China’s assault on Cathay Pacific
economist.com
economist.com
> The Taiwan News claimed that Cathay Pacific CEO Rupert Hogg's decision to resign last week came after he refused to name names to the Chinese government when he was asked to provide a list of employees who were involved in the Hong Kong protests.
> China's Civil Aviation Administration ordered Cathay to provide a list of employees who were involved in a recent protest. He was also ordered to suspend the employees. According to the Taiwan News, Hogg provided the list—but it included only one name: his own.
> His resignation was first announced by CCTV, China's state-run television station, 30 minutes before Cathay Pacific announced Hogg had stepped down.
If that doesn't persuade ordinary Hong Kongers to love and trust the mainland authorities, I don't know what will.
Edit: I genuinely appreciate all of the replies to this comment as this humanitarian crisis unfolds.
The USA is explicitly anti immigration right now, asylum or no. We can't even get people in on working visas to our SF office that have worked here before. They get arbitrarily denied.
This whole situation has been a long time in the making.
Canada in particular did a great job of encouraging emigration.
These days it's a little harder. The classic "HK passport" is the BNO - British Nationality Overseas which doesn't give you right of abode in the UK because racism.
Asylum is also extremely difficult to achieve - you'd have to have been already targeted and by that point there's already a risk of being disappeared extra-judicially.
- 500K Canadian Citizens in HK [1]
- 300K of Hong Kong descent in Canada [2]
(I may have reversed this in one of the two posts).
- Ethnic breakdown of Vancouver [3] although I used the 2011 census data not the 2016 data reflected there, which explains the slight drift.
[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/unrest-in-hong-kong-fue...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Canadians
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouve...
https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/billions-in-d...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pro-china-de...
I'd personally make tons of policies to extract as much money possible from these type of immigrants tbh.
1. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/unrest-in-hong-kong-fue...
2. https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/service/travel_document/visa_fre...
Its essentially impossible to move to another 1st world country without years (or decades) of process + usually a highly valued university degree these days
EDIT: it wasn't easy immigrating the US in the 19th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...
The same way startups figure out how to survive and eventually profit: by continuously adapting and continuously looking for opportunity. In our case, some of my relatives saved up enough "under the counter" money to pay a citizen to marry them until they were able to get a green card; after which they divorced. Others just married citizens. Others got enough education to get a work visa (I don't remember the details). You get the picture. It's a waste of time and energy, dwelling on what you don't have vs how to accomplish what you need to happen. I'm not saying that you should be ignorant of obstacles and challenges (you need to know what they are), but you need to focus on the openings & opportunities to get through. This is a generalization, but I feel that most if not all Asian cultures have this same spirit.
Here's a modern example.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1774417/how-modern-da...
I didn't downvote anyone on this thread
My point remains - nowadays (unlike a century ago, if I'm not mistaken), the majority of people can not choose in which country to live (legally, at any rate).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-chinatowns-history_n...
I didn't say that your point was invalid. I'm just pointing out that when you're desperate enough to escape an authoritarian regime or other dangers, legality isn't as important of a consideration. There's plenty of grey areas to work in. ie if there's a will, there's a way
Cantonese are also known for emigrating.
It’s still hard, and it sucks to leave home because you can’t get a good deal there any longer.
"good" deals in the past are a fantasy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-chinatowns-history_n...
It was always hard. The only thing that changes is the nature of the obstacles.
For example, in the US an investment of $500k (will be $900k later this year) in certain businesses will land foreign individuals a green card. Otherwise, they'll need to come in through a family or work visa, latter of which can take years and has high barriers to entry, like requiring sponsorship or a specialized degree.
Those without means are going to have a hard time leaving the country legally.
In the past the Netherlands has made a promise to the people of South Maluku a republic and independent status from Indonesia in a similar situation which in the end could not be upheld. This enfolded in to a very traumatic event where people out of desperation high jacked a train in the Netherlands to come to a solution. Some of these people where killed.
China has a righteous claim on HK and the West should not be in denial of the inevitable. Giving China the chance of restoring their geographical region while facilitating a frictionless migration for those in need would prevent in worse case scenario a war.
Asian people assimilate very well in Western societies and we can always use more people with an average IQ of 108.
Why exactly? Modern China itself was formed from wars of imperial conquest. That these conquests by force happened long ago doesn't make them any “more righteous” than the British conquest of HK over 100 years ago.
By your logic, Germany had a “righteous claim” on Austria, Hungary, and at least parts of Poland in the late 1930s.
(In fact, I wonder if particular sovereign nations are already attempting psy-ops with an inculcation of this attitude in the Chinese government as their goal. It's really the only way that the population of HK "gets out" from under China's rule in one piece. Minus a city, of course...)
(Though, if we're talking "things on the CIA's to-do list", giving the CNP another chance to take China from the CCP is probably pretty high up there. Hong Kong would be perfectly content with "assimilation" under a democratic Taiwan-led China.)
The implied threat is that anyone who participates in protests risks their livelihood and prospects of future education, and that major companies in Hong Kong will not be allowed to remain apolitical, but must choose sides.
These pressure tactics are intended to break the Hong Kong protests, and while taken very seriously by Hong Kongers, have so far failed to achieve that aim.
https://medium.com/@pnolan20/lets-stop-the-us-versus-them-co...
But the Chinese border searches have gone even further: they install additional tracking apps on travelers’ phones [1], and they make a copy of the phone data for later analysis (in Cantonese [2]).
[1]: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/visitors-to-china-...
Company after company has been raided for IP and forced out of China, stop falling for the siren song.
what if a Chinese courier company operating in US diverts some Cisco packages to China when China is "blacklisting" Cisco? what do you think US government would do?
Simple.
Give people a choice which society they're allowed to live in. China currently does not do that.
By this metric, this would be a prohibitively small WTO.
I wish I can live in a society where inequality is minimal, where people work and innovate not because of money, but because they enjoy their work and enjoy innovation. I wish I and my fellow citizens can have universal health and dental care, free higher education. I wish a political system without bribing disguised as lobbying, without innovation-killing monopoly. I wish we have similar chance of being happy irrelevant of how rich our parents are. A place where mental illness people are treated, instead of being free to be on the street. Where I can freely roam the city at any hour without the fear of being robbed or raped. Where the urban/transit design makes people free from using cars if they feel not like to. Where I don't have to work as a housing slave.
Now, if my view of a free and fair society is a majority view, why there's isn't one that I can go? If my view is a minority one, then I still don't have the choice in a democracy isn't it?
(i.e it's a massive market).
It sounds like a colleague turned over a post that was on her facebook and the company responded to that. They didn't go seek out the posting to remove her. That's like complaining about being fired because a coworker reported you for sexually harassing them in text messages at home.
Not defending China or Cathay; more than likely they have negative and self-interested political motive. I'm just saying, we can't judge either side without all the details.
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/standnewshk/videos/646850612491620/
Protest in Hong Kong has descended into nationalism and sovereignty issue for 1.4 billion people. Majority wins even though there is some protection guaranteed in most nation and there are plenty of examples in recent days where majority wins. In social media it's majority wins, minority is always relegated to corner.
I hope it resolves amicably.
The founders were not Chinese, the main shareholder has always been British, the CEO until a week ago was British. It's always been a western (anglosphere) company operating in China/Asia, not a Chinese company and perhaps the Chinese authorities want to make clear that it is now a Chinese company.
The largest shareholder is still Swire (British HQ'd in London), and I believe that the departing CEO came from there.
And how are most of my comments "pro-beijing"? The world is complex and trying to have a measured approach and to understand the different points of view is not being pro or anti anything.
HN promotes intellectual curiosity, not narrow-mindedness.
I'm sure your intention was a fine one, to protect the integrity of the community, but this kind of comment rapidly devolves into mob behavior, and we're seeing a lot of that right now.
> China’s airline regulator declared it unsafe
Based on other sources it means that Cathay would be forbidden to enter China's airspace. It entails much more than not being able to land in China: since the airspace of Hong Kong is surrounded by that of China, it is virtually impossible not to enter China's airspace when using the only international airport in Hong Kong. Being forbidden to enter China's airspace means not being able to fly to and from Hong Kong, a death spell for Cathay.
The China Mirage
How Asia Works
Peter Zeihan is good. Geopolitical Futures is good but they have some duds in their prediction but good deeper level analysis. Stratfor has kind of become shallow but still good.
edit: On YouTube Caspian Report is probably a better production about Geopolitics.
The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower [0] by Hudson Institute's China expert.
and
Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America [1]
These are rather hawkish but unfortunately also nailing the truth.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20696000-the-hundred-yea...
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/855077.Unrestricted_Warf...
Richard McGregor's work on the CCP is also very good and worth reading.
Orville Schell's Wealth And Power is also quite good for politics/history.
https://www.amazon.com/China-Dream-Thinking-Strategic-Post-A...
On China by Henry Kissinger:
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/on-china_henry-kissinger/26645...
Destined for War - Graham Allison:
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/destined-for-war_graham-alliso...
Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World:
https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-international/d...
See China with your own eyes!
I also recommend traveling to China. I found this to be very eye opening, and to be honest, despite all of our great problems it made me so thankful to live in a free country.
From the point of view of the former Singaporean leader whose governance has inspired China in the first place (3rd world to first in a few decades), and who is fairly objective being a mixture of eastern and western cultures.
For geopolitics I thought Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, * Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, and The Rise of Eurasia* both had some value but I didn't find them as enlightening as the previous two.
EDIT: Oh, and China Airborne had some great insight into where China's technological abilities are as good as anything in the world and where it still has catching up to do. Or at least the state of play as of 2012.
OTOH, I had studied International Politics in undergraduate, and took several classes on SE Asian history and politics. And I also had done some semi-professional research regarding exports controls on supercomputing technology--a big issue back when Linux Beowulf clusters were hot. So I had some background knowledge going in.
Still, there's much to be said for primary material. I know there's some debate about the selection of what went into The Tiananmen Papers, but doing a deep dive on a narrow issue is more useful to understanding the broader society than you'd think, even if the material selection is skewed. For similar reasons, I feel like I learned a tremendous amount about Chilean political history and culture, more than all other sources combined (except perhaps contemporary Chilean newsprint) reading "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile". There are fundamental truths about a culture that are revealed by the fine details of how historical events unfold, independent of the larger context (i.e. Allende's soft socialist revolution, or brutally paranoid Chinese state repression).
https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/d...
Despite unclear connection from the title, it's actually a good contextual background on industry in general.
Is it because I use private browsing by default?
EDIT: Private browsing is not the culprit. Geo-restrictions maybe? Or because I use a VPN?
The power of china given its economic power and land mass and no of people should wake up people. Unless there is a way to constrain it, if should be contained one way or the other.
I would wholly support a policy of no paywalled articles on HN.
Trump does bad things.
Stop whataboutism.
Does the chinese gov have backdoor access to gmail/gdrive?
Basically you need to assume no privacy whatsoever but at the same time, still stand the fuck up for free speech.
Fu k all authoritarians.
Recall when jetpack (reddit founders) were trying to sell sentiment manipulation to the government?
Where the fuck is palantir these days?
Twitter is the shithole of the internet.
Reddit is now compromat by tencent
Voat.co is compromised
8chan is gone
4chan is also uselessly trustworthy (although i admit i have been impressed over the years as to some of the things they have accomplished) ((my secret conspiracy on that is there are many intels on 4chan that know how to post true-anon and reveal shit))
I personally feel really bad for all my interest in the cyberpunk future i thought we were heading for - but instead we built digital 1984.
China has a longer continuous timeline than the western powers by far. Are the current political moires there not another node on that chain?
You either have enough leverage that Beijing backs down (China is in a very precarious economic condition at the moment, don’t let it go to waste; prevent further rise in power long enough for their demographic transition to complete), or you support internal revolutionaries (which the US has done enough previously in its history I don’t need to detail here). Anything else will be outright world war (probably starting near HK, perhaps with the destruction of the bridge connecting it to the mainland to stave off a ground invasion).
Global capitalism created this situation by deepening trade relationships with China to the point that we're all dependent on them to the point that there's very little leverage over their international behaviour.
Look at how the PRC is behaving against Canada right now. Illegal torture-like detention of two of innocent Canadian citizens in China, in retaliation for the very mild house arrest (for extradition) of a Huawei executive, something Canada _had_ to do (treaty) on US request.
How they behave domestically (against Hong Kong citizens for example), yes, that's another question.
Of course, neither are completely impervious. And the citizens aren't completely oblivious. But from everything I've read about China and the Chinese, including little things like how Chinese tourists and visitors behave in foreign countries, the similarities are striking. And of course they have an obvious common source--both countries don't really need to care much about the outside world because of their size and power, and culturally they were historically inward looking even before they rose to global powers.
Question: Is there even remotely a legitimate security concern here? Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, the unrest spirals out of control into a state of complete desperation. The HK government and the CCP refuse to compromise on any of the five demands, and the protestors refuse to stand down.
Let's say politically polarized HK pilots and cabin crew are flying a plane full of mainlanders.
Would you be 100% comfortable being a passenger on that plane as a mainlander?
Also, I don't necessarily mean a terrorist incident. Any kerfuffle at 35,000ft would be enough grounds to turn an airplane around and land it at the nearest runway as per standard safety practices.
With HK-mainland tensions at an all time high, I don't think this can be completely ruled out.
Now imagine being an HK Cathay cabin crew member making not so great pay and living in the most expensive city in the world by far. This could be a tinder box for incidents like verbal assaults, jostling and shoving and if enough passengers get involved, it could transform into a real flight risk.
> is participation in the protest a reliable indicator for the likelihood of it
Humans are capable of many things right or wrong when they are desperate to get their message across. Doubly true when they believe their fight is for justice.
Please don't make assumptions about my motives.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/08/21/cathay-pacific-pilot-w...
This pilots announcement happened before July 26.
This should be a claim reserved to the experts. If everyone can make those kind of claims why we need FAA? China's aviation authority's claim might not be reasonable, but I'm in no position to judge. And I don't think the Economist can judge either. It not only judged, but grossed over the few incidents with just one word, absurdly.
Now you are a pilot yourself, I'm sure you have encountered many aviation rules that seem redundant or even borderline unreasonable. But we would assume there are reasons behind them right? Again not saying China's aviation authority's demand is reasonable. Sometimes even FAA fucked up (737-max). But when it comes to aviation, non expert opinions are really irrelevant.
You have some anonymous user in this thread fantasizing about crazy scenarios that didn't happen, and you're propping them up with your own judgement, and then you're telling me to hold my judgement and trust the alleged "experts" that happen to agree with you.
No thanks, I'll take as much freedom in judgement as you afforded yourself.
What judgement has I made? I said I'm surprised the Economist used the word absurdly. Is surprised a judgement?
>alleged "experts" that happen to agree with you.
What's my position in this matter? Did I say it's a safety concern in any comment? Again is surprised == I agree with the demand? Or please remind me if I said something else that made you think I agree with China's aviation authority?
This is the Economist sentence that you're commenting on:
> When the Chinese aviation authority, absurdly, accused the airline of imperilling safety because its employees had joined the protests
If you didn't believe that pilot protests / speech is a safety concern, you wouldn't disagree at the use of "absurdly" in that sentence, and then wouldn't double down on that by giving an example of an incident which you think imperiled safety.
Otherwise, if you didn't agree with those fake safety concerns, there is nothing surprising about the usage of "absurd" by the Economist.
Let me make it crystal clear: I didn't necessarily believe that pilot protests / speech is a safety concern but I disagree at the use of "absurdly" in that sentence, because personally I think the Economist has no expertise to judge.
But the protests have been nothing but peaceful, so there really isn't any reason to have fear.