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I am a US citizen who resided in HK for 5 years, until this last December.

I think Hong Kongers' efforts to resist increasing Chinese encroachment, while admirable, are probably futile. They are simply too British. British culture is completely incompatible with any kind of successful resistance against a hostile government. They are too scared of weapons and (justified, defensive) violence to make Chinese occupation unviable. The absolute most extreme behavior we saw from protestors was thrown bricks and the occasional molotov cocktail. Almost none of the destruction was targeted at Chinese government facilities in HK - instead they went after easy HK-controlled targets like road equipment and the airport. This is not a winning strategy.

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Yes, what’s happening on the street (the protests) and in the legislative council (the voting) may not be enough to resist China, but Hong Kong people recently are doing more, which is what prompted the harsh response from China, including the proposed changes outlined in this news article.

Hong Kong people realized that they could “vote” (express their opinions) by choosing what businesses they support: they could support businesses who support the protest. This economic circle [1] eventually could resist the control from China.

This could be substantial when Chinese economy is not looking good, and when some businesses care about overseas market (think of the trade tariffs and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019).

[1]: https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/how-the-yellow-economic-circ...

Non violent, persistent, civil disobedience has worked in modern history.

It just takes serious dedication, but the current world has a lot more tools in place to broadcast the narrative.

Those Hong Kong protests can never stop.

Not against the CCP. Tank man was allegedy executed by firing squad two weeks after the event.

Allegedly, though. If protest didn't matter at all, it wouldn't be merely alleged; the CCP would just publicly say "yeah we shot him and we'll shoot you next if you bug us about it".

> Non violent, persistent, civil disobedience has worked in modern history.

Against the British empire in places that Britain didn't actually make much money anymore.

In America with Civil Rights also.

That worked because the federal government had guns and Civil Rights had widespread support in much of the rest of the country.

History is probably full of deaths of nonviolent (and violent) resisters.

Because America is a Democracy. Non violent protests changed people's minds and those people ultimately decide the laws. Won't work in China. China is totalitarian. The government gets what it wants regardless of public opinion. And it will squash any opinion it doesn't like before it spreads.

It won't work against a totalitarian government.

If the totalitarian government could survive a large scale joblessness or recession, comparable to the one US might be experiencing now.

Democratic regime may survive bad economic times by transitioning of power if needed, but less so for a totalitarian government.

Especially CCP got a lot of its legitimacy from the perceived fast economic growth, it will be problematic if their growth engine halts.

Non violent actions such as strikes brought us many human rights improvements such as 40 hour week and safety and health regulations. Many societies reformed after their citizens striked extensively. I'm curious why there's no sweeping strikes in Hong Kong yet?

Can you provide an example of a time peaceful strikes worked against a well-organized, massive, and authoritarian government like the CCP? I don't think comparing wins in civil rights in Western democracies is a good basis for policy here.

Solidarity, leading the way to the Polish revolution of 1989 and ultimately the restoration of democracy to the Warsaw Pact?

That's an interesting one, but mostly because it's tied to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the same time. China is not anywhere near the same state of affairs. Poland was also a relatively small economy and war power.

The non violence movement in India against Imperial Britain? You can argue the particularity of every historical event but to me striking is one of the immediately reachable weapon against CCP that is not employed. With the same logic we can say protesting is not effective against CCP yet ppl still do it?

Imperial Britain is still not China of today. There are some cultures that will simply read your nonviolence as weakness and stomp over you.

Our modern tendency to compete on who can most hyperbolically denounce Western Imperialism strips us of any ability to calibrate between cultures. Do you know what Imperial Rome would have done to the nonviolent Indian revolt? They'd have executed it at its infancy and it would be a historical footnote. They wouldn't have even waited for it to become a big movement; the death penalty would have been used early and often. To some degree, even as entertainment.

My read on China is closer to first-century Rome than 20th century Britain. YMMV.

And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?

To be clear, neither I or you are certain what the majority of HKers want to trade for democracy. Realistically if they want democracy so bad, what else they can do other than the protesting they are doing? Long term striking seems to be something they can do TODAY, RIGHT NOW. Equiped with weapons or not, one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed.

"And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?"

I don't know how that's relevant to anything I said. My point is about culture. Nonviolent protest requires you to be protesting an amenable authority. There have been plenty of examples in history of authorities that will just spill as much blood as it takes. To my eye, the only constraint on China doing that is their fear that people might stop paying into their economy.

Bear in mind that if China decided to roll into Hong Kong and simply kill everybody there, it would only increase the current Chinese government's death toll against their own people by somewhere between 16% to 40%. It wouldn't even double it! This is the government that brought you the "Great Leap Forward" in which they killed 18-45 million of their own people. This is a government being credibly accused of engaging in ethnic cleansing.

Are you sure advising "nonviolent protest" against that is a good idea?

"one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed."

That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.

I thought it was relevant because my initial reply was to someone saying

>They are too scared of weapons and (justified, defensive) violence to make Chinese occupation unviable.

To that end I felt striking is probably a better option to try before more violent forms of fighting get involved. Maybe nonviolent protest is not a good idea, but it's probably not a worse idea than violent ones.

>That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.

Say without international community support, is there any winning strategy you can think of?

I personally think once the confrontation becomes more heated, at least a dozen western countries would allow HKers to immigrate to their countries, which doesn't require too much resources to do? One example is last year Sweden has already started granting China's Uighurs refugee status.

They did. For 6 months since last June at least, every single day.

not long term striking. most protesters are students.

Guys; We do not 2m students. It is not 2015. It is the whole Hk.

We are trying our best to find a way. The recent approach is not to do any business with anyone who is Communist blue. (Well, the Communist control many things and this strategy should not work. But it hurts a bit. ) Strike is hard but we will see.

For so call violence, there is a lot of police violence and they have used this to suppress the protest, down to even sing a song in mall.

Tomorrow we will try. But how many will suffer from police we do not know.

Democracy and human rights is core to our belief. We will fight even as said here not very hopeful. Fighting a communist state with resources like that ...

It is not because we have hope we persist but by persistence we might have hope. One of our belief as well.

How often do violent uprisings turn out well? A thorough reading of history shows that they aren’t very effective, either.

Worked in the US and France as I recall.

The US is a great example to consider: compare the odds of success of a violent secessionist movement in Hong Kong to those of the Confederacy winning the Civil War.

Or perhaps a French example might be more relevant, with a single city at stake: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

Revolutionary war. Not civil war.

Call it what you like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_American_Civil_...

Talking about a different war dude. History didn't start in 1860.

Sorry I wasn’t clear about what I was trying to say. My argument was that most violent independence movements aren’t successful, an example of which was the Civil War, which was also called the “War for Southern Independence” by the rebels. Having a revolution sounds great if you expect it to turn out like 1776, but the majority of the time it doesn’t work out that way.

A thorough reading of history shows that violent uprisings are de facto _what_ is effective, and certainly in post-industrial modern times. Empires cede control of territory when they become too expensive to maintain. Usually, that is in terms of violence, which threatens mercantile stability and integrability.

Unfortunately, the violence and instability that often accompanies secession doesn't always end up resulting in prosperity after independence. That is because violent or not, uprisings do not necessarily upset the power balance between the colonizer and the colonized. Some say the alphabet agencies that form the worldwide practice of SIGINT operate on this inertia -- well, I don't want to speculate about what I don't know about, but I think that at least my own country's declassified documents are telling. The USA has had a hand in kingmaking much of LatAm and the Middle East. Historically, I think this kind of proxying only ends when the empire itself shrivels.

There have been many successful insurrections, but have you truly taken into consideration all of the failed ones?

We obviously can’t make a long list here, but here is one that might be relevant to think about:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident

As it pertains to statecraft, what is the point of bringing up "insurrections"? It just seems like a pedantic red herring to avoid discussing war. Insurrections are either aborted attempts to start wars and brutally suppressed, or they become protracted wars, which folds into the empire cost benefit analysis I pointed to. When it comes to wars, I think that territory, violence, the threat of it, and its costs are the attendant free variables in which decisions are made.

Well... I can think of two:

Korean protests in 1987 (against a military strongman)

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

Carnation Revolution in Portugal 1974 (against dictatorship)

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

That is the best way of achieving long lasted change - solidarity mentioned.

However China is different cup of tea. They don't care about image as they can suppress and buy PR - Tibet.

They massacred their own youth, organized mass organ thief etc. They have different approach to (de)valuing human life.

I am afraid that HK is under a CPR steamroller slowly crushing the resistance.

> They don't care about image as they can suppress and buy PR - Tibet.

Yes and no. China is almost crazily touchy about their image. They claim that it's an insult to their nation if anyone admits that Taiwan exists as a separate entity. You can't even mention Winnie the Pooh in China, because some people use it as a derisive label for Chairman Xi. (Imagine having the NSA notice every on-line mention of "Orange Man", and ordering the hosting site to remove it.)

Now, they may not care about their image as much as they care about suppressing Hong Kong. But the rest of the world can make them pay a price in terms of image - a price that China seems to find rather painful.

Maybe they throw a hissy fit at the mention of Taiwan, but do they give a shit, really?

Just for info sake. Only memes with Xi and Winnie are banned. Literally the first thing I saw in China were Winnie the Pooh images in Hainan airport toilet.

Their concern for their image isn't egoism, it's propoganda. With Taiwan for instance, if you get everyone to agree for long enough that Taiwan does not exist internationally, Noone will care when you roll in and squash it.

Strikes can also have the opposite effect; like Bacon's rebellion which ushered in an era of racial tensions that are felt to this day [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion

> British culture is completely incompatible with any kind of successful resistance against a hostile government.

Wat?

I mean, do you count the Revolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

The American revolution would be like some Chinese colonists refusing to pay back infra debt in Africa. And the US would have to have the guts to send some Rochambeaus and Lafayettes to the Chinese colonies.

Kinda a stretch comparison. But I would like it in doing so the US got mad broke and then we had a real revolution.

> They are simply too British.

It worked for the Americans somehow.

edit: and for that matter, it almost worked for cromwell.

Love the Cromwell reference! And your main response is on-point, as well.

However, when I read that Dennis Kwok, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said "This is a complete and total surprise and I think it means the end of one country, two systems" [my emphasis], I hope he is saying this rhetorically, rather than as an expression of being blindsided by the turn of events.

Kind of a weird take. What does being British have to do with being able to successfully protest?

To be fair I don't think they have a winning strategy available, so they're making the strongest move they can.

Armed insurrection of the type you're describing would just bring the PLA jackboots down on Hong Kong, and the rebels will join the Uyghurs in the camps. Sure there'd be some international backlash, but between backlash and losing Hong Kong, the CCP will choose the backlash. It's an existential issue for them.

The only way armed insurrection works is by creating a situation painful enough that, over time (years or decades), the leadership of the occupying force starts asking if the cost is worth it. The current CCP will always answer yes to that question.

I think US people are incredibly naive in thinking that they are going to oppose government military action with their personal guns. It won't work, the only difference will be many more dead.

Why not? It worked in Vietnam, it worked in Afghanistan.

Guns work. "Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun", said Mao.

It worked in the US, even without shooting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff)

(independent of whether you think the Bundys were in the right, the fact is, armed ranchers did deter armed BLM intervention, basically indefinitely)

Well, many more dead (on both sides) is the point.

Grim but true. It's the nuclear option: force the government to order their soldiers to go to war against the citizenry.

US military are at the mercy of their population. Think Nazi Germans with their superweapons vs punny Russians. Germans east front were utterly destroyed that it was preferably to surrender to West as fast as possible even though it came at a huge toll on Russians side. American military at most top to 1-2 millions which is only about 1-2% of their population. Whatever weapons that US military got, they can be easily commandeered by the population should it turn evil like Nazi. A lot of ex-veterans including ex-special forces are part of population who are very well verse with military tactics. Unfortunately this is uncommon in Europe or Asia side. If you reside in this places, then you pretty much have not seen some US private citizen collections that can rival 3rd world armies. Remember USA was beaten by Vietnamese. What makes you think their own citizens can't keep them in check? The parents who their children are military are part of population too. These are what most governments are scared of and ban weapons. The intention for these governments are never for the safety of their population but their own. USA people are way more smarter than most people giving credit for. They known this concept by inventing a written document that guarantees 1st and 2nd. Even UK dares not to do this even though most early Americans originate from there.

I’m curious now, how is having 1 gun per citizen not some sort of barrier to hostile takeover/occupation?

This is an amazingly ignorant viewpoint, and I'd bet the farmers in Vietnam of the 1960's and Afghanistan of the 2000's would likely care to differ. Insurgencies undermine the advantages of expensive weaponry.

And if we're talking about a civil war or insurgency within US borders: An army fighting on its own soil and against its own citizens is surrounded on all sides and can't maintain secure supply lines.

You can look up US military projections about the feasibility of engaging in guerrilla combat against even regional armed resistance in the US. The prognosis is not good (for the military). This should be obvious to anyone who's paid attention to the relatively poorly equipped VC or Taliban.

To an American, that sounds completely clueless. The soldier is likely a neighbor (who isn't going to shoot); there's no way to isolate part of the country from any other part (excellent secondary roads); they're outnumbered 1000 to 1 in any case.

And many of the opponents are ex-military, with tactical knowledge and skills.

Neighbours already shoot each other over politics in the US. As these things always happen, it would be a corrupt government plus a significant part of the population that supports the corrupt government.

That just leaves the last two items.

Undoubtedly, the main reason Gandhi failed to achieve any substantial strides toward Indian independence was because he was too hesitant to deploy real guns and firepower.

(Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on British/Indian/Chinese history/politics.)

As far as I know, Gandhi's strategy worked because the British public eventually couldn't take it anymore that their military was gunning down peaceful protesters.

That's where the analogy fails: Given the circumstances, I don't see the mainland Chinese public standing up for HK's rights any time soon.

I think it was not only the British public, but also their international peers. The presence of international reporters put a lot of pressure on Britain.

By the same token, the HK protesters' strongest asset is the international perception that they are passionate but peaceful protests, and it's why China is so eager to label them as riots. If they were to employ significant violence - say, start shooting cops - it gives China infinite license to crack down with disproportionate power. And they have that power available (see the convoys of military trucks that they moved to the border, enough to stretch beyond the horizon).

That's why China's strongest strategy is to infiltrate the protesters and provoke violence, or just dress up soldiers as protesters and blow up some replaceable infrastructure and blame them for it. Then roll in the army in uniform in response, lock the city down, and remove anyone who causes trouble, in the name of public safety.

Having widespread armaments throughout HK does not play in the favour of the public here. It makes that violence much easier to provoke, and legitimizes any response. China isn't afraid to lose soldiers and cops to bullets, they're afraid of looking like the bad guys (the optics of another Tienanmen square).

Scared of weapon and violence? LMAO. How does it feel to be a liar? Tell us the videos here show no violence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj0XUN7hJXY&list=PLoR2eeftuk...

And they don't hesitate to beat up a girl either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I55gRzacm-0&list=PLoR2eeftuk...

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