Hong Kong has charged and jailed 47 pro-democracy candidates with subversion | Hacker News Reader

Hong Kong has charged and jailed 47 pro-democracy candidates with subversion

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What's worse is that Taiwan will be next. Anyone who's counting on UN stepping in and preventing it is just fooling themselves.

I don’t think so. Taiwan is a whole different ball game and literally has a military to put up some measure of defense.

Hong Kong was legally going back to China at some point. There was no question of that. China accelerated the process.

I certainly have my own opinions on that, but it’s not comparable to Taiwan.

And you’re right about the UN. They won’t do jack. (Remember China and Russia are permanent members). The United States might (alongside strong allies in the region, but maybe not), however. Taiwan is strategic at this point as a source of chip manufacturing among other things. The Chinese won’t do anything.

TW is a different ballgame and TW is next because it's too important and China has been drumming up the attitudes of conflict with TW.

Hong Kong went back in 1997. That China left them alone this long is a surprise, not an acceleration.

It’s both. It’s a surprise as you indicated, but the agreement was that things should be left in place for a longer period of time (the acceleration part). China has thrown that part of the agreement out of the window, despite protests from the U.K. and others.

Personally, I think the anglosphere should allow Hong Kong citizens to relocate to their countries.

> Personally, I think the anglosphere should allow Hong Kong citizens to relocate to their countries.

This is sort-of happening. The UK is making it easier for the Hong-Kongese to relocate to the UK and gain citizenship. Note "easier" doesn't mean "easy", and one needs to get out of HK first, presumably.

But speaking of the UK, it is a massive slap in its face. The UK brokered the unification agreement (not that they had much pragmatic choice but to give up HK), China is now not even pretending to honour it.

A bit like with Ukraine's deal to give up nuclear arms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit... . I'm amazed this has gone down so placidly.

It feels as if certain blocs are solidifying their grip for an upcoming event.

Events seems to be accelerating and it's beginning to make me nervous.

Flows and ebbs hopefully. I was born decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but reading about it now, it must have felt like Armageddon. And yet it wasn’t, thankfully.

Of course eventually this doesn’t hold anymore.

> A bit like with Ukraine's deal to give up nuclear arms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit... . I'm amazed this has gone down so placidly.

It all depends on who's behind the wheel when stuff like this happens. I think once it became clear that Obama was more bark than bite Putin felt pretty confident in running amok.

I wonder what UK's strategy was when they made that decision. It was clear they'd have no leverage in enforcing the agreement. I've also always wondered why there was so much investments in HK based on expectation that the status-quo would prevail.

I feel really bad for the situation and what it suggests about the future. Yet I can't help but feel this was inevitable.

Taiwan however seems a couple orders of magnitude less likely on the short/medium term, I believe, unless the US loses it's edge quite dramatically. That's all just my speculation.

The UK didn't really have an alternative, I think.

UK "owned" Hong Kong "proper", i.e. what is called "Hong Kong island". This is a tiny fraction of the territory it was governing until 1997. The remaining territories were only leased, on fixed-term, from the Chinese government, with the lease running out in 1997.

Hong Kong Island is in no way self-sustainable as a foreign territory, much less so than even Gibraltar or the Falklands. Think owning downtown Manhattan, with the US hostile to the idea.

Still 23 years ago if the UK had just said "well we'll be keeping this indefinitely under the current terms," China would have had little recourse. They certainly wouldn't start a hot war with the UK, especially because they were still trying to make it on the world stage and HK was printing money for them at that point.

Everything north of Hong Kong Island was going back to China anyway, under international law. For the UK to oppose that, without China's consent, would be below par for their standard of international politics.

Hong Kong Island is 80 km^2, surrounded by undisputably Chinese territory and waters. Most of it is mountainous rock you can't develop very much. Not even the airport lies on the island, and there is less than 1 km of sea between the island and territories returning to China anyway.

If the UK had tried that I'm quite certain there'd have been a hot conflict over this. China could have never accepted this. At the very least the PRC would have occupied the New Territories and stopped supplies.

All of Hong Kong's water supplies are outside and would have been cut off.

Perhaps, but probably not right away. Water supplies are not hard to build - if you have the time. The UK could make nice with China long enough to build a desalination plant. I doubt China would want the international stain of shutting off water without warning. (They might have an "accident" shutting off water for a few hours)

Though I'm not sure the UK really gains anything either.

This was in the same decade that the USSR fell, it felt inevitable that communism would give-way to capitalism and indeed china was slowly allowing more freedom in the rest of the country, that's all been rolled back under Xi who I guess is a megalomaniac.

The deal was "one country, two systems" until 2047. You can't trust China, just like almost everyone else, btw.

Chinese friends tell me that the gov is increasing anti Taiwan propaganda over time - representing the Taiwanese as people who hate the mainland and who think that they’re superior.

We’re getting to a position where the domestic Chinese population would support an invasion. I’m concerned for the future.

UN is not preventing China taking over Taiwan. US Navy and Taiwanese F-16s are.

And the PRC has a deliberate strategy to basically "fly the wings" off of the Taiwanese F-16s via constant airspace incursions, degrading the ROCAF to the point where eventually they won't be a credible deterrent to invasion.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/09/26/asia-pacific/ta...

Only until TSMC becomes irrelevant because US will have gained the same manufacturing capabilities.

The agreement is not because of TSMC but US projection of power. By having close allies in Taiwan they effectively have a huge military presence in China's backyard. I doubt this will change any time soon.

The defense agreement has been around before TSMC became a superpower in chip making.

Pegging China to a wrangle around Taiwan presumably keeps them away from other strategic disputes, ones more directly affecting the US, even if TSMC is out of the game.

History and geopolitics only look stable over short periods of time.

Look over any 100 year period at any region, and you'll find cruelty, injustice, wars. You'll see metastable statii quo, which hold against all odds, but only for so long. You'll also see hope, perseverance, prevailing against evil.

Does an independent Taiwan right next to budding superpower China look stable? Not really. But then, Soviet Union looked like it's taking over the world a fair few times, not to mention Japan, or actual one-time superpowers UK and France. Or Italy, Spain, Germany...

Lots of reasons to be alarmed and distressed, no reason to panic and give up.

For that to happen, China Italy has to start a war. HK was under control of mainland China since 1997, Taiwan isn’t. They have a separate government.

Similar to South/North Korea.

Even when UN would not step in, invading Taiwan is not as easy as it sounds, even with the military power of the PRC.

TSMC will be defended.

Yes, until US builds the same manufacturing potential on-shore.

A dark time of my city. If one can so successful to kill a liberal city to a totalitarian one, right in front of the world ...

The footage from the HK protests were and still are deeply moving. It is hard to ignore the gravity of the situation and easy to empathize with the people just fighting for their freedom.

With that said, I feel like we have to be objective about this. Was there any doubt that this will happen? It's hard to see how any country could intervene given that Hong Kong is rightfully China's territory.

> It's hard to see how any country could intervene given that Hong Kong is rightfully China's territory.

would we say this (that ... "it belongs rightfully to" ...) if HK would be geographically situated just outside DPRK? The idea that human rights abuses can be justified because they're done by a nation to its own people is an example of doublespeak/doublethink in action. How can this be morally OK? The way to deal with China is to isolate it with sanctions on individuals and to keep their crimes correctly reported in the news. Make them "lose face" and make anyone in the West lose face too who condones such human rights abuses.

The "only" problem with it: anything the West does will be hypocrisy, thanks to decades of failure, racism, war-mongering and general incompetence in US/EU foreign policy in dealing with the CCP.

As I said before, I am deeply troubled by what is happening in HK. I don't like China one bit and I would be so incredibly happy if it became a democracy.

If you look at this through the lens of morality, it is obvious that there should be a tougher stance on what is happening in Hong Kong, and not just Hong Kong.

I was replying to the original post directly, where the wording was "I can't believe the world watched as a democratic city turned into totalitarianism".

Hong Kong is a region in China, whether we want it or not, regardless of its history and the feelings of its people. China did not invade some independent nation and started to push totalitarianism down its throat, they just did it in their own country. Whether we like it or not, the world is divided into countries and those countries govern as they please.

As I view this thread, a comment threatening Taiwan resides at the top and the ones lamenting HK's situation are all grayed out below that.

It's sad that the supposedly passionate activitists and anti fascists in the US and west will do.. nothing.

Peace to the people and spirit of Hong Kong.

Why is this purely political news HN appropriate?

I agree in large part, but Hong Kong is closely connected to the electronics industry and impact many tech companies and start ups.

I think you meant humanitarian.

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