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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

One of the surprising things to me is how much China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly). People have been sounding alarms about China for a while but if they had played it cool everything likely would’ve ticked along as it was. Everyone would still ignore the human rights abuses, and IP theft, and creeping influence in our institutions around the world, etc. Instead China has managed to really put it right in front of every average persons face and now there’s a real chance things could shift away from China. And what for? Ego? On the one hand I think the CCP bought a dud with Chairman Xi. But maybe that’s good for the rest of us.

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> One of the surprising things to me is how much China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly)

China is a dictatorship, Xi a leader for life. That dramatically changed Beijing's political profile.

Pre-Xi, one could argue China had long-term planning capacities. The rotation of leaders and intraparty competition limited corruption and promoted political fitness. Dictatorships have neither. They're cronyist, corrupt and focussed on short-term political survival.

A strategic China would have waited until 2050 to deal with Hong Kong. Instead, Xi got insecure about Winnie the Pooh or whatever. A strategic China would have slowly accumulated technology, capital and soft power. Instead, they're pivoting into a wall.

> On the one hand I think the CCP bought a dud with Chairman Xi. But maybe that’s good for the rest of us.

In the short term, sure. In the medium term, it's a security nightmare. In the long term, we're going to watch billions of peoples' humanity and productivity get squandered. That's a loss to everyone.

Good points made above. Out of curiosity, is there a route to a return of rotating leaders without a voluntary abdication by Xi?

> is there a route to a return of rotating leaders without a voluntary abdication by Xi?

History has limited examples of such peaceful (i.e. no civil war) transitions of power. (Most are from the modern era.)

My guess is the CCP’s senior guard would need to orchestrate his “illness.” But Xi has done a good job of purging the Politburo of able competition.

If I were giving this question serious study, I’d look at the PLA.

I’m not sure he’s up to the level of Stalin, but he’s sure purged many of those whom he thought might threaten his standing —most under rather made up circumstances like corruption, where you know, everyone is corrupt, but they all play the game, except if you’re out, then of course, you’re denounced, striped of property, put in jail, or worse, depending. It’s so reminiscent of soviet politicking.

There has to be a faction within the Politburo, or at least within the Central Committee, that is becoming increasingly skeptical of Xi’s hardline policies, even if all those with pre-existing loyalties were politically purged before. I suppose the question is whether they all find themselves suddenly facing corruption charges one day before they have a chance to consolidate any power.

Last good example in China was Mao, who basically had to die to lose power.

Along those same lines, I'm very interested to see which direction Russia heads after Putin kicks the bucket.

I was under the impression that Deng Xiaoping had similar levels of influence and power during his first 10 years in power and that he stepped down due to a weakened influence following Tiananmen.

A few years ago, South Korea's then conservative government decided to let US force build an anti-missile radar facility called THAAD, which conveniently was powerful enough to see through Chinese airspace up to Beijing (or so I've heard). Of course China didn't like it - and actually a lot of Koreans objected to it, viewing it as needlessly putting ourselves in the middle of geopolitical game between two superpowers.

But then China went completely overboard, banning Chinese tourism to Korea, and forcing out many Korean companies from Chinese market. And to what end? It hurt Korean economy a bit, but the primary effect was that Koreans' opinion on China cooled down remarkably.

As some of you may remember, the conservative president got kicked out in 2017 amid national protest - we now have a reformist president who is less pro-American than his predecessor. If China waited just a bit, they could have negotiated a better position. But they had already played their cards. THAAD is getting built anyway.

It seems China's national pride is getting in the way of their diplomacy.

I think HK is a huge part of this. They probably thought it would go away quietly but to see this level of support slowly growing and refusing to go away must be alarming. Notice how it was specifically the HK stuff where they are going scorched earth (NBA, Blizzard, co-opting celebrity messages, etc).

I think especially when it comes to entertainment they know how much it goes into shaping their own public discourse and they cannot lose that.

> They probably thought [Hong Kong] would go away quietly

Hong Kong is a problem manufactured by Xi. Most Hong Kongers identified as Chinese not more than a few years ago [1]. Come 2050, almost every Hong Konger would have lived under Beijing's rule their whole life. The sensible thing was to wait.

But Xi got impatient. So we got this mess. Hong Kong accelerated the outcome for a die cast when Xi installed himself as leader for life.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-anniversary-idUS...

Hker here. In 2008, even the most radical forum on HK Internet praise the achievement of China , we celebrated the Chinese Olympic and mourned for the great earthquake in Szechwan.

We all shared the same view with the west that China will eventually transform itself to democracy and we shall have harmony in 2047.....right until China shattered the promised universal suffrage.

Also, China had singlehandedly groom the separatist sentiments HK. Initially in 2014, there were only a handful of activists and they weren’t even treated seriously even within the pro-democracy circle. But lately you see Chinese state media started to put the separatist hat on every pro-democracy movement and figure. You can imagine people are extremely frustrated by this narrative and many young people started to wholeheartedly support independence (no matter how impossible it seems).

You're giving China too much credit here. It has single-handedly gone down the wrong path with HK in the same way that it did so with Taiwan maybe 30 years ago. But in both cases, you don't think the nativist/chauvinist local media and Western propaganda had anything to do with it, in fanning a negative identity ("not Chinese")? Nothing at all?

No , because there’s only one major newspapers that is pro democracy. All other major media is either centrist controlled by businessman, or flat out pro-CCP.

But even back in 2008, the pro-democracy paper namely Apple Daily also was celebrating our Chinese identity, and praising china’s progress.

They should have seen this coming a long time. It's not like it's without precedent. There have been demos in Hong Kong since around 2001 or 02, just about each and every time Beijing tried fiddling with the Basic Law, or restricting freedoms. Along with the yearly July Marches. The 2014 umbrella protests should have been clear, though other demos were much smaller.

But it long predates Xi, he's just stepped it up, and been particularly clumsy with it. They've been fiddling with HK's agreed status pretty much since the moment of handover.

I fear you're getting the wrong message. The protesters will be crushed just like the yellow umbrellas were.

HK, China is declaring that it will flex its muscle.

There's nothing clumsy about it.

They've allowed the regular democratic demonstration to escalate from thousands to millions. That wasn't necessary, it was clumsy. They cleared the umbrella protests long before they escalated to huge, and well over half the population.

Flexing muscle now will risk destroying the advantages of Hong Kong in the process. It will almost certainly have to come with some international reaction.

Given the sheer numbers, and visibility, if they react similarly to Tiananmen, the international reaction will be far larger than then. Whether it will be sustained...

There is a useful parallel in history for keen history buffs.

After the Seven Years' War, a certain European country accidentally kicked off strife with its colonies which morphed into a struggle over legislative sovereignty. For a decade, this simmered until a particularly hard-nosed governor ending up allowing a confrontation to escalate into a very notorious act of vandalism, one that was nearly universally condemned, even on all sides of the conflict. In response, the government enacted a series of laws to punish not just the perpetrators but the entire colony. They hoped to turn moderates into loyalists, to better rein in neighboring radicals lest the same happen to them. Instead, they turned moderates into radicals, and furthermore caused the radicals to shift their demands from autonomy to outright independence, especially as the government chose to double down on their mistakes at every opportunity instead of reversing course hard and fast.

The big difference there would be the relative sizes of the two parties at play, and distance between them.

And for the non-history-buffs, what country are you talking about?

I think the very notorious act of vandalism is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

The notorious act of vandalism was as much an act against the monopoly of the East India Company than just the governor's stupid hard line approach. The daft thing is the tea boycott was dwindling. Dwindling until IIRC the tax was reduced and the East India Company got the monopoly they had been lobbying for in its place.

This provoked other British tea merchants to organise a campaign, publicity and letter writing to colonists to try and get the boycott going again.

It was the Company that then chose to send the four(?) ships to Boston.

T'was mostly the East India Company lit that touchpaper. Then, as you say, a series of government responses that turned moderates into radicals, and subjects of the Crown into Americans.

If that's the case, I think it reveals an incredibly myopic understanding of the situation. I and people I know have been watching events unfold in Hong Kong with a feeling of helplessness and distance. But now that Western companies have made themselves targets for trying to censor support for Hong Kong, it has given us a local focus through which we feel we are able to participate. cf. Streisand Effect.

Tin foil hat time:

I wonder if this was intentional?

Perhaps the CIA orchestrated these companies play?

It doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

Pure speculation, of course, but it is kind of in their wheelwhouse. If there were a connection, I imagine it would take the form of influencing individuals like Blitzchung and Daryl Morey to make their pro-Hong Kong statements in the first place, anticipating the response, and not plotting with the companies themselves (that would be way too crazy).

Playing them like puppets, yes ;)

> I and people I know have been watching events unfold in Hong Kong with a feeling of helplessness and distance

Thank you for keeping an eye on HK. How you can help from abroad: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cv0ws4/how_can_yo...

If you're in the US, contact your senators and representatives to voice your support for passing Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. May be Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against Chinese officials also (much like the recent visa ban for Xinjiang officials).

Boycotting Chinese companies/products may also be useful in the long run.

It is said (by his acquaintances) that Chairman Xi is not a smart guy ("brain dead" is the word). He only has elementary to junior high level of education. Anything higher (including his "PhD") is fake.

His solution to every problem is fight (power struggle) until all your opponents are down. It may work in China's party politics but if taken to the international level, it fails. You can see this same solution being applied to the handling of Hong Kong.

He also believes that China is invincible because they have this massive supply chain thing which nobody else has.

Genuinely curious -- do you have a source for this?

Yes, I didn't make those things up. They are not all from a single source though. I don't keep a list of everything I have read but here is one (in chinese):

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E6%9D%8E%E9%94%90_(1917%E5%B...

https://www.voachinese.com/a/voanews-20180413-former-secreta...

Can you do an English TLDR?

The scary part of the Chinese strategy is conteolling people with AI and social credit score together. So far it seems that it works.

My original post is the TLDR.

As for control, intense power struggle is happening at the top right now, between Xi fraction and his opponents. Of course due to the opaque nature of Chinese politics nobody is sure.

Xi wants to be China's most powerful man since Mao but he is very insecure. So he is tightening control of the whole China, including Hong Kong (the extradition bill). It is working in the mainland but in Hong Kong it caused a blowback.

Thanks!

For me as an outsider it looks like Chinese people are scared from another massacre (for a good reason), but it's interesting to know that Xi's power doesn't look that stable for you.

Both links say the same thing - one old man, an expert on the history of the CCP, says Xi Jinping has a low level of cultural intelligence. They don't support the idea of this being a widespread notion.

> China seems to have played their hand too early (and too strongly)

China got away with the Tiananmen massacre. Is this worst than Tiananmen? Sadly people have a short memory and dealing with China is profitable for Western companies. I hope not but most likely this episode will be forgotten soon.

"China" didn't get away with the massacre: the oligarchy lost any remnant of respect for the people, enforced the one child policy with forced abortions widened the gulf, the dead are still dead...

They got away in the sense the US imported $11B worth or goods from China in 1989 (the year of the massacre) and $539B in 2018.

source: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

Great point. Seems like Xi never read Sun Tzu's Art of War.

You bring up s good point. Maybe that was too bourgeois for the party, or at least part of the past that needed extirpation since it was associated with the nationalists.

But in the other hand they have begun to bring their glorious past (myth or otherwise) back into the fold of their national story...

Xi is inept, but the playing of a poor hand is somewhat forced by the US. Recall there was already a pivot to Asia under Obama to counter China's rise, and before that, if it weren't for 9/11 and the Iraq War boondoggle, Bush Jr. was planning to do the same. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has never given up on destabilizing CCP rule, and with hands free now the heat was turned up to 11 on all fronts. China had been preparing too. The Belt and Road Initiative was a preemptive seeking of alternate routes of trade in preparation for the then-anticipated American sanctions.

Everybody in Asia knows this. Only the American public doesn't and thinks this dynamic is something new.

Hong Kong forced their hand early on this, but I suppose the whole series of events that precipitated the protests in the first place could have been delayed a year or two. I feel like things were pretty close to a breaking point already, though, following Xi's lifetime appointment and opposition purge.

I believe the CCP is looking ahead at the next decade or two and realizing that the global economic boom is over for everyone - especially for them.

The experiment with free-market capitalism has to come to an end one way or another, and the CCP has chosen to be in control of the situation instead of letting their citizens decide.

   I believe the CCP is looking ahead at the next 
   decade or two and realizing that the global economic
   boom is over for everyone - especially for them.

That seems like a credible way of thinking if you were only concerned with short term goals. But how does China see the next couple of decades play out - both for them and for others if they, like you say, took control of the situation?

Would they just sit back and let the turmoil play itself out? Would they not be drawn into it somehow via North Korea / Russia or their interests in Africa and the new Silk Road (the Belt & Road initiative) ?

You're more than welcome to stop buying Chinese products anytime you want.

Everyone ignored a superpower's rampant abuses over the last 30 years and still did business with them, what exactly makes you think that same world will stand up for "human rights" this time?

It's funny how certain places care about rights far removed from their own existence while ignoring those right in their face.

The US still has the most people imprisoned per capita. 85% of which are for non-violent crimes, mostly drugs. To ignore that (mostly)black guy who got 5 years federal prison for selling weed who now has to work for $0.70 an hour (sound familiar?) while actively campaigning for the release of violent muslim separatists who want to create their own country in far western China is staggering.

I guess freedom is just a word to some.

That or Americans in general are 10x more evil on the whole than the rest of the developed world due to their prison population? Perhaps the police are 10x more effective than everyone else.

I'd be interested in the number of US citizens that actively campaign about their prison system compared to those who talk about China bad.

Let's face it, unless you are an expert on the subject virtually everyone you meet simply repeats what the news media tell them, that's the extent of their knowledge on basically all topics.

Now, how many people watch, experience or live outside of that nationalistic media-infused bubble? Fraction of a percent?

To talk about another country with no experience of it is farting in the wind. There's really no point discussing China with Americans anymore online because there's far too much emotional baggage, media disinformation and talking points repeated verbatim. The fragile ego's of the biggest, strongest, most militaristic country is on show for all to see while China charges forward towards being the largest economy on Earth.

Undoubtedly when that day comes, "biggest" will mean GDP per capita, not gdp and those fragile sandcastles of the national psyche can rest easy for a decade or two longer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

Millions of people in US prisons faced "justice" and lengthy incarceration as far as American society is concerned, why exactly do you consider the imprisonment of Chinese Muslim separatists undeserved? They are bombing civilians and actively trying to create a new nation-state. Who is the bad guy here?

Exercise for the reader: when was the last foreign civilian child killed by both the US and China? How many civilians have been killed by each countries military in the last decade (last two decades)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

What if any do you feel Trumps role was/is in any of this?

It's a reasonably valid point. During his administration, right-wing autocrats the world over have been emboldened, and he hasn't spoken against them. See, for instance, Khashoggi, the Kurds, or the Skripal poisoning incidents in recent memory, or, more to the point, the promise that Trump would say nothing of the protests in Hong Kong if he got his trade deal [0].

You're being downvoted, but while it's not a direct cause and effect, he has supported and encouraged authoritarianism the world over.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-promise-hong-kon...

Would you say that Trump's trade war has also forced Xi's hand? China could afford to ignore these issues when its economy was still growing. But a shrinking economy has forced China to consolidate power and clamp down any dissent

Trumps trade war has been an effective policy. It may not have been the most elegant or the only option. But all things considered not terrible. It may backfire into a recession. Taking some action was both overdue and likely to happen regardless of who was in charge.

I am otherwise aggressively anti trump.

I think you're attributing too much to Trump here. Trump is part of the same movement of rising authoritarianism and strong man politics. He may be the poster boy, but Putin has been there for decades.

My opinion, which I can't support, is that the dream of information technology automatically progressing democratic and liberal ideals has failed. Information technology is no different than chemistry. It can be weaponized effectively. Right-wing parties around the world learned how to powerfully engage with the masses. It really was a meme war. Propaganda is undoubtedly effective even when it's standing right next to the truth.

If you only read the news you would think it's only national leaders taking over and oppressing the populations. I don't think so. I think this is a trend towards grassroots nationalism and fascism. The people want this.

Was there ever a dream of the internet promoting specifically left wing democracies? I don't remember any of that in the early days. Surely the opposite - a lot of early hacker culture was libertarian in nature. You seem to simply describe anything not left wing as "grassroots nationalism and fascism" but that's not a reasonable view.

This is a conversation I'm really interested in but upon rereading my original comment I think it was low quality. I didn't mean some of things that I implied.

No I don't think the dream was for left wing ideology. I meant classic liberalism and democracy which aligns well with libertarianism. So regardless of political leaning the dream was that information will free the people. What we're seeing is that information is being used to entrench the establishment. It is the opposite of libertarian today.

Fascism and nationalism were in a time in history attached to left wing ideology rather than right wing. I don't want to imply that those movements are inherently left or right. But I do see that today they are attached to the right, who are using information very effectively to achieve their goals.

Trumps actions don’t explain China’s actions that we’re talking about here. If anything, assuming someone smart was in charge in China, Trumps behavior would be cause to show more restraint for now in places like HK to play it very cool and not give your opponents ammunition to accelerate trade wars, etc.

Trump allegedly offered silence on Hong Kong: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/politics/trump-xi-hong-kong-p...

To the extent China succeeds in influencing the world economy, whatever they do will be portrayed as "playing their hand too strongly" by those who perceive China's success as coming at the cost of their own.

So while I think you're basically right, I'm not sure under what conditions we'd be hearing comments such as, "China has grown into a legitimate economic power by playing fair and square. They really caught the rest of us napping."

What playing their hand too early means is that they’ve hurt themselves with dumb moves. What good is having influence if China use it stupidly, makes everyone pissed off, and everyone closes their doors to China? Xi and the CCP have hurt China here.

Soft influence. Release a couple more international films. Allow at least one major American company unfettered access to the Chinese market (better if it were an underdog American company whose brand is an up and coming younger hip version of some big corporate player) to demonstrate the possibilities inherent in playing ball w/ China. Continue to advertise world leadership in AI research and invite cooperation and share advancements with neighboring countries. Continue and expand their space program with international cooperation.

In another 10 years they’d take the mantel of world superpower from the US.

But I guess it’s true of totalitarian government as it is with most evil: it contains the seeds of its own destruction

Agreed, largely. At the rate we're going, that mantle will be theirs for the taking before long.

They are really shooting themselves in the foot over HK

For the Communist Party, it's not about HK, at least not exclusively. It's about everybody else in their sphere of influence, including Taiwan, who will be emboldened if HK prevails.

HK is basically an exercise in calling Xi's bluff. Everyone will now see his cards, whatever they are. The residents of HK have judged that now is the time to do that, for better or worse, and they deserve our support.

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