They are screwed without an armed populace.
I completely agree. I have been thinking that just thwarting the agent provocateurs and hot-headed protestors would be a giant task for protest leadership in itself. It should actually be priority number one. I admit it's easy for me to say that when I'm not being confronted by police and getting caught up in the fever of the crowd.
Say Hong Kong did have something like the 2nd amendment, and more private firearms than citizens just like the USA.
What are the strategies and tactics that these people could use to win a military campaign against the might and weaponry of Chinese People’s Liberation Army?
Modern warfare hasn’t figured out urban insurgencies. Pot shots and IEDs, sabotage, et cetera would have made China’s occupation of Hong Kong a PITA. It would raise the stakes of invasion from worldwide outrage to having to destroy Hong Kong in a Pyrrhic victory.
Hong Kong can’t win a war against China. It’s too vulnerable to blockade. Barring a Berlin airlift, their strategy would be waiting out Xi with urban guerrilla tactics.
It would at least cause a delay big enough for the west to act.
Only in a sense of US rules of engagement.
However, look at other less scrupulous countries dealing with urban combat and you will see that while bloody they can pacify quickly.
If you know that resisting means death of your family, you're less likely to resist.
If your neighbour's best way to safeguard his family is to expose every guerilla fighter he knows he will do it.
The thing is, it won't be pyhrric victory, it will be a full and near lossless victory for PLA. Most HKers will lay down their arms because people generally dont want to die in a hopeless struggle and collective punishment will flush out the remaining guerrillas.
This is far from universal. Chechnya was bloody. Syria remains bloody. Short of razing a city, we don’t have great tools for fighting urban insurgencies.
1. Chechnya WAS pacified when Russians started using inhumane tactics.
2. Chechnya had an organized military to fight Russians.
3. Chechnya and Syria had rebels use military equipment of similar quality as their adversary.
4. Assad and Yeltzin's armies were very mismanaged/poor quality.
I posit that PLA is
1. Actually professional and not disorganized like russian/Syrian militaries
2. HKers will not be able to capture PLA equipment in any significant amounts
Do you have any examples? I'm not challenging you, I just don't know much about this topic.
Taliban taking over cities in Afghanistan
More "police" actions:
China pacifying Uighur and Tibet regions.
El-Sisi pacifying Muslim brotherhood in Egypt.
Basically, intense indiscriminate violence "solves" some problems.
If China does that, it goes from "that not-fantastic-country that produces cheap iPhones" to "this-is-where-blood-diamonds-come-from".
The way it will act can have a direct and profund impact on its exports and GDP.
Kashoggi's murder basically killed a 500 billion dollar project.
It had a thousand ways to fail, but it did mostly because of Kashogi's murder.
We’re exploring the hypothetical military suppression of Hong Kong’s system of laws and government. Nothing is good in this scenario. The options are coöperation (and likely concentration camps), escape and resistance.
At least they would have a chance. As things stand, if tanks start rolling in, it'll be over before the US manages to turn a carrier around.
IIRC, one of the reasons the British decided to give it up was that they judged it to be militarily indefensible against China.
The city is all sky scrapers with tiny winding streets and secret entrances and exits to and from everywhere. Resistance could probably persist for decades unless China were willing to just level the islands and start over.
It'd be quite easy to starve HK.
HKs populace, even armed with best small arms, would not pose any significant challenge to PLA.
Kind of like random Texan militias arent actually capable of resisting the US Marines.
With advent of modern military technologies there is absolutely no power symmetry between militias and professional armies.
That's the whole point. The military capabilities are very asymmetric.
When Taliban/ISIS took land they didnt have this trouble pacifying because they were very bloody.
Morale undermining command and control is a real issue in the military and a frequent issue historically.
1. in reality only a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the population has such permits;
2. the majority of permit holders are probably members of police/ICAC/correctional services;
3. if I remember correctly, you’re supposed to leave your gun at the gun club anyway, not take it home.
I'm living in the UK and I could get a rifle licence if I really wanted to, it's just that the restrictions are far too severe. Must be straight-pull that's manufactured that way, not converted. Makes an AR-15 equivalent worth $5k. That is after you have spent a year on getting the permit and other technicalities.
Instead I just travel to eastern europe or the United States every now and then to shoot some guns as the rules are a lot more lax in say, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic and Latvia. In those countries you can generally go to a range and they'll accomodate you. Although ammunition costs about 5-10x what it would cost in the States.