Hong Kong protests: President Xi warns of 'bodies smashed'
bbc.com
bbc.com
The original is, as pointed out elsewhere, 任何人企图在中国任何地区搞分裂，结果只能是粉身碎骨；任何支持分裂中国的外部势力只能被中国人民视为痴心妄想. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-10/13/c_1125099224.ht...
I offer an alternative translation below since I find the BBC's translation overly literal and cherry-picked for a punchy headline, although there are certainly overtones of violence in the original idiom chosen. I've used the wheel to emphasize that the idiom ultimately is a brutal one, but not necessarily a literal one.
For anyone who tries to mess around with separatism in any part of China, the only possible outcome is that they are broken upon the wheel. Any external forces which support the fracturing of China can only be seen by the Chinese people as delusional.
Funny how it reminds me exactly of the protesters crushed by the tanks at the Tiananmian Incident.
Even in wuxia novels where I see this phrase used the most, the phrase is never used literally (And in those fictional universes turning people into powder is actually possible). If you choose to translate chinese literally you can make anyone sound insane.
Focus on the intent. He is very much saying he will destroy those people. But not necessarily by crushing bones.
There’s enough real bad stuff going on in the world. Inventing or purposefully twisting it only creates opportunities to completely dismiss the paper’s original point.
There’s a good reason trust in the media is super low and it’s not just because some influential people claim “fake news” at every chance. There’s plenty of real examples on a daily basis if you spend the time to look into what is being said.
The media is often their own worst enemy when it comes to holding bad guys accountable.
The BBC chose to make it specifically about Hongkong from the very first words of their article's title.
Which...I guess is a little better, arguably.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-a...
It's just conveying an intensity, not any specific action. Just like how "wiping the floor" with someone doesn't mean you're going to beat someone unconscious and use their body as a literal mop. That would warrant immediately calling the police or justifiable homicide in self-defense. That's obviously an insane way to interpret that phrase but that's what I am seeing here.
It's still a menacing threat but no chinese person is interpreting it as tanks being imminent (like how many english speakers would interpret the threat of literal crushed bones). If tanks do roll in, it is an escalation of the current situation but it's nowhere close to what is being said here.
You can copy and paste in Google to find transcript from Chinese sources.
粉身碎骨 is an idiom used in a variety of contexts, largely not literally, some different usage:
https://www.purpleculture.net/sample-sentences/?word=粉身碎骨
It's generic language for saying "crushed", but western audiences with limited understanding of China will naturally think of tank treads.
The quote from the article ("...perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder") has three separate allusions to death. Are all three of them being misinterpreted?
It is hard not to interpret that as a menace of brutality, regardless of whether actual crushing of bones is in the works.
>"Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder," Mr Xi said, according to a foreign ministry statement issued on Sunday.
What the source (Chinese State Media) linked by BBC in the article translates [1]:
>"Those who engage in separatist activities in any part of China will be smashed into pieces, Xi said, adding that external support for separatists will be seen by the Chinese people as delusional."
[1] http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201910/14/WS5da3743da310cf...
You would have to stretch credulity to interpret this as an enthusiastic call for literal violence. Though it doesn't necessarily preclude violent intervention which is not really news. All options are on the table for HK.
Is it reasonable to assume that violent metaphors are meant to be taken 100% figuratively and not imply actual violence, given that China has been more than happy to employ actual violence against its own citizens before? It feels like nitpicking to say that it's malicious to assume violent intent at all, just because the wording doesn't literally, explicitly call for violence.
>more than happy to employ actual violence against its own citizens before
Implying China is "happy" to employ violence is the kind of absurd, sensationalist characterization seen in this BBC article. As if 6/4 didn't literally put the country on the brink of a civil war. No one was happy at what was done. Also I think it should be recognized that the imagery of Chinese violence in western audience mind is going to be tied to Tianamen, especially with the crushing idiom. This is an outdated heuristic, China spends more money on (non-lethal) domestic security than (lethal) military, no small part due to reverberations from 6/4. There are thousands of Chinese protests every week, the state is very good containing public disorder non-lethally now. There won't be tanks on the ground but sometimes it feels like many western observers perversely hope it would happen to validate their biases. Compare 1967 Detriot Riot where the National Guard was called with modern riot protocols or the Dakota Pipeline Protests. China is either going to wait this out, or contain the problem with non-lethal methods.
You've just been chiding me for taking figures of speech too literally. Obviously I don't think anyone was cheering and handing out champagne as they gave the order.
Let me give you an example: in ancient Chinese it is a standard greeting to wish the emperor to live ten thousand years, literally. But everyone understands that it just means very long life.
All that is also true in English, of course. But one does want to take context and history into account. If an office worker says "I'm gonna kick his ass" when a coworker makes a stupid mistake, you assume he's being figurative and is just going to reprimand the coworker. If a drunk guy with a history of violence says the same thing, a reasonable person assumes they intend actual violence.
Given that China has a rich and recent history of using violence to suppress dissent, including in the specific situation we're discussing, Hong Kong, it seems pretty disingenuous to claim that their intentions here are purely peaceful.
It's like if a politician/government member in the UK/US said that the opposition would be crushed. Would anyone focus on whether that was meant literally?
I think sometimes Western media try a bit too hard to interpret statements by the Chinese government in the worst and most sensationalist way.
It has a menacing undertone in English. Yes, its used in sport quite often, but in that context it is also aggressive. It's just that in sport it is expected, in politics one used to expect calmer language...
Meanwhile China is growing in power and influence while not softening in authoritarianism but even going backwards with Xi. The threat that something like that may spread elsewhere worries which may be why the NBA and Activision/Blizzard are facing a fiercer backlash than Dr. Strange and the Red Dawn remake for their caving - they effectively extended their reach. While boots on the ground domestically wouldn't be plausible without some "magic" antinuclear technology or incredibly good missle defense and detection bringing an end to Pax Atomica getting fired and blacklisted over acknowledging Tiananmen Square is potentially plausible with global markets and clout. That level of "having a blacklisted employee or contractor bars the company from selling to China" wouldn't technically violate treaties. Jurisdiction may keep one safe but barring financial transactions would be within the powers of a nation and before that level of tracking would be logistically impossible.
Ecuador has been eye-opening for me from a personalized-news perspective. I spent a few months in Ecuador working on a project with an NGO so I have many friends in Quito and a handful in Guayaquil. From the moment the IMF-related austerity measures were announced it was all over my newsfeed and I've been getting "recommend" alerts about the situation from Apple News and Reddit.
I assumed it was a major international story. A few days after the protests started I mentioned them in conversation to a friend at Reuters who only had a vague idea of the situation. I couldn't believe it. He's an international news junkie. Looking at my phone, the protests are (were? hopefully) a major story but looking at his you wouldn't even really know it was happening.
And although I'm pro-democracy and think the repression of HK citizens is wrong, I can understand the Chinese government's point of view and their cultural reasoning. I see China as the spiritual successor to Soviet Union which did the right choices for its continuation. And when Soviet Union fell apart it wasn't really a triumph of democracy that followed. Sure other Soviet Union states have been more successful but Russia itself seems to be chronically vulnerable to mafia-type people who will strong-arm themselves into power. Better than Soviet Union? I guess, but Chinese government doesn't seem interested in wanting to try out if democracy would work.
I'm sure the government officials are also more concerned with their own selfish needs than just what would be the best for people. So far the only reason why I would see authoritarian government being good, is that it can act more powerfully than democratically elected government without having to fear their decisions weakening their re-election chances. Yet their privilege in being power only rests on their ability to force people to obey their orders - be it fear, bribery or mass-media brainwash. I don't think that kind of environment is sustainable and is definitely not an equilibrium state for humans to exist in. If something requires you to constantly keep distorting reality in order to keep it going, it can't be a long-term solution. And this is without taking in consideration the humanitarian problems, prevalence of corruption and the absence of critical thought.
Of course the definition of 1st world = NATO aligned, rarely used numerically 2nd = Soviet aligned, and 3rd = Unalligned has been effectively replaced by connotation of advancement with 1st as post industrial, the once again rarely used as number 2nd as developing or industrial, and 3rd as undeveloped or unindustrialized.
China is a second world country by the original definition of that phrase, which was: 1st world — Western bloc; 2nd world — red and non-aligned; and 3rd — everybody else "not worth talking about"
where have you seen "second world" used to refer to unaligned countries? this how almost everyone used "third world" before it became a non-pc synonym for "poor". in the original categorization, the "third world" was absolutely worth talking about. these countries were the proxy battlegrounds of the cold war.
Pretty much like this — "Hey look, Americans lambasting us for boycotting Guatemala. We are not Soviets, but they still criticise us!"
On one side, they will be staunchly opposing America, on other side, they have that "not Soviets" defence — greatly reducing Western political resolve
Because it's not just about Hong Kong protestors but about how China deals with thoughts and opinions that aren't of the ruling government.
HK is no longer China's golden goose, which is probably why China started this mess to begin with. From their viewpoint, HK's British hybrid law system is no longer worth putting up with. There's a very realistic possibility that China is going to crush resistance in HK by any means necessary. Keeping HK's economy and productivity intact probably aren't viewed to be important, but avoiding sanctions that would impact the entire country likely is.
This really is a conflict in which the threat of economic sanctions might actually save lives, provided they're believable.
The HK property and stock market is also where a huge amount of of Chinese money is parked.
Neither of these contribute to GDP but provide a lot of value to the mainland.
In the last decade, much of the HK stock market (and economy) is propped up by Chinese money and these outflows. Shell companies are sold in Hong Kong just because they are listed on the stock exchange - the underlying businesses are often spun-off as a part of the transaction and the resulting operation just a way to funnel money and business outside of Chinese capital controls.
The property market is also full to the brim with money from the mainland. Hong Kong has a much stronger hand than most people realise, because of the fact that the Chinese elite themselves lack confidence in their own system on the mainland.
I wonder if this is the reason China wants to get rid of Hong Kong. Their capital restrictions are useless if Chinese can move a ton of value through Hong Kong. The world still needs China, though. So it'll make a new way to China.
Maybe China has figured out: Value from Hong Kong < Value going to Hong Kong.
In this sense, the existence of HK as an international finance center brings money closer to mainland rather than further away.
At the end of the day, it's my opinion that this struggle is from the CCP side of things not a rational one. They are willing to sacrifice "rational" values for the sake of things like honor and saving face, and I think (and to some extent, hope) that there is a risk that type of decision making will cause a downward spiral for the regime.
I can't remember who made this point, but there's a historical anecdote about how "totalitarian regimes are suicidal". Sooner or later the fascist cocktail that has fueled economic growth explodes into unbearable oppression, unsustainable expansion, economically questionable decisions, or all of the above. I've heard the point many times that just like the Roman Empire was always just "one missed grain shipment away from a revolution", the only thing really standing between the CCP and a popular revolt is the downturn of the economy. The only reason people are tolerating the suffocating oppression of the state is because of tangible rewards.
If you’ve been to China, this is certainly not what the general population are feeling. There are enough entertainment and economic pressure to keep most everyone busy. And social injustice are _voiced_ and _acted upon_. As very few of those involve the legitimacy of whole CCP anyways, the lower level officials are mostly threading on thin ice.
I think there’s a huge gap between the perceived conditions in China vs the actual sentiment in China, and western media have only been widening it.
Rosa Luxemburg said that "those who do not move, do not notice their chains". Of course most people in mainland China do not feel anything close to a "suffocating oppression" because the mere thought of disobedience may never have occurred to them. To insinuate that the reason for this is the fact that "social injustice" is "voiced and acted upon" is nothing short of insulting. Most people in China would want more freedom, because they are human and humans do: but most of them are also raised in a system that equates the communist party with stability, and most people believe the (of course, to some extent correct) propaganda that disobedience would cause chaos. That is not to say that the CCP is in power due to wide popular support, they are in power due to wide popular apathy.
Right there after:
1. Getting a stable job
2. Starting a family.
3. Worry about children's education
4. Worrying about rent raising and loathing about crowded subways.
5. Pork price.
6. Popular pop star getting divorced.
I think you're right with your conclusion though, there _is_ widespread apathy for political activism. In no small part due to seeing how UK and US are being ran, the whole Brexit saga has been a laughingstock in China and good stuff just keep coming. Now, does anyone like getting an emperor? No, but at least the alternatives are not as good (as once thought).
I keep waiting for the shoe to drop.
China, by her own standards, has been very soft on the protests so far. China is much more concerned with its global image than back during the Tiananmen Square protests.
But if anyone should think this won’t end similarly, they’d be fooling themselves.
I’d put lower odds on a sudden violent crack down than on a slow, methodical process of arresting leaders and slowly ratcheting up the pressure on protestors.
As sad as it might seem, the CCP will come out on top in the end.
Surprisingly, things in this digital age are different and you can thank social media for that. If we didn't hav the Internet and live-broadcasting, the Hong Konguese are nothing but history now.
Being seen as a bloody dictatorship makes doing business much harder.
But you can watch as much basketball as you want, and wear fashionable sneakers, and of course call your buddies in the Party over for a party on your smartphones “proudly designed in California”.
Everyone already knows about Tibet, the Uighurs and so on. Everyone. And yet they still do business there unashamedly.
If China murdered thousands of protestors in Hong Kong, I would imagine there would be a lot of shaming of companies doing business with them.
They’ll still be companies who skirt public opinion, but I can imagine many would be affected.
The other impact could be government sanctions against China. Companies wouldn’t have much of an option then.
Hong Kong is different because people in the West relate to Hong Kong people more. They see them as being close; thus attacking them is similar to an attack on the "west" people.
If Xi ordered a massacre in Hong Kong, it would alienate tons of people in the west who have relatives there. It would alienate countless others who see Hong Kong as a westernized place. It might even reignite a McCarthy-esque red scare.
Not just by China's standard, the handling seems very soft by Western standards also. G8 meetings in Western cities regularly look similar, and those are 3-5 days, not weeks or months.
Not that G8 summits don't draw protests, but I'd hardly say they look similar.
I'm not even sure why you ask about the tear gas and water canons though. Water cannons are frequently used as crowd control in German protests precisely to avoid live ammunition. Here's one example of an old guy getting blinded during the Stuttgart 21 demonstrations in Germany [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27th_G8_summit#Protests
No, they draw smaller protests and violent police oppression with mass arrests and the occasional dead protestor.
There's also a key difference in that crackdowns on G8 protestors are police protecting/facilitating an international summit, and arguably the right of the summit participants to peacefully assemble. By contrast in Hong Kong an authoritarian regime is attempting to suppress human rights through semi-soft force (for the moment), with military forces conspicuously conducting exercises nearby and threats of "Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder."
You're comparing a foothill to a mountain and calling the mountain smaller.
If you have 3 people instead of 30, yeah, you're going to use less tear gas.
I get, China bad, West good and all that, but still "if it happens in Genua, the police are just upholding the right of the politicians to assemble" vs "if it happens in HK, it's just an authoritarian regime".
Things don't just return to normal the next day morning.
One of the earliest protests I remember was around 2,000 (Edit: it was actually 2003) and tied in with the universal suffrage electing the Chief Executive that was in the handover agreement, written into Basic Law, and remains an issue for today's protests. It's one of the protest's "five points".
Edit: There was an earlier demo in 2,002 over civil rights stemming from the subversion law, which spawned the yearly marches.
If China decides to "crush" resistance in HK by any means necessary, it would be the Chinese economy that took the blow of international sanctions and boycotts?
What I find interesting is that Macau is in the same position as Hong Kong, former colony, 1 country 2 systems, but it’s GDP per capita is double that of HK, and there have been no protests in Macau.
I root for these people because I can just begin to imagine my city being taken over by a country that would just disappear me if I become inconvenient. But does it really have to come to a Braveheart style conclusion?
The end result here depends on a lot of factors, but as it stands the CCP has the long-term advantage. The "super camera"[1] along with the ban on face masks is just one obvious vector for the techno-authoritarians to win by attrition. They can analyze the data, find the key nodes (people!) in the graph, and make them disappear.
AFAICT, there is no long-term defense against ubiquitous surveillance. Technology makes it possible and politics and economics drive it to the limit (e.g. Vernor Vinge's "locator dust".[2])
From this POV, the crucial question is whether the administrators of the system are themselves subjected to it. It's a global problem. Authoritarianism anywhere threatens you, today, wherever you are. The inexorable logic of it means there can be no stable equilibrium. Notice how the CCP is already working to control people outside the bounds of China? That's not going to stop. The people of HK are the "tip of the spear" in the war between free humans and dictators.
If Xi really was Papa Smurf [3] the people of Hong Kong wouldn't be so scared to be a part of his village, eh?
[1] "China's super camera can pinpoint specific targets among of thousands of people" (abc.net.au) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100048
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust
[3] The Smurfs are Communist Propaganda!? https://www.buzzfeed.com/richmonahan/13-reasons-why-the-smur...
Tiananmen Square set Chinese diplomatic relations back well over a decade, and with their economy showing signs of a possible slowdown, they’re particularly conscious of the consequences that any militaristic response would have.
It's a full blown military state guilty of several crimes against humanity, we have proof of muslim detention camps, sterilisation campaigns, destruction of churches, &c... doesn't look like anyone care as long as they build iphones and cpus. I doubt HK would be the last straw.
In Macau, another Chinese city under One Country Two Systems, people are generally very happy with the present political arrangement. Macau has an advanced economy with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world today. It is also a free and democratic society.
Both economically and politically, China prefers HK to be like Macau at a larger scale (HK has over 10x population). The current situation seems to be necessary pains of growing up.
Which are what exactly?
Now that we're seeing some of the downsides of globalisation, perhaps the world community could hold its nerve longer. Or perhaps not as that's not a profit making stance.
The problem is that decades of globalization have all but wrecked domestic manufacture of many goods that China provides - not just cheap plastic toys but basically anything that requires lots of human assembly. A part of electronics manufacture could probably be picked up by Vietnam, Japan and South Korea but that's it, the world has shifted to China too much.
In the long term it might be a sane option for the Western world to see Africa as more than just a dumping ground for excess food/clothing "donations" or a source for stealing fish, but that would require politicians with more long term vision than "how do I get reelected"...
(source - I designed a robotic manufacturing plant for consumer electronics and bought dozens of Kuka robots)
The most damaging aspect of the sanctions would be giving time for a competition to establish itself again while the outsourcing destination was unavailable - even if it takes the form of going to India instead of China.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-13/hong-kong-protests-br...
Vox: 9 questions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embarrassed to ask
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/8/22/20804294/hong-kong-prote...
These two articles were written in late Aug/mid Sep and do not contain the most recent developments.
I can't help but wonder how things would be different if the Hong Kong population was armed like Americans.
No, that's wrong. Conflicts like the one in Afghanistan show they can be effective against a well-equipped modern army, you just need to deploy them with the right (asymmetric) tactics.
The only way I see it ending well is if somehow the military/police side with HK and China decide that it isn't worth the trouble. Even if China goes full berserk on HK I don't see the EU or US doing more than economic sanctions, and we all know this is as bad for US as it is for them.
If the population of HK was sufficiently armed and motivated, the only way the PLA could do that "in a few hours" is with nukes.
But you make a good point: asymmetric tactics can be countered with indiscriminate extermination. However the diplomatic fallout of such tactics is likely unacceptable, even to the PRC.
No, they could obliterate HK with conventional artillery. But that would be a huge mistake, to say the least.
Also allows you to hold out long enough to import more weaponry from sympathetic regimes.
Plus drone based weapons are cheap and effective.