Cryptic, allusive messages from Hong Kong's wealthiest tycoon
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
It's so easy that people in forums do this a along - being sarcastic or just funny. You could have positive meaning literally, but hide dirty words in structures.
Also because it's so easy that this was defined as serious crime in many dynasties. There were even people committed it by coincidence were sentenced to death.
So they sentenced themselves to death with an unfortunate sentence structure.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...
So they sentenced themselves to death.
http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=intro
Text is laid out in the same fashion as OP. Wengu lets you mouseover characters for translation and along with an interpretation:
- Book of Odes: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Shijing&no=1
- Art of War: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Sunzi&s=1
- Book of Changes: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Yijing&no=0
- Tao Te Ching: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=0
- Analects of Confucius: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Lunyu&no=1
Your assumption that HK doesn't have any autonomy might have something to do with that ;)
As to what she could do: she can do a lot; the protestors have a list of 5 demands, one of them is the withdrawal of the extradition-bill. She could comply with that, for example.
Their demands also include permanent legislative independence from China. Something they obviously don’t have today, and will have less and less as China continues it’s stated policy of continuing the complete integration of Hong Kong into China.
Any level of autonomy Hong Kong has is granted entirely at the discretion of China, and is only temporary in any case, as it has an expiry date. It’s exceedingly obvious to any observer that Hong Kong does not currently have sufficient autonomy to satisfy the protestors demands.
Without meaningful ways to defend themselves, there really is no way to win against the Chinese government.
The Vietnamese had massive foreign support. China is unlikely to give up so easily, and no country is going to want to keep arming such a resistance.
Personally I think they'll just continue arresting and making people disappear to the mainland so there is nothing damaging on the news.
HK has maybe a difficult terrain?
Sometimes armed rebellion has good outcomes, sometimes (probably more often) it has horribly tragic ones. Prolonged political pressure and alliances, non-violent protest, can give equally good results without the risk of creating bloodsheds like the US secession war or the current Syrian civil war (that as horrendous as it is, has yet to claim as many victims as the US secession war).
I'll spare myself the obvious retort. Not everyone has the privilege of starting an armed revolution and succeed, or simply survive. Not everyone who does is guaranteed to be in the right (for example the US states that tried to secede). And the outcome can be complete destruction for yourself, for your city and your region, and hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced and homeless- many of whom couldn't care less about your "revolution".
Do I condemn armed resistance? No. Of course not, sometimes it is inevitable. But the idea that you should distribute firearms to people just in case somebody one day decides he's fed up and wants to start shooting other people for freedom, or for white supremacy, or- why not- for a religious caliphate- that is ridiculous.
No, we're here taking potshots at each other on the Internet.
Very few governments will just give away freedom and power. It needs to be take back by force.
If the HK citizens had access to weapons this entire time, the Chinese government would think twice before invading. Unfortunately, it's too late for that.
This is why the second amendment is so important in the US.
Power of public is in numbers. Revolutions happen when everybody including soldiers become the protesters.
Unfortunately in this media age thats going to be harder and harder.
Americans and the US like to perpetuate the freedom myth, but it's mostly bullshit used to destroy countries in the name of liberating them to benefit the US financially or strategically. The reality is much more stark.
We crushed them (and the regular DPRK army) utterly and completely in Vietnam and Korea, but then forces that weren't “farmers and normal folk” (or even the DPRK military) got on the field (Chinese Army as we showed signs that we would roll the DPRK up completely and potentially—the concern on their side went—keep going into Communist China in Korea, the NVA in Vietnam.)
Depends, are there any nuclear or biological assets deployed in Texas?
The second amendment does not exist to arm the citizenry against the police/army, it exists to provide a militia of citizens so that government will not (because the citizenry will be both capable and, being politically empowered, will not stand for the alternative) resort to permanent professional police and armies for security.
But it turns out the citizenry, armed or not, like the government applying violence, and don't want to be bothered to be on the pointy end, so even with the second amendment we have abandoned reliance on the citizen militia in favor of professional security services, along with a weird civic cult of worship of those services.
With open warfare, the historical playbook for putting down this sort of thing is clear. Roll in the tanks, and infantry from Mongolia or whatever. Sometimes the revolt get put down immediately, sometimes you end up with guerrilla warfare.
Meanwhile, the Chinese PLA certainly doesn't suffer from any manpower shortages to contain the situation when they eventually want to.
You don't need guns. Making car bombs and IEDs requires only determination and some practice. PLA as any modern army is poorly equiped to combat urban guerilla. Such a dense maze like Hong-Kong had never been experienced by any army.
Loss of face for China would be collosal if any sort of prolonged and effective resistance happend after intervention.
But I hope it won't be necessary.
I doubt China ultimately cares about loss of face.
In a population of 8 milion you will find more then enough smart, determined, intelligent people who can learn quickly enough and innovate.
The only thing that China is afraid of is the loss of face :-)
China's style in Xinjiang is more bottom up and comprehensive with internment camps and mass surveillance.
You could say our style reflects our individualistic understanding of society while China's style represents a more Marxist collectivist view.
What a contorted argument. I assume that the British empire wasn’t a modern state, and that history is less than one century long (and full of holes).
Using your example of the British Empire, India didn't win independence through combat, civil disobedience made it politically untenable for the British to continue. That had far-ranging effects on what was left of the colonies.
One of the arguments core to an advocate of the 2nd amendment with respect to this issue is that a citizen militia, equipped with small arms, would be capable of deterring a government from taking some action. It's an increasingly absurd position.
No. Ordinary civil disobedience will do utterly nothing. You need a certain amount of violence - just look at France, only after the riots were utterly massive the government caved. The alternative is a massive general strike, which has fallen out of favor in modern times as many jobs are easily replaceable and people are afraid of getting fired.
I have severe doubts that the US could contain a civil uprising scenario, especially given international pressures. About 42% of Americans *live in a household with guns according to Gallup, with approximately 30% owning them. If even 10% of those people decided to revolt, that would be approximately 9 million people.
I'd wager that's vastly more than the insurgent military forces we've lost to in the past few conflicts we've had.
I would add that the US monitors its civilians with multiple agencies, including Homeland Security and the NSA, and I would think it'd be easier to do on the domestic side than have to contend with foreign governments and the distances involved in operating overseas.
I'm not sure about the Gallup poll you're referring to, but the Pew Research poll I stumbled upon has 30% of Americans owning a firearm with an additional 11 to 12% living in a household with someone who owns a firearm. I don't really agree that means 42% of Americans own firearms. In fact, the ratio of households that own a gun has been going down for decades (You can see this here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-mass-shootings-number-o...). The issue is there are fewer and fewer people owning guns, but those people own far more guns than they did previously. Which is where the extremism and mass shootings come in (along with our current social and political structure). Here's a quotation from the article I linked above:
>They found that those who own guns own an average of 4.8 firearms. But they also found that half of all guns — 130 million guns — are owned by 14 percent of gun owners or 7.6 million people. That's 3 percent of the U.S. population.
The international pressure angle is interesting and not something I've really thought a lot about. Incidentally, the current administration doesn't seem to care what international governments think.
My point on the "few thousand insurgents" is more specifically referring to Afghanistan, but I think both apply similarly: that the US has been unable to contain and combat relatively small insurgency movements via direct action, be that boots on the ground or through mechanized warfare. I think if a similar insurgency happened here in America, if say a percent or even less than a percent of Americans engaged in sympathetic action, that it would be nigh impossible to contain given our military's past performance against similar combatants, not even taking into account the nuances of fighting one's own citizenship and the likelihood of disobedience among the state.
Arguments that a scenario could be contained at local, civic levels are valid, but a full-scale conflict between citizens and military would be catastrophic not only for the population but for the administration as well (who wants to blow up all the infrastructure they've built?). The state has a vested interest in not provoking this scenario, which is why I imply the second amendment is important and alive in the US even today although the tides have changed.
In regards to HK, a previous comment above mentioned they have a much more comprehensive "bottom-up" structure of monitoring and enforcing compliance with their citizens. Even if they had a theoretical second amendment, they can still initiate a massive crackdown and have the infrastructure to contain and control their citizenship. Which is frankly terrifying, of course, but the solution isn't necessarily just "give the citizens guns", nor would this ever work on a cultural level.
China does actually have the resources and is in a position to contain civic revolt in nearly all cases, from my point of view. This is vastly different to America, and can't really be easily compared.
The protestors themselves may disagree with that. There’s plenty of photos of protestors holding signs that make exactly that comment. Their oppressor in this case also actually has a history of massacring unarmed civilians.
Regarding the might of the US or Chinese military, I can’t think of an example of a military winning against an insurgency.
If this was the truth why is the US military still engaged in Afghanistan? Is it possible that war is more nuanced if you don't carpet bomb locations off the map?
It happened in Iraq too, and Vietnam.
Unwanted and unhappy, but can't leave. I wonder if this might make some otherwise "approved candidates" think twice.
Go completely CCP authoritarian will kill any trust of her by HK citizens, and could she advance anywhere in the mainland party?
Go to the HK side may regain trust but kill all CCP future.
Neither, the current state, will ensure that nobody is happy.
Seems like no possible exit plan? Could CCP push her hard enough that she must exit by taking her own life? If so, would that be a sufficient potential embarrassment for CCP to prevent them from doing so?
The billionaires have the most to lose with any social unrest, and he exposed himself to support the masses.
If so: Respect
Counter-possibility: it's a CYA maneuver, which supports both sides simlutaneously and either message can be declared as "intended" post-hoc.
He will have investments, properties, friends or family outside HK. He can simply pay his way to citizenship in most countries around the world.
The average HK citizen has everything to lose, their rights and way of life. He will loose some money and property at the most, depending on how he decides to play it.
A billionaire has the greatest potential for relative change from the consequences of their actions. They have more chips they can put on the table and thus they can experience a change in fortune larger than others.
At the same time, the poor have the greatest potential for suffering. With fewer chips to put on the table, they are much closer to getting kicked out of the game entirely.
Try searching "李嘉诚发声" and you'll get a message saying "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, this page is not found"
They want to paint the protesters as pro-HK independence but in fact this is not one of our five demands.
And of course they block all the stuffs that make the HK gov and police look bad.
I have also noticed sharing videos WeChat seems to be on whitelist mode 2 nights ago.
Speculation is that there were heavy traffic for sharing globally resulting in all videos on WeChat were temporarily shadow banned until individually approved.
A lot of big corporations/wealthy people had ads on HK newspaper front page explicitly condemning the protesters. Li Ka Shing could have done the same but he didn't.
Keep in mind that Li fell out with Beijing and have cashed out most of his assets in the Mainland over the last several years.
There is no way that the following phrase, formed by the the end characters of each phrase in the ad, could be a coincidence.
因果由國 容港治己 義憤民誠
The only slightly questionable word choice is 由, but as the phrases are supposed to be read as stanzas in a poem, I think liberties can be taken in composition.
It's like a compact puzzle or "steganographic joke" - intelligent, elegant, satirical and even humorous in a way.
Constructing these interlocking phrases, one "public" and the other a "private" message for those "in the know"; getting the right number of characters and dots; even using his own name as part of the message.
I don't know anything about this billionaire, but I appreciate the effort that went into this form of protest, it's a work of art.
It could be a common way to trick the initial sensor from the publisher. Because most editors wouldn't notice that. But it won't hide from the mass. Once it's get published it would piss someone off.
But once I read the explanation it became quite clear since there isn't really other ways to interpret it.
To be fair, I knew HongKong and GuangZhou area are still very traditional, rooted with a lot of these ancient Chinese language games. People there might be much more conscientious looking for word games than I do.
Also, this slogan is often interpreted as protestor declaration for wanting HK independence.
因果由國，容港治己，義憤民誠
The last part reads anger is righteous.
Despite what is said in the media I don't think that this is 'brave' to state this opinion. The key is how to say it and how to behave with respect to China and the government.
Can you elaborate why it matters to be respectful to a dictator for life who puts huge numbers of Uighurs in concentration camps?
* Outright rebellion: Likely to result in large-scale violence and suffering.
* Persistent gradual resistance: Messages like these may gradually sway the government to accept more progressive ideas, become a more legitimate democracy, and develop to a point where such atrocities don't happen. Doing so with an air of respect may make it more likely for mainland citizens and softer-hearted government officials to take your side.
Obviously it'd be best if those responsible for concentration camps just swiftly and permanently lost all their power. But I don't know how one would make that happen.
I've only ever heard the word "dauphin" in the context of a French crown prince (starting with Charles V, when Philip VI gave him the Dauphiné region to rule while he was still the heir). Is the term used more universally?
‘I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9443914/How-Christ...
I’ve seen other examples in this style. Maybe folks in comments can point out more.
This annoyed me quite a bit. No I don’t. Most people probably don’t.
It’s the date of Tiananmen Square.
Contextually it's more than obvious for anyone even casually familiar with Chinese history which the audience would be.
9/11 is a bit of a weird case in that the name of the event is also the event itself... that usually does not happen.
Please label your dates folks (except 9/11 I guess...)
And who's buried in Grant's Tomb?
Since the blog is in English, a "translation" might have been helpful; but since he goes so much into Mandarin, perhaps he assumes his readers are already familiar with the Chinese name.
As the song goes: "Remember remember the fith of November", but I don't remember the 9th.
...supposedly universal cultural references are hard :-)
Cool. You're on a computer. Look it up. Now you know (probably better than if they had just said it outright).
Why do so many people here choose to fill the comment sections with gripes about minor imperfections in articles, when those imperfections don't take away from the article as a whole? Especially when there's so much else worth discussing here.
I myself am reading quite a bit of meaning into the conspicuous avoidance of the characters "tian", "an", and "men" throughout both ads.
The melon ad is fairly defiant, though, in a classy kind of way. If I were a betting man, I'd take the other side. Preserving absolute rule of law in Hong Kong is as doomed as the Taiwan independence movement. The Chinese anschluss seems unstoppable.
The complete hidden message is actually a bit longer:
因果由國，容港治己，義憤民誠
No way that's an accident.
In context, it likely isn't straining. If he desired to simply declare an end to violence, he could have done so in a less tortured graphical format.
He and other oligarchs raise prices and exploit profits from people. HK Gov tried several times to press down house prices (build public rental apartments provided by gov, called 新界东北发展计划 ), all failed. What's the funniest part is, HK GOV plan to dismantle the golf courses for building public apartments, and was stopped by the name of environmental protection, House prices keep high, and riches keep their golf courses.
Who will get the most benefit from those riots? Oligarchs, no competitors can enter Hong Kong again. Li himself is the devil's advocate, those oligarchs make young men can only live in cells, but nobody never is able to fight him like they fight CCP now. In this a City with the 0.539 Gini coefficient, why people hate the government on the other side than rich oligarchs? capital owns media.
That, is the true power and true authority, make people fight for you while you consume them.
All those things happened in Hongkong make me feel desperate about this evil world.
I really hate this, no right, no wrong, no justice, no savior, everyone is just puppet of God.
This has perplexed me to no end. The straw that broke the camel's back was an extradition treaty being proposed, and not the crushing living conditions that have been worsening over the past two decades.
Sounds like you are a native. curious why you think this is the case outside of the oligarchs owning media. If that's the case i can't see why the CCP is complaining they lost control of the narrative via the press, if they never had it in the first place.
Just like some western opinion that why Chinese people don't fight their government for democracy and free speech, I really can not understand why HK people don't fight oligarchs for goods prices and living house.
Every few years, some protests happen in Hong Kong, None of those protests is aiming to the oligarchs, some people do hate Li, but the most far they can do is ridiculing and complaining.
>If that's the case i can't see why the CCP is complaining they lost control of the narrative via the press, if they never had it in the first place
the CCP attached great importance to propaganda from the beginning (the 1930s). At that time, they do have the advantage of propaganda (compare to the Kuomintang), and now the CCP has lost its ability and skills, the official media of CCP are barely welcome by Chinese, very many young men dislike them. Those years what the CCP propaganda department can do is only to delete and forbidden the contents they dislike, and this usually has the opposite effect - more and more people don't trust them
In some HKer's perspective, they detest how the current administration had been in bed with the oligarchs. In their view, gaining universal suffrage (not only 1 person one vote, but a free nomination) would help with that situation.
This problem is not new - it's an old problem that existed in the colonial state. The definition of a colony is to extract wealth for their masters, so colonial administrations and oligarchs work hand in hand.
Even if one could separate that fight between the administration and the oligarch, there are other structural issues for the administration. HK administration, colonial or SAR, is highly dependent on land leases as its source of income. In it's pursuit of being the "most capitalist city", the tax base is very narrow - income tax is very low, no sales tax, etc... So it is not in HK administration's interest to lower housing prices because that would affect its own budget.
And if one were to temporarily cast aside their own views, and look at the incentive a little, there are other political problems - pro-democrats typically controls the legislature (spare this case of disqualifying a few), but they have no hope of becoming part of the executive council, where the Chief Exec heads, and Beijing has control of the nomination. So there's not a lot of incentive to work well together between the legislature and the executive.
How do you properly fight oligarchs in your country when you don't have control of the government?
Also note that if an opinion is almost perfectly correlated with a nationality, that is a reasonable cue to question its rationality.
https://twitter.com/natashakhanhk/status/1164060311743156224