Comment by greenbush | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greenbush | Hacker News Reader

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A true leader would have gotten on the phone with all of his counterparts in all of our allied countries and given notice to China that the new laws to curtail freedoms are a red line. And come up together with a list of collective sanctions (including banking) to threaten China with.

Instead, Trump has spent so much of his time kissing up to Xi to get his help to win the re-election (per Bolton's book). And check out some tweets from 2020: "Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country." "In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” "“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus."

"Of his many tweets over the three-day Memorial Day weekend, when the Hong Kong issue was at the top of the news, none was about Hong Kong. During the Hong Kong protests of 2014, Mr. Trump tweeted one of his few clear statements on the plight of the territory: “President Obama should stay out of the Hong Kong protests, we have enough problems in our own country!”" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/china-hong-kong-l...

> A true leader would have gotten on the phone with all of his counterparts in all of our allied countries and given notice to China that the new laws to curtail freedoms are a red line. And come up together with a list of collective sanctions (including banking) to threaten China with

This is literally, exactly what the White House did.

It isn't enough, we need to do a lot more.

Can you please point me to an article where Trump called the leaders of all our allies to create a coalition? And also which collective sanctions were created?

It's complicated to get buy-in on actual sanctions within the anglosphere and Europe, but it's not as though the U.S. is not pushing for them. [0]

[0]: https://www.ft.com/content/fcaf0a57-ac0f-4695-af0f-82a44e6ae...

The UK and Australia are willing to flap their mouths a bit [1] over it at least, and the UK is much closer to actual sanctions (Australia has, for the time being, not terminated their special trade arrangements with Hong Kong).

[1]: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/05/us-uk-canada-and-au...

Ultimately only the U.S. has taken any leadership on this matter, even if I think it will be inadequate. There is more to be done; but with the U.S. Presidential election looming, one thing that would steel the resolve and buff the resources of PRC assets in American politics would be a major announcement.

Nothing is as simple as the free world bullying the nominally-free world to condemn the only major state in the world conducting a holocaust; because apparently those "allies" don't give a toss.

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