Comment by alisonatwork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alisonatwork | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I don't think the main problem Hongkongers have with this law is necessarily the content, but the fact it has been pushed on them by an external government which many Hongkongers expected to remain independent from for the next 27 years. From their perspective, having their own government taking marching orders from Beijing undermines the principle of "one country two systems".

Aside from the principle of it, there are also several aspects of the proposed law that go beyond what many people consider to be reasonable. Most notable for migrants and tourists is the emphasis on preventing and penalizing "foreign interference", which doesn't sit well in a city that is still the most multicultural in East Asia. Allowing the mainland security apparatus to set up offices in the city is also concerning, given mainland law enforcement is famous for disappearing and torturing people who do not support the single party dictatorship.

I think it's fairly clear that this is an opportunistic power-grab by the central government. The coronavirus has allowed them to dramatically increase the intensity of their security measures in the mainland, instituting Xinjiang-style movement tracking apps, "temporary" barricades and checkpoints all over the country. The state media has whipped up intense anti-American hatred, and the government is emboldened by the fact that America is dealing with the virus comparatively poorly. There is a widespread public support for cracking down on Hong Kong, which has been presented here in mainland as a city besieged by terrorists and American agents of chaos, all out to destroy China. I suspect from the point of view of the central government, being able to advance their timetable on the takeover of Hong Kong is the silver lining of this pandemic.

Was Hong Kong ever really independent though?

Essentially, yes. Besides China having sovereignty over the city, it has its own currency, government, different law system than China, a border with China, and different passport. In recent years on the rise of Chinese Nationalism, the Chinese government seems to downplay this a lot to eliminate the HKer's local identity and creates an image of HK = China. Culturally, it is also vastly different than China.

What i meant was it was under British rule prior to China. The British ruler was literally appointed by outsiders.

From an American perspective it’s more about losing a territory under Allied jurisdiction. From the local perspective it’s about losing independence rights—though they didn’t really have that right under British rule either.

I'll illustrate with an example.

Under the British, while it was true that the governor and many government officials were Brits, a surprising number of them were able to speak fluent Cantonese. They actually took the effort to understand the local culture. You can find many such clips on Youtube.

Nowadays, under Chinese rule, Hong Kongers often get told off by mainland Chinese officials for not speaking Mandarin, and hence Hong Kongers are unpatriotic and seditious. Schools must be forced to switch to teach in Mandarin, and so on.

If Trump started learning the local dialect (English), that doesn’t suddenly make him legitimately represent all English speakers.

And actually the last of the British governors tried to increase democracy. While the PRC blocked it because it was in their interest to do so, the HK people didn’t exactly fight for it or make it easy.

I can stand behind a Democracy movement, but find it harder to palate a political power grab.

> the HK people didn’t exactly fight for it

People tend not to demand a democratic system until they are dissatisfied with the governance.

> or make it easy

I still don't see how you've come to this conclusion.

> I can stand behind a Democracy movement, but find it harder to palate a political power grab.

Any democracy movement is by definition a political power grab.

A large part of the gay rights movement come from supporters of human rights, not just people trying to protect their self interests.

The problem is there are a lot of third parties in play in HK and if I'm going to support Democracy I want to be sure that's what I'm supporting. If it's poor governance, I want to be sure I'm supporting good governance. If it's poor housing policy, I want to support good housing policy movements. I don't want to be a pawn in a proxy political war between Eastern powers and Western powers while my own democratic rights are being eroded by the US senate.

Towards the end, it was only under direct British rule because China threatened to invade if the British gave them self-governance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu...

Towards the end the British tried to increase Democracy as a an anti-PRC political move but efforts were stalled by HK people themselves.

This is a reminder that it’s important to fight for rights everywhere, not just when it suits your interests.

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

> stalled by HK people themselves

From the article you linked, it says it was stalled by vested interests and the CCP. Where does it say it was stalled by HK people?

> Although full universal suffrage was never granted by the British to its colony before the handover in 1997, some democratic reform began in 1984.

> ... but they stalled due to opposition from Beijing, local business interests as represented by Executive Council, and the British Foreign Office under the pretext that it would bring chaos to Hong Kong.

> In 1987, many surveys indicated that there was more than 60% popular support for direct elections. The government, under governor David Wilson, issued another green paper in 1987 proposing direct LegCo elections for 1988.

> However, the proposal was ruled out after a government consultation concluded that people were 'sharply divided' over its introduction that year.

It links to an article here: https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1618427...

The "vested interests" you refer to is "Patten's push for reform was strongly opposed at the time by vested interests within LegCo and by former ambassador to China Percy Cradock." However that was in response to "labour rights and collective bargaining" and not strictly democratic elections.

Local business interests, and a "sharply divided" public were the reasons democracy never came sooner. Of course I'm not sure how reliable those government consultations were. I do want to point out I fully support Democracy in Hong Kong. I'd just rather not be a pawn in an opportunistic power grab by business elites who decided Chinese rulers don't work out as well for them as their former British ones. Freedom of information and thought aside, the elites have more to lose from Chinese rule than the working class.

No, by "vested interests" I mean whoever had power at the time. In the 70s-80s it was the ExCo, which had on it a few business elites hand-picked by the British.

In the 80s-90s, as China opened up its markets and needed HK investment, many business elites cozied up with Beijing, gaining political power in the process; they became the vested interests today. But they are not exactly the same group as the vested interests in the 80s.

> > However, the proposal was ruled out after a government consultation concluded that people were 'sharply divided' over its introduction that year.

By that time the CCP was heavily involved. People feared that introducing direct elections would (and eventually did) antagonise Beijing.

> rather not be a pawn in an opportunistic power grab by business elites

This is an interesting take. Do you have anything to support this claim?

"American Columnist Blames China For British Decision"

In 1960, China was in the middle of the Great Leap Forward and like 40 million people were starving to death. The rest weren't doing great, either. Maybe the Brits were really worried, maybe it was a fig leaf. Maybe they were scared communists could win an election.

To be fair, China did almost invade in support of communist protestors in 1967 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Hong_Kong_riots -- but that was during the Cultural Revolution when they were a lot less starving and a lot more psycho. And they still thought better of it.

In any case, the UK still ought to own their decisions.

I see, you meant true independence as a nation?

Hong Kong has a very complex history and culture about independence. To be brief, majority of Hong Kongers never wanted independence as a country. (It's weird but there was a split of people being pro-China and pro-UK) The thought of Hong Kong independence has been around for long but didn't become major topic and a significant opinion until recent years (after 2014-2016 with rise of figures like Edward Leung).

Historically, China has threaten to "liberate" HK if UK gave Hong Kong any form of independence/progressive democracy. UK also has no intention on instigating conflict with China, especially US was friendly with China in the 60s/70s/80s to fight Soviet. There was an unclassified UK government transcript that backs this information. Ultimately, HKers/Brits/China wanted to maintain the status quo and the final solution was to give HK back to China with some underlying promises (1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration - Basic Law - 1 Country 2 System).

I mean true Democracy and government and representation by the people.

There’s two way’s to characterize the protests: I don’t like China or I want Democracy.

PRC put strong pressure against Democracy in HK back during British rule, probably because it would set a precedent for after the handover. And despite the last few British governors pushing to increase Democratic processes many efforts for that were stalled by the HK people.

So now that a new governor is in place I fully support movements to increase Democracy, but anything that smells of just an anti-China motivation is just too politically tainted for me to get behind.

What started as "I want Democracy", which was promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984[1], slowly was pressured into something different.

As the CCP started to really apply pressure starting in 2014 after the umbrella revolution, HK people have been witnessing the erosion of their rights.

When the CCP labelled the protests as a separatist movement to justify to the West that these were simply "internal affairs/extremist movements", most in HK laughed at the idea of independence. It's CCP's narrative to align their online army and casual observers as anti-China/pro HK independence.

All HK wanted was to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and universal suffrage. Slowly HK people started to realize the CCP would never hold their end of the bargain and truly give democracy to the HK people. So what was CCP's fake news campaign became reality and it's now turning into a HK independence and anti-China campaign.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration

I see what you are saying. I think it is hard to separate anti-China and pro-democracy. After all, China is against democracy in the case of HK (Backed by example why universal suffrage legislation was crippled). The question comes down to, how to be pro-democratic but not anti-China, especially when CCP-backed media categorized the entire movement to be separatist....

Well, it made its own laws, had a different style of economy, had much greater freedom. From an outsider's perspective (mine), seems so.

Read up on Hong Kong history. The people of Hong Kong were under foreign rulers pretty much their entire history. This is one of the reasons why you should always fight for what’s right. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. They just didn’t bother to begin fighting until they didn’t like their ruler.

Of course it was a colony since... whenever. Speaking as a brit, you're bang on.

But given that, what rectitude you suggest I (or they) fight for is unclear. It seems they prefer the UK legacy to the encroaching Chinese one. I'm unsure what you're saying (though I do agree with you about rights and justice, completely).

It is my understanding that the protests originally started over HK residents frustrated that they would never ever be able to afford decent housing inside of HK, and they blamed a couple of central figures in HK (who are not Chinese residents).

The protests seem to have become much more than that.

The final form of the protests don't address the frustration of HK residents over living costs.

The British rule was more successful because it was governing at arms length. London never flexed like Beijing by actively disqualifying publicly elected legislators and meddling with its internal affairs, eroding individuals freedom and rights.

Eg pressuring companies like Cathay Pacific, Big four accounting firms to take action against employees participating in lawful assemblies and protests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Hong_Kong_prot...

Thanks for that informative reply

Reply on news.ycombinator.com