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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> 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...

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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.

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.

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...

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