese really butcher people it will be business as usual but the chance of some viral video lighting a fire under the politician's asses is not to be discounted, especially when the current US administration has taken a policy line that means they will play up these kinds of things for negotiating leverage.
Edit: by "honorary Europe" I mean they have similar standards of living, similar strong and stable government institutions and with that comes the expectation that they won't just drive tanks over people at the drop of a hat. Basically, they're rich enough that we expect them to handle the problem in what we consider the "right way".
This is what I assumed it meant. I know its difficult to make this work with the US but lots of Asian cities can boast these features.
Look at what happened in Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc. Do you want your country to become like that? Do you want to welcome an American intervention, and the joy and prosperity it brought to Iraq? Do you want to invite Western management of capitalism and the success it wrought in Russia in the 90’s?
You can disagree with the CCP’s premise, but US actions in the Middle East, and perceived US meddling in the world has done more to reinforce the CCP’s rule than any other country. And if there’s one thing East Asian cultures really dislike in society, it’s uncleanliness and disharmony. In particular, China’s history is one civil war and famine after another, with a period of peace in between, and the West seems to fundamentally misunderstand how they think over there.
I’d wager that the CCP can open fire with machine guns on the protesters and they might even be cheered on in the mainland. But they probably won’t, perhaps even fearing in the back of their mind what an example that will set in some later time. How would they justify that? That it’s okay to light into American-supported protesters? Who have had it so good for so long in the gilded city of theirs? And make no mistake, there is a tone of anti-mainland on the HK’ers part that can be easily construed as snobbery as well. That would all be a sort of nationalism you can’t walk back on easily.
To that end, you should not suppose that when a revolution in China — as it inevitably will — will be produce a government friendly to your values. It did not happen in Russia, it hasn’t been happening anywhere in the Middle East, even in Iraq where the US poured a trillion into the effort, and Europe is arguably weaker for what has been happening there as well.
But they entered the public awareness in 1963 with the March on Washington, and haven't let up since.
My concern is that if, Heaven forbid, there is ever again something worth protesting to that degree, no one will pay attention. Regular Americans, rather than being swayed, will look on and say, "Oh look honey, the kids are protesting again."
I don't think they are as "enshrined" as you think they are.
Survivorship bias ensures that history only remembers the protests that were meaningful, making it seem like protests were historically more effective and more meaningful.
Or one could observe that it has completely let up and now most Americans are cynical about protests and cheer on authoritarian figures from both parties.
Women protested in the 1910s for the right to votes.
My guess is it’s an industrial revolution side effect, but would be love to learn of earlier roots.
but probably what you are referring to is post world war 2, which mostly started in the 1960s caused by the vietnam war and civil rights movements brought about by myriad causes (middle class affluence, mass communications, overextending of the govt overseas (and at home with the draft etc))
wikipedia, but it’s as god a place to start as any[1]
I'd love to hear other perspectives.
The CR made the party fear chaos above all else. HK actually learned the same lesson under the British during the same timeframe (Maoist protesters almost tore the city apart). Not that it justifies their behavior, it just explains it.
The two countries are absolutely incomparable on these particular points. Prosperity alone does not quell protests, most protests in the U.S. are decidedly bourgeois.
Exactly. The US population is a model of complacency, so the US Government does not have to project much authoritarian force domestically.
The narrative that there is a culture of dissent in the US is false and gets more false every day.
It will most likely become a totally different cyberpunk society, with modern cities and massive surveillance coexist, instead of being another US.
I think western people are just more complacent, and so protests are viewed as fundamentally non threatening by authority figures.
In China, however, the people are much less complacent and so authority figures fear more widespread uprising.
In the US, we are taught to view this sort of thing through the lens of authoritarian excess, but to do so requires Saddam-ifying the Chinese government.
A more rational view is to suppose that all governments operate from the same playbook and use whatever tactics are necessary to keep the people at bay.
The American people embody a unique blend of cowardice and complacency that most governments would be quite pleased to foster in their own populations. The image of the "Tank Man" was so compelling in the US because that kind of courage against authoritarian power is utterly foreign to Americans.
In the US, the people with "Tank Man" level courage (Chelsea Manning, Ed Snowden, etc.) are vilified and most Americans follow the lead of authority figures and despise them.
You make progress in the West by winning over your naysayers by memetic warfare, and ideally by grassroots sentiment/political engineering.
In recent decades, there have been issues with the system as a whole that have made it difficult for the system to self-correct. Namely, the obsession with never revisiting laws on the books to simplify the act of legislating, the dismantling of the legislative branch as the ultimate source of law through delegation to the Executive branch and dissolution of vital apparatuses like the Office of Technological Assessment, and overreliance on an overloaded Judiciary as a relief valve for legislation largely driven by donor/special interest organizations.
Resistance in the United States, and the West in general was never intended to be "buy the vote" but rather the end result of pushes to modify public sentiment through bottom up pressure, with laws being passed at the lowest level possible such that each State was free to run itself as it saw fit with minimal undue influence from other State, with a Federal body of jurisdiction to mediate cross-State issues.
At no point was the U.S. Government ever expected or desired to be able to control the populace. That was specifically avoided and straight up poisoned through various Constitutional Amendments, as well as quite elegantly rejected in the Declaration of Independence; which while not a document with legal force, remains an elegant expression that I still believe it safe to say expresses the essence of American culture. The Government is there to serve the populace. Not suppress, dominate, or terrorize them.
Any contest of wills in the States is fundamentally a difference of opinion between people; not a challenge to the superiority of the State. Whether in current times the establishment has started to waiver from the rails is anyone's guess, but currently there is a generational changing of the guard as it were going on.
Hope this is enlightening or at least provides food for thought.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I'll try to rebut in case you can help clarify things for me further.
> You make progress in the West by winning over your naysayers by memetic warfare, and ideally by grassroots sentiment/political engineering.
I think this is another way of saying that leaders do not have absolute power and there must be some level of consent of the governed behind what the leaders do.
The word progress entails views that could be described as "politically progressive". While I agree that what you describe (grassroots efforts, awareness, shifts in public opinion) have characterized progressive movements in the US, I think those represent only a subset of the relevant political trends to consider in our analysis, such as right wing movements that have been remarkably retrogressive.
> In recent decades, there have been issues with the system as a whole that have made it difficult for the system to self-correct. Namely, the obsession with never revisiting laws on the books to simplify the act of legislating, the dismantling of the legislative branch as the ultimate source of law through delegation to the Executive branch and dissolution of vital apparatuses like the Office of Technological Assessment, and overreliance on an overloaded Judiciary as a relief valve for legislation largely driven by donor/special interest organizations.
I would characterize the items you mention as (broadly) institutionalized corruption. As powerful interests obtain greater advantage, they allow the system to evolve in ways that protects their power. There has not been any significant public movement to alter the course of this trend.
> Resistance in the United States, and the West in general was never intended to be "buy the vote" but rather the end result of pushes to modify public sentiment through bottom up pressure, with laws being passed at the lowest level possible such that each State was free to run itself as it saw fit with minimal undue influence from other State, with a Federal body of jurisdiction to mediate cross-State issues.
This was indeed the intent at the outset, but we have seen a massive growth in the size and reach of the Federal government, both in terms of size/scope of the government itself and also in terms of the percentage of lobbying dollars spent at the Federal level. For lobbying interests, it's easier/cheaper to focus on one target than 50.
> At no point was the U.S. Government ever expected or desired to be able to control the populace. That was specifically avoided and straight up poisoned through various Constitutional Amendments, as well as quite elegantly rejected in the Declaration of Independence
We have seen in recent decades a substantial weakening of the bill of rights, which is, to your point, the most concrete embodiment of the initial importance of protecting the people from government:
1st amendment: We've seen the past several administrations conduct a war on whistleblowers, as well as prosecute journalists under the espionage act.
2nd amendment: Many Americans support the total repeal of this one.
4th amendment: Immigration oriented laws remove 4th amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure within 100 miles of the US border. 80% of the US population lives within 100 miles of a US border.
5th amendment: Courts have been convicting child pornographers in ways that are troubling for broader 5th amendment protections against self incrimination.
The notable thing here is not that the protections against government have been reduced, it's that they have been reduced and nobody cares.
> The Government is there to serve the populace. Not suppress, dominate, or terrorize them.
What government has in its constitution the idea that it would do anything else?
> Any contest of wills in the States is fundamentally a difference of opinion between people; not a challenge to the superiority of the State.
This is only due to the selective focus on in-fighting between political groups, such as the abortion debate. I'd argue that the state should not have been allowed to get away with the following abuses of authoritarian power (and big budget, state actor scale PR efforts):
- Sloppy accounting of the GSEs that led to the financial crisis in 2008
- Dishonest accounting of social welfare systems and their sustainability (Social Security, Medicare)
- Dishonest leaks of intelligence information (or deliberate leaks of fake info (Hersch)) leading to the costly Iraq war, along with dishonest cost projections.
- Inappropriate classification of information about the Iraq and Afghan wars (Wikileaks)
- The attacks on press freedom mentioned above
- The attacks on urban black populations that occurred during the 1970s (Chicago) and were aided by Federal law enforcement.
- The negligent handling of water pollution (Flint) which is actually happening in many US cities. Lead and contamination tests are often performed improperly, leading people to think their water is clean.
The above are predominantly akin to theft, but some are graft and some are obstruction to prevent accountability. Generally speaking, all would be highly criminal if done by a private firm.
That Americans do not mind these things illustrates that there is total compliance with authoritarian excesses and criminal behavior. The distraction from these issues and focus on partisan tit for tat issues is generally just what it looks like when the population is complacent about its authoritarian overlords.
I'd be curious to read your responses. I think we agree on the conceptual (idealistic) objectives of the US form of government, and we agree that the current instantiation has problems. My take is that we can measure authoritarianism by looking at how much it is challenged by the democratic process... more authoritarian means there will be fewer challenges, which is our status quo in the US.
>I think this is another way of saying that leaders do not have absolute power and there must be some level of consent of the governed behind what the leaders do.
Absolutely spot on.
>The word progress entails views that could be described as "politically progressive". While I agree that what you describe (grassroots efforts, awareness, shifts in public opinion) have characterized progressive movements in the US, I think those represent only a subset of the relevant political trends to consider in our analysis, such as right wing movements that have been remarkably retrogressive
Careful there, you're mixing up senses of the word "progress". I was originally using it to communicate the sense of gaining headway toward facilitating a particular change, without respect to who or what that change is associated with. I.e. we have progressed toward our goal. Any side can and does make progress in winning over the majority mindshare.
In American politics however, there is the label of being a Progressive, which is generally used to describe more centrist voters on the left right spectrum with maybe some more willingness to accept that label in recent times on the Right. That is a totally different sense of the word I tried and failed to avoid.
>I would characterize the items you mention as (broadly) institutionalized corruption. As powerful interests obtain greater advantage, they allow the system to evolve in ways that protects their power. There has not been any significant public movement to alter the course of this trend.
I vehemently agree. The delegation of matters of administrative lawmaking in particular to the Executive branch being one of the most troubling. The far more concerning though, is the usurpation of the process of actually writing legislation by entrenched special interest, combined with playing extraordinarily fast and loose with what gets legislated and passed, without initial review for Constitutionality, combined with reconciling the corner cases of the Common Law system with the Constitution. An unconstitutional law can be passed, enforced, and allowed to stand for many years before the environment is right for an attempt at judicial strike down, and there is little to no stomach for periodically repealing/revisiting legislation to keep the books clean as it were. Many of these failings come from overreliance on lobbyists supplying verbatim bill text, but there is also a lot of misunderstanding in terms of just people writing bills badly, or writing bills on topics they don't understand without getting input by an impartial group beholden to the tax payer. This was made all the more frequent through dissolution of legislative research arms like the OTA, which was killed by ideologues back in the 90's, likely because they were often at odds with entrenched industry interests. It has gotten to the point where legislation is becoming more reliant on party-line towing, or trying to engineer party majorities rather than being based on a best faith effort to doing what is best for the nation as a whole. Which requires concession on both sides, and a willingness to understand there are just some things that will not get through and maybe shouldn't even be attempted at the Federal level.
>This was indeed the intent at the outset, but we have seen a massive growth in the size and reach of the Federal government, both in terms of size/scope of the government itself and also in terms of the percentage of lobbying dollars spent at the Federal level. For lobbying interests, it's easier/cheaper to focus on one target than 50.
Faster information propagation and the rise of the national media has played a hand in that, as well as a change in the apparent philosophy of representation. The classical idea of a representative is an agent who operates as a sort of floating average of the populace. The combination of first-past-the-post voting system, faster feedback loops via the national media/polling, and campaign finance laws have disrupted the way the Congress should work based on views the Founders had in mind. The idea they laid out was to have level headed people making the best calls on their own merit, and worked well given a relatively small base of laws to sift through. Now though, most legislators come in with an agenda, run into the wall of old business still stuck in the legislative cycle, have to react to new business in ways consistent with maintaining polling numbers, and need to filter through or delegate the filtering of frankly ridiculous levels of information. My primary concern is that legislators seem to have become chess pieces for professional social engineers instead of well-versed in the material on which they will be acting. An undesirable course of events if one takes into account the fact that part of the Library of Congress mission is to make available the breadth of knowledge required to allow legislators to effectively legislate. Instead, they are essentially hounded by people who shape their career around getting what their employer wants instead of presenting things in a manner not instantly discernable as biased and cherrypicked.
>W.R.T. The Bill of Rights
Many of the attacks on the Bill of Rights have been enabled by the Common Law system. This is either a bug, or a feature depending on who you ask, and is exacerbated by the fact that the layperson is ill-equipped to understand the mire of complexity that is our adversarial legal framework.
The corpus of precedent, and its constantly shifting nature makes a true reconciliation of the historical output of the legal system difficult because the very meaning of straightforward statements written on paper can be twisted in ways disconnected from plain-English grammars as long as recognizably valid legal reasoning is employed; combine that with a reticence of judges to regularly challenge precedent, and you run into legal drift over time.
The adversarial nature of the institution of the Judiciary also renders it vulnerable to a form of Social Engineering where strategic priming, jury/venue/judge engineering perpetuates various patterns of systemic abuse that do not quite seem to have effective countermeasures.
Working as designed, many would say, but I'm not sure that it's really possible to reconcile the fact that the barrister/solicitor occupation is locked behind significant financial barriers to entry, and there being such a disparity what types of outcomes that are generated given different financial resources to expend; even if that may be a somewhat inevitable outcome of the free market system. What I mean by this disparity is the inability of the justice system to act as a sufficient tempering force for white collar/corporate malfeasance compared to relatively straightforward outcomes in non-corporate/white collar cases.
I don't think there is any willful aspiration on most actors in the system's part, but there is definitely a problem of equal access to quality representation in our system that I think could be remedied by a system whereby private practices are delegated some quota of public defense case load in return for the privilege of practicing.
W.R.T. malfeasance by the government.
The Office of the Inspector General needs teeth, and to be separate from the Executive, but tasked and empowered with full jurisdiction to cut through Executive privilege and national security concerns if need be. The whistleblowers/watchdogs of the Executive branch cannot afford to be beholden to a President directly. Who they should be I am not sure, but clearly, they do not seem to have any oomph in regards to curtailing malfeasant behavior under their current operating model.
Again, sorry for the delay, but I wanted a chance to get in some good thinking on things. It's still not the most carefully thought out bit, but I'd feel remiss putting it off any longer.
I've still got a lot of cogitation to do before I'll be satisfied with my articulation, I'm sure.
Shared sentencing was common, but I believe there's nuance between European feudal kingdoms and eastern empires.
In Machiavelli's Price, he compared the French kingdom and the Ottoman empire. The former was based on the traditional feudal model - Nobels are powerful. And the latter was based on province model, there are officers but they don't own things, and can be replaced by the Sultan or the Emporer without any problems.
I found for empires like China, Ottoman, people usually respect authoritarian more. My guess people might fear their local lords because they are cruel, but that's not consistent for every place and every decade in Europe because it's too divided. But for China, this continuously goes on for thousands of years.
PS: I believe the shared sentencing is much more important than other cruel sentencings on this topic. Because it's not because it affects the criminal by his sense of responsibility for families. But instead, it's because other family members will first stop him, if they failed to stop him they will report directly.
When I was a kid every time I tried to say something about politics everyone else's response was "stop that, don't ask for trouble".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations
Maybe we both figure it's a way to get GDP up...
I assume you are referring to "dead man's switch"? If so, we've had the concept of mutually assured destruction for a long time. With our radar capabilities etc. we can see bombs coming long before they hit. Plenty of time to launch our own. Same goes for the Russians.
With respect to militarizing space, the French are doing it too, and I don't hear the same issues being raised. It's better we get there before, say, China or Russia. https://www.ft.com/content/a479bcb6-a628-11e9-984c-fac8325aa...
Where can I read about this?
You are absolutely right Hong Kong cannot even provide proper shelter or health system or good education to more than 40% of its people, who live in a space smaller than prison cell. All these protests are due to this simmering discontent.
I do not think living in a prison cell size apartment and then being hold hostage to mortgage for life working for 14 rich billionaires of the city is ahead of it's time.
Hong Kong is just paying price of its own reliance on get rich quick through property and closed China. First one destroyed innovation and second one is no longer true. Today Chinese cities are way ahead in innovation and technology, they also have a property bubble but not as severe as Hong Kong. Hope they learn lesson from Hong Kong.
When it suited Hong Kong they asked China to reinterpret basic law for their own benefit against basic human rights separating spouses and kids and they still do it with impunity and all people in Hong Kong are happy with that reinterpretation. You cross line once you cannot go back, this is what Hong Kong asked for and got it. Moreover Hong Kong is a Chinese territory so everything applicable in China apply except few exception as defined in basic law.
If not, why are they staying in HK?
For your question moving between cities anywhere is hard. Moreover most population in Hong Kong is not that well educated to get better paying jobs as locals have better university education and good English knowledge in tier 1 cities.
People live in Hong Kong as they don't have a choice or skills or resources. Most Hong Kong people with skills or resources are already either in China or other parts of the world.
It's interesting how 30 years ago, western economists were trying to sell everybody how moving all our industries to China will eventually turn the latter into a democracy because economic growth and democracy goes hand in hand.
30 years later, the Chinese communist party has never been as powerful as it is today and they are still employing the same barbaric methods to crush any form of rebellion, as seen with how they are dealing with the Uyghur.
my opinion: they are not at all the same thing, and it was naive to think it would happen in china (markets existed a long time before capitalism even existed and democracy was quite the no-show for a long time)
Doing that still works ya know
"Violence usually works."
"One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence usually works. That’s world history. Secondly, it’s a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it’s primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror. Now that’s close to universal. I can’t think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So pick the Nazis. They weren’t carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror. Furthermore, the United States essentially agreed with that. After the war, the US army did extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in Europe. First I should say that the US picked them up and began carrying them out itself, often against the same targets, the former resistance. But the military also studied the Nazi methods published interesting studies, sometimes critical of them because they were inefficiently carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn’t do this right, you did that right, but those methods with the advice of Wermacht officers who were brought over here became the manuals of counter insurgency, of counter terror, of low intensity conflict, as it is called, and are the manuals, and are the procedures that are being used. So it’s not just that the Nazis did it. It’s that it was regarded as the right thing to do by the leaders of western civilization, that is us, who then proceeded to do it themselves. Terrorism is not the weapon of the weak. It is the weapon of those who are against ‘us’ whoever ‘us’ happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I’d be interested in seeing it."
The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom. The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Please, please do not take a free China for granted. Do not think that change — that democracy and freedom — is inevitable. It’s not.
See: the Great Leap Forward
You may not intend to give this impression, but the sense I get from casual observers of China (I count myself in this group) is that if we just let China do its China thing eventually it will implode and some different state will emerge, probably slightly better. As an American, this seems like The Way of Things because we are taught that freedom triumphs, even if it takes a long time, even if it comes in fits and starts.
It seems that this historical bias has created a blind spot for the possibility that things will continue to get very much worse for the Chinese people — who will go their own way entirely, as a group influenced by a completely different cultural background, with entirely different notions of what good government is.
Yes, in the face of a dystopian surveillance apparatus and a Party that will not hesitate to commit mass murder to maintain power, Chinese citizens are understandably reticent to publicly ask for _anything_ besides basic subsistence and stability.
I wouldn't be so quick to chalk this up to some sort of spontaneous decision originating with the Chinese people.
Remember that any sort of political dissent or organization tends to be quickly and effectively quashed in China by the authorities. Leaders and activists are imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or "reeducated". The media and education systems are tightly controlled to only show and teach what the authorities want, and as a result the rest of the population (minus the "counterrevolutinary" leaders and activists, who've been weeded out) has been manipulated to think the way the authorities want them to think and say things the authorities want them to say, and if they don't there are very real consequences.
That said, as long as mainland China is prosperous and more and more people are lifted out of poverty, it's unlikely to have a real revolution. HK is in a different position, as they were already prosperous and have faced worsening conditions since they've been under the Chinese yoke.
Chinese middle class may not demand democracy but they are clearly unhappy with the judiciary. Some kinds of checks and balances and independent juridical system is where it may start.
Maybe we should look how some European monarchies gradually transformed over centuries.
Joel Garreau once said (IIRC) "To not have the problems of your parents is to not have problems." If you grew up worried about hunger, and now you have enough to eat, life is good. Political freedom? Might be nice, but not a big problem.
For the next generation, though, who grew up with enough food to eat...
> The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Ouch. But it hurts because it's true. I'm hoping it's only temporary, but yeah, the west at the moment is not exactly a shining advertisement for how great democracy is...
The alt-right and antifa battling it out in the streets isn't a great look for democracy and the rule of law, either.
Epstein may have been the world's most successful pimp and blackmailer, and thrived for years among our elite. That's not a great look, either.
Then there's income disparity, the alienation of so many in our society (though it's probably still better than working in a Foxconn factory), debt (especially from medical care and higher education), the rise of opioid addiction, and suicide.
A Chinese could be forgiven for looking at all that and saying "No thanks. Your freedom isn't going to get me where I want to go."
Which is why it has now been proven wrong, none of those who grew up with enough food ( Very decent food in fact ) cares or even think about it. Look at those who grew up wealthy and are now studying aboard.
Maslow's Theory, is just a theory after all, not a law.
No. HK people are not enjoying enough middle-class comfort and prosperity.
Precisely, HK's income inequality is even worse than mainland China (0.537 vs. 0.467). And because HK has historically been more liberal, it's a subject of many rich and powerful, especially the demand from mainland people drives the real estate price even further [3].
HK's violent street protest is because there isn't a strong and significant middle class group. Otherwise, we all know for sure that middle class are never politically radical, nor are they willing to sacrifice their livelihood for the so-called freedom.
[1] https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/09/hong-kong-household-in...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250400/inequality-of-inc...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/correction-not-a-crisis-in-h...
> Precisely, HK's income inequality is even worse than mainland China
I'm not claiming you are wrong but inequality may not be tied to prosperity directly.
For example, I have £10,000,000 and all the people on my street only have £1000,000. That's high inequality.
Someone in rural china has RMB 2,000, the rest of the village has RMB 1,000
Much less inequality but I'd prefer the former to the latter.
Inequity + high commodity price (housing being one of the most important foundation of comfort) translate to majority of the population are suffering.
Doesn't look like China will fall for this again after the West has gone out of its way setting up examples around the world to convince them it doesn't work.
China PR (the de facto mainland government) already blames the US for Hong Kong protests. Things will get worse if we do something overt.
To pretend like it was a moral issue is insane. Most people don't care in the slightest in democratic countries. Virtually every country involved in sending troops couldn't point to it on a map nor talk about the region with any sort of knowledge. We walked in and replaced Hussein with ISIS. It will go down as 21st century Vietnam.
China has nukes. Absolutely nothing will happen regardless, just like 30 years ago. Perhaps some more outrage on twitter I guess?
China has shown (again) in their treatment of Hong Kong that they don't care about past agreements. The least that anyone can do, even in the presence of nukes, is to get their business out of China, and that is already happening to some degree. And of course be welcoming to people who choose to emigrate from Hong Kong.
Make them care and things might change, truly. Don't bother with CEO's or governments, we all know who they serve.
If anythin, most HKers aren't very interested in what's happening around the world either, AFAIK.
Spinning that particular situation in a reason to boycott a country (and replace it with what? India isn't exactly a paragon of virtue and neither is the US, and let us never speak of the stain that is Russia) is a strange mental place to go to.
So if I told you you would be maimed in 10 years, does that make the maiming less painful when it happens? I'm not sure what you're getting at by stating that this was preordained to occur.
You cannot annex your own territory.
And your post are still visible. Which suggest it is only a minor downvote.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/07/16/europe-joi...
I don't see what's controversial about that. The bigger question is whether this will hurt China at all; time will tell.
Every nation that feels it is powerful enough reneges on past agreements when it's strategic to do so: Russia[1], Great Britain[2], and even the current US admin which is set on rolling back every agreement that Obama might have been involved with, chief among them the Iran nuclear deal (JCPA).
Realpolitik-wise; any country with a permanent seat on the US security council can do as they please.
1. nuclear agreement with US
2. disavowed multiple agreements with former-colonies, especially under Tony Blair whose government didn't put much weight on being bound by the predecessor conservative government
At least some serious sanctions / embargo on some chinese industries as a direct result of their actions in Hong Kong would be good.
If you can't see the good of the balance sheet shouldn't always justify the enablement of despotism... Well... I'm probably not going to make any convincing argument that'll make it past the pragmatism filter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing#Usage...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_%E2%80%93...
It was the US, UK, AU and PL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
Who and how? Outside of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions, which were huge excuses to hand over pallets of untraceable bills to US contractors.
Quite a few telecoms etc companies lost money and assets in the strife. Or contracts with the collapsed governments.
"In the Joint Declaration, the PRC Government stated that it had decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories) with effect from 1 July 1997, and the UK Government declared that it would hand over Hong Kong to the PRC with effect from 1 July 1997. The PRC Government also declared its basic policies regarding Hong Kong in the document.
In accordance with the "one country, two systems" principle agreed between the UK and the PRC, the socialist system of PRC would not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years until 2047." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
For the UK there was concern that if the PLA arrived in force in Hong Kong overnight to make it part of China in practice as well as in law many, perhaps millions, would try to defy them and demand sanctuary from the British. The international community, looking on, would certainly prefer the story "This is Britain's responsibility" over "We all need to take some of these people". So then either the UK has to find somewhere to put a LOT of people or it is seen to have failed badly as the Chinese put down the resistance.
For China it was recognition that their notional sovereignty over all of "China" must be temporarily shadowed by the consideration that Hong Kong is not just some nice waterfront property (which they could have seized at any time by military force) it's a people, a culture, lots of successful businesses. If you roll in with tanks overnight that probably goes away and you might not get it back.
But gradual is the thing. "Unchanged for a period of 50 years" is merely the ambition on paper. Nobody in Hong Kong thought they'd wake up in 2046 still under the same democracy they'd had under the British. Things get chipped away, they shade over, decisions are made that might once have been different, this year's protests are about some of the less subtle changes.
Gradual change suited both parties. Not the people of Hong Kong themselves of course, but they weren't signatories.
"We are calling for peace, for order, for dialogue … we certainly call on China to be very careful and very respectful in how it deals with people who have legitimate concerns in Hong Kong," Trudeau told a televised news conference in Toronto.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-concerned-hong-kong...
The escalation in protests seemed very sharp. The ransacking of parliament appeared to have been allowed. There was no police presence at all. Almost as if they were being purposefully held back.
I might just have my tin foil hat on. I wouldn't be surprised though if Chinese groups have escalated mostly peaceful protests while police have been held back to create a situation which requires full Chinese state involvement.
It sort of bothers me how conspiracy theorist this sounds, but I know for a fact that this is the case.
But I'm guessing by 'fact' you mean 'I'm very convinced of my own opinions'.
It is almost mystifyingly selfish of you to ask this of me, especially when you souse it with your fairly hostile closing remark.
There is no hierarchy that can be suborned.
I personally thinks this comes after there were more confrontations before, and there was a lot of public outcry over the use of force. (It being justified or not)
There was initially a large police presence inside the parliament (LegCo), but they all retreated after protestors became increasingly violent, I think it was mostly a tactical decision, it would've been impossible for the police to push back, so all they could do was hold their grounds. If protestors stormed in while the police was still there, it would've been a very difficult and violent confrontations. So I think they decided to fall back, and give protestors space.
And from previous protests, the police has never held back, they've always cracked down once the protests got out of control, don't really see what they would do so now, and just one time.
Strategically, for China? Yes. Politically, for Xi? Maybe not. Remember that Xi is a dictator. Moves that boost him in the short term at China’s long-term expense are on the board.
That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.
Personally I think that ship has long sailed and it's not particularly anyone's fault.
Not to mention that many CCP members have a lot of investment in Hong Kong, a collapse of the HK economy, should the PLA be deployed, would be quite problematic.
But I generally agree with your observations.
China desperately requires dollars to keep its debt problems floating and to interact with the global economy (relatively little is settled in Yuan outside of China's borders). Without a steady inflow of dollars China cannot function normally; their economy would seize up.
Hong Kong is a critical inflow port for US Dollars into China's economy and is largely spared from the tariff war.
This is why Hong Kong is so important to China right now, and it's also why China has been so careful in suppressing the protests (by their standards). China is afraid of the US changing Hong Kong's special status. People often don't think China can be swayed: the US slapped currency manipulator status on them, and they immediately backed off from letting the Yuan sink, carefully pegging it just inbounds near the 7 line.
Culture is more than the rack (or tailor) you buy your suit from. If you choose to wear one. Things like personal space and not spitting in public and not having to kowtowing to whomever is the current President, are things some hold dear. Others may not. Other still, may look to the past and ask: what started on 15th April, 1989 and ended on 4th June 1989, in Tiananmen Square, and elsewhere in China?
To maintain dictatorship, you need bullets, not money.
In USSR during Stalin, regular people were pretty much eating grass, but he never doubted his ability to do virtually anything to them without repercussions.
Soviet army of the time had a meal of 3 slices of dried bread and a millet porridge. Even Stalin's personal bodyguards were eating thin gruel, but none of them ever dared to do anything about that.
A tactic of trying to economically starve a dictatorship has no logic. Yes, you can cripple a country, but not the dictatorship itself.
In other words, great villains have exit plans, bad ones don't
Do not expect Xi to do something sane, especially if he feels insulted. I think HK's best hope is for something else big to distract him. Unfortunately, I think it is very likely right now that he will invade HK and kill a lot of people.
I'm not sure if this will change your opinion, but this isn't true.
I asked my friends that are in China now to search for Winne The Pooh on Baidu and Bing, and they were able to find pictures of the character.
The are also Winnie the Pooh cartoons and movies and dolls readily available in China. Along with various merchandise for sale.
So no, it is not banned in China. Neither are time travel movies and TV shows, despite the English news reporting as such.
It wouldn't surprise me either, that the decision was made not by Xi, but by someone who wanted to appease him or the part or whatever.
- Winnie the Pooh Baidu search: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62957954-...
- Baidu image search featuring both Winnie and Xi: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62958027-... (Memes are filtered or at least demoted, though.)
My local friends don’t think it was ever banned. (Of course they aren’t bored enough to monitor this every day.)
A lot of stupid claims about China in the Western press are easily debunked with the teeniest amount of Mandarin knowledge, or none at all. If it sounds too crazy, it’s probably false. Doesn’t help when people reaffirm each other’s totally unfounded opinions, and discredit anyone who speaks otherwise.
https://www.hk01.com/中國/105476/太像習近平-小熊維尼-慘遭-河蟹
Of course you wouldn't have problem about it now.
Yes, there are a lot of stupid claims a out China in the western press, but there are easily equally, if not more, absurd claims about USA in China too.
Same for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, so on and so forth.
BTW, maybe try 8964 八九六四 and see what you get.
> but there are easily equally, if not more, absurd claims about USA in China too.
I wouldn't be surprised. Naturally this is what happens when you talk about things you have zero experience with.
> BTW, maybe try 8964 八九六四 and see what you get.
I never said nothing is censored. Btw at least every single soul I've talked to about this in China knows exactly what it means, contrary to claims I've seen from certain Western journalists that people typically aren't aware. Censoring something inevitably makes people more interested.
A news report within the PRC that "Winnie the Pooh" was banned?
Reports from Hong Kong and Taiwan is the closest thing you can get.
Do you think there was ever a ban?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some...
> Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,”
China could just dangle the promise of a post-Brexit trade deal (the Brexiters need anything to look good, they were ready to brag about deals with S. Arabia and Turkey).
As someone has mentioned, imagine if Le Pen wins in France, the UN Security Council would be run by Xi, Putin, Trump, BoJo and Le Pen...
This is like saying Ford's factories have no competitors, and that's true too. Ford isn't going to farm out their car manufacturing to some other company. (I mean the final assembly; of course carmakers routinely get various components from suppliers, such as airbags, infotainment computers, seats, etc.)
Chipmaking is a little weird because, unlike carmaking where the automakers all own and operate their own final-assembly factories, or aircraft makers like Boeing which own their own factories, chipmakers are frequently "fabless" these days and do the design work but partner with a fab like TSMC to actually make the chips. Intel is an exception and doesn't do this.
Intel's own messaging in this regard refers to the competition.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/sunit-rikhi-...
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon...
Nationalism will not be tolerated.
It's Belarus and Ukraine primarily at issue, not Poland.
Poland is doing great overall, they've almost entirely left Russia's orbit in terms of overt influence. Their economic output per capita is beginning to embarrass Russia, it's now 50% higher than Russia's figure (that gap will increase). Poland is starting to push into the upper tier of the middle income nations, with a real shot at leaving that group and moving into the upper economic tier in the next two decades, along with the Baltic states.
Russia can't do much to countries like Poland, the Baltics or eg Romania. They know that of course. They can and will persistently, aggressively mess with Belarus (forced union) and Ukraine (constantly seek to destabilize & split it) however. In Russia's ideal world, they keep those two nations impoverished beneath Russia's economic level, so that Russia can perpetually lord over them; then given enough time figure out a way to de facto annex all or a lot of their territory. The people running Russia - including Putin - believe that is all really Russian territory.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/key-policie...
Then at some point we realized China with its large labor pool, low wages and no effective safety legislation was a good place to build all our junk for cheap.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/212...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows...
The result could be similar.
There isn't any framework where this would be seen as illegal or illegitimate.
Even under a foreign power's "national security interests", Hong Kong is pretty much an administrative convenience to asian markets than an outlier, as China knows how to run markets these days and has little qualms about capitalist functions, so it is very unlikely that major market disruptions would happen from even the most extreme scenarios imagined here. As such "rockets on Beijing" let alone any foreign diplomatic recognition of these internal issues would be very counterproductive.
In this case for whats productive, use this analogy: think of it more like a theorist in Ohio wondering if DC is causing a false flag attempt during a period of unrest in a US state or dependent territory. That theorist is never suggesting that a neighboring or powerful country intervene, while still being passionate about the idea that the unrest is being propelled in order to justify state control. Might be true, might not, doesn't matter, but still the only outlet to express discontent than suggesting a third party drop rockets on the capital!
Doing it just to effectively end "One China, two systems" would absolutely be breaking a teaty. Which is illegal.
Its the same behavior.
I presumed you would have been able to make the leap.
"United States officials to regard the Paris Agreement as an executive agreement rather than a legally binding treaty. This removed the requirement for the United States Congress to ratify the agreement.[13] In April 2016, the United States became a signatory to the Paris Agreement, and accepted it by executive order in September 2016"
The Sino-British Joint Declaration resulted in the enactment of the Basic Law, of which entitles China to provide for military support, intervention, and assumption of administrative functions in Hong Kong.
Its not breaking a treaty when you use the provisions of it.
The only stipulation of the treaty, an ideological line in spirit, is that the socialist policies are not enacted. All that means is that markets stay open and there are no strings attached when the state provides for you. That has nothing to do with the military entering.
And finally, articles 158 and 159 of the Basic Law put the "Standing Committee of the National People's Congress" as the final arbiter and interpreter of the whole thing. It has always been this way, and the rationale for not using it is thinner than ever.
> West wasn't ready to die for Danzig in 1939
by linking a Wikipedia that argues that this slogan was a fringe opinion that was promptly disavowed by political leaders and had _very_ limited political or societal impact in general doesn't really help make a case.
Let them know dialogue & political solutions are needed, violence is not acceptable, and that PEOPLE ARE WATCHING AND CARE.
Your voice can make a difference to the political calculus. But time is very short. You must act now.
In many ways, french police did repress protesters in a much more brutal way than HK police has done so far. Of course having PLA in the city would be a different story however...
The protesters were burning cars and destroying public and private property to vast extents, besides throwing Molotov cocktails at the police.
The yellow vests went way, way beyond their right to protest.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/-yellow-vest-protests-grow-v...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-ve...
People burning cars and destroying property are not yellow vests, they are antifa groups and their job is to bring chaos to discredit the yellow vests movement.
There is indeed quite a lot of violence from both sides, but no, no police officer has been set on fire.
An army division from a different region, properly instructed (brainwashed) can do “wonders” in terms of viciousness and brutally.
Let me ask you this: do you feel the protestors are trying to protect your freedoms, or give you new ones?
It will be definitely too late to protest about it then.
Also, curious, what are some of the biases and unrealistic views?
That being said, one is not being unreasonable to suspect their level of editorial independence could be influenced.
You only just have to open the SCMP front page to find them calling military deployments in a stadium near Hong Kong "drills", citing anonymous sources that say "they are not of concern" and quoting liberally from anonymous posters on Chinese message boards spouting hate.
After the first 6 months in the military, you'll have been broken enough to have lost a lot of sense of individuality and are willing to just blindly follow orders. After your initial training, you're likely dumped into an established unit where you are at the very bottom of the totem pole. Until about 20 years ago in western militaries, you'd experience physical violence on the first day of your first posting into a "real" unit just to show you your place. I'm assuming this still happens in China. If there are soldiers in those trucks it is very likely they haven't been told a single thing about their mission.
It's very easy to live your comfortable life and talk about how evil the individual soldiers are but in reality, the troops holding the rifles on the ground are simply a tool of those higher.
From the description:
Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
When a country deploys it's own troops internally, as opposed to the police, it's often a forerunner to martial law or civil war.
Believe me or not, 10 years ago Shenzhen had a wall around it to separate if from the rest of the country.
For all intent and purposes, SZ does feels like almost like a different country. Not to the same extend as HK, but still.
A armoured paramilitary troops were deployed to the geographic area of Shenzen. Travelling in convoys, they entered the city of Shenzen, where they seem to be currently marshalled in a sports stadium. They are there as a direct threat and the assumption is that they will leave Shenzhen and enter Hong Kong to begin suppression
https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehi...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/hong-kong-protests-china-med...
P.S.: On a side note, it's quite sickening to see how much American society is divided, that even the original Twitter thread became flooded with people talking about Trump and blaming him for what is happening in Hong Kong. It is absolutely ridiculous to an outsider to see this behavior.
Here they are "just restoring law and order" against vandals, a critical role of any government, so very few critics will be heard.
EDIT: It is true China is doing some military performance in SZ to scare off the protesters. But the PLA has not entered HK as that would seem unwise.
What is happening instead is Chinese police or army likely working inside the HK police force.
1. Hong Kong, at least on paper, is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people. Mainland party hasn’t acted yet because, again, on paper, this is a Hong Kong issue. But things could get messy when Hong Kong government cries for help
2. The protest started when a bill that many feared could be used to target and deport anti-China citizens. Hong Kong government was quick to withdrawn and eventually kill that bill but the protest got bigger regardless as they see the government is too pro-China
3. Many protesters are now actively attacking police force even if unprovoked. Some even send threats to police officer’s families whilst some caught getting cash handed to them for taking part in protests by foreigners
4. Sentiment in mainland China is mostly against these protests as they see Hong Kong benefits financially a lot from China since its return, and Hong Kong’s real issue is its ever increasing wealth gap
Getting back to the news itself, this is indeed very alarming.
We could talk about reasons and sides, but that's misleading and unproductive. The sad reality is that China is a "Unitary one-party socialist republic", a bad euphemism for an undemocratic country ruled by a single dictatorial party.
There's a lot of misinformation surrounding the violence of protesters, but let's not forget that these officers are protecting the interests of a regime.
No such bill is killed "for good" as long as the people who proposed it are still in power and the protesters know that.
> Many protesters are now actively attacking police force even if unprovoked.
If true this is very regrettable, but once you go up against the institution which has the monopoly of using violence what other realistic means are there? Afaik they did try the non-violent way a couple of years back but those protests gave no concrete results and their leaders were eventually arrested nonetheless.
You called "elected" by a group consists of 1200 people as elected by Hong Kong people?
Those 1200 definitely aren't.
Yes, the US system may not be perfect, but to put both on the same balance is such a misleading comparison.
Except it's not, top leadership is elected by a small council of business owners and other high ranking members of society, the people they are allowed to vote for are selected by Beijing and anyone they don't like is vetoed out.
And in the last election, the government was able to even disqualify candidates from the general election.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/12/breaking-hong-kong-ban...
There was public opposition since it was proposed in February but they only backed down in the presence of overwhelming public outcry and blamed the public for misunderstanding the intent of the bill. They were not "quick" nor were they easily persuaded to back down. They could easily reintroduce it after protests died down.
They cannot have this form of anarchy and disturbance.
Actually, the US would have acted harshly already if it was on US soil. I can't think of any protesters invading congress and not getting shot at. Stopping traffic at an airport? Yeah that is not going to happen for very long.
China must act. Any nation would act at this point.
It will come with much suffering and it is almost completely unnecessary. The protesters took it way too far. It will also make China look bad on the international stage, especially with the Us controlling the western narrative.
Perhaps still China can find an alternative approach. I hope so.
Why do you say this? HK is still a nominally free society and protest is their right
> China must act. Any nation would act at this point.
that's not a given, and why must they act against peaceful protest? Lining up para-military tanks against a civilian population is not something that most nations would do. It's clearly designed to intimidate.
> Perhaps still China can find an alternative approach. I hope so.
The alternative approach is pretty obvious to any democratic nation
> act against peaceful protest
But violent protest is not a right. With Molotov cocktails being thrown around and lasers used to burn the polices' eyes, it's not "peaceful protest" anymore.
However, I'd like to point out that the shutdown of the airport is how the protest should look like. People being peaceful, so no one's getting hurt and there's no police showing up.
I am of course not at all advocating today's Chinese violence. I just don't understand how any of us have a leg to stand on in feeling outraged. This is the world, the so-called modern world, that, by using mobile phones and modern medicine, we've implicitly signed up for. HK is but one example of the price of modernity. What if native Americans or indigenous Australians rose up in the same way, asking for their land back? Or Indians and Africans rose up asking for their natural resources and slave labour back?
The real "crime" here is that we're so morally bankrupt and out of touch with history that all we can do is watch and tweet hashtags. Globalisation is here to stay. The quality of Western life is fundamentally dependent on Chinese labour, manufacturing and technology. We don't get to reap the benefits of that and at the same time arrogantly and unreflectively denounce their political policies. And to repeat, this is not a justification of China's recent stance on HK or any of its other foreign or domestic policies.
Perhaps we should boycott everything Chinese? Of course that is never going to happen. But we can at least help each other remember how exactly the West came to be. Though of course we don't because we're the top dogs and no one is forcing us to. Which I might argue is the true source of the outrage that most of us feel in hearing the news from HK: outrage that something is actually forcing us to reflect on our own circumstances. And what better scapegoat to deflect those difficult emotions than a quintessentially foreign, little understood far far-away culture.
Specially in a case where the legacy that is being put in question is exactly the culture of respect for human rights, civil liberties and democracy brought by an Western nation, that is now under threat by an autocratic power: The central Government of China.
There is a term coined specifically for that: Whataboutism
Again, I must repeat, I do not at all condone China's lack of respect for human rights. All I am saying is that people need to know the actual context of the situation. If HK had come into being due to centuries of mutual, conflict-free trade, then I think this would be different situation. The fact is though that HK is the legacy of a sustained, coordinated, state-level, brutal and greedy campaign to extract as much money as possible from the Chinese.
The actual context of the situation is that indeed, if the British hadn't controlled Hong Kong for a time this conflict wouldn't be happening.
It wouldn't be happening, because people in Hong Kong wouldn't know what it is to live in a free democratic society as they lived in the last half a century of British "occupation", so they would just accept the human rights and personal freedoms violations of the autocratic government of China, without knowing any better.
Listen, I'm genuinely interested in how you and others justify the destiny of Hong Kong. So we're in agreement that democracy is better, and for example there's a very tenuous argument that the violence the West used in Iraq was necessitated by an existing autocratic regime. However the violence used by the UK to gain HK was utterly unprompted and motivated purely by economic greed. Democracy may well be the better choice for HK, but in what way does it deserve it? How can any argument in support of HK's democracy not also justify absolute violence against all other currently non-democratic states?
It's unfortunate, but HK didn't come across democracy by its own struggle in the way most countries did. Such foundations are just inherently unstable, how can it possibly be any other way?
Democracy in HK society seems actually very stable and ingrained into HK societiy mind. So much, that a territory that is 0.5% of the population of mainland China, is willing to stand up to the biggest army in the world to defend what is left of that democracy.
Neither is fair. Britain didn't have a right to HK and now China doesn't have a right to HK. They are both as bad as each other. You can't support one without implicitly supporting the other. Like I said, the world is a globalised now. We are all both Chinese and Western, the difference is superficial.
You're still doing a wrong to the people of HK by forcing them into an arrangement that they don't want, so it is in no way justified by righting previous wrongs.
Because the people of Hong Kong have no responsibility for the Opium Wars perhaps? I'm not sure what you are actually suggesting.
>The real "crime" here is that we're so morally bankrupt and out of touch with history that all we can do is watch and tweet hashtags.
Ok, what do you want to do?
I'm suggesting that, figuratively, if you actually knew that you lived by a volcano, the emotional shock caused by its eruption could be tempered by some foresight.
The Opium Trade and Wars were evil and at a massive scale, I just don't see how that can be spun any other way. How was this ever going to turn out any differently? Like I said the only reason we're so outraged is because we obliterated every other nation to the point that they'll never be able to rise up.
I don't see why the actions of some dead British guys from 150 years ago have anything to do with whether that it true or not?
Nobody is spinning the opium wars in any way. You are the one who brought up the topic.
I'm not an apologist for China. For example I strongly believe in the independence of Taiwan, they've clearly demonstrated through their own efforts that they are different to the mainland. They didn't have that sentiment force upon them by guns from a foreign military might.
That's one of the most stupid politically correct ideas of the modern times. Thinking descendants of perpetrators owe anything to descendant of victim fails to account that, in most cases, the victims would actually have done the same than th eperpetrators had they be in the similar position of power (see slavery / natives vs europeans). It's bullshit. It's human nature that people abuse people. It's never a race/ people / specific group issue.
Eg; I sure as hell didn't write the buggy code that brought down the production site. I can shout all I want that I don't owe anything to the clients, or I can just take responsibility for the fix and we all move on with our lives.
>They didn't have that sentiment force upon them by guns from a foreign military might.
The current population of Hong Kong didn't have their current status imposed on them by people with guns either. Yet. They, like you and I, were simply born into a political and economic environment not of their making. I think it's reasonable for any of us to have an opinion about whether having anything forced on them by guns now is acceptable or not.
Imagine that my long-term girlfriend who worked in a coffee shop all her life found out her boss was a murderous drug dealer. Instead of quitting she becomes the company accountant thus taking a massive pay raise that I in turn benefit from. The company doesn't directly break the law but we have some vague idea that it wouldn't be as successful as it is if it wasn't for the connections the boss has. Neither I nor my girlfriend ever did or ever will do anything morally wrong. We enjoy the freedoms the extra money gives us. One day the police find out about the boss's illegal activities and it looks like the company will have to be dissolved.
In this circumstance I completely agree that I and my girlfriend have a right to feel distressed our quality of life is about to be drastically lowered. However, considering the circumstances, I have no right to be outraged at my government for not supporting my rights to indirectly enjoy the money my girlfriend gets from a company that built its niche through mafia activities.
I still don't think you understand my point. I'm not saying that HK doesn't have a right to fight. I'm saying that they're not like Taiwan or all the other peoples that naturally came to their differentiated political stance - HK simply doesn't have history and destiny on its side, so it's always going to be that much more of a struggle.
Maybe another example will make it clearer. I have the right to protest against the bear that's attacking me, but I don't have a right to ask the world to change the fundamental nature of bears as if its a matter of geopolitics. Bears will always be bears. Bear violence has nothing to do with communism or democracy. And so it's a waste of energy to entertain that idea.
I don't like what China is doing to HK, but Britain walked into bear territory. Let's not argue about how wrong bears are, let's be sober and treat bears as bears, not as symbols of anti-democracy that might somehow appeal to diplomacy.