Hong Kong pro-democracy Stand News shuts down after police raid, arrests
reuters.com
reuters.com
> Hong Kong would maintain its existing governing and economic systems separate from that of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".
The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
This is exactly what has been used to craft very vague language that basically allows authorities to treat anything that goes counter to China's official line as a "threat to National Security".
It's so vague that self-censorship is now omnipresent in what was, just a few years ago, a bastion of freedom of speech in Asia. Newspaper and political figures are afraid of being targetted for their perceived dissent, and there is no real recourse, with pressure on judges to fall in line.
It is a farce of course, but there will be no international action. The British have no recourse to enforce the treaty. China will invade HK with tanks before they release their tightening grip on it, and the world will watch and do nothing of course.
It's not just democracy that is under threat in HK. There never was any to start with. It's plain freedom of speech that is under threat.
There are a lot of Chinese investments in the UK that could be seized, as well as information warfare, travel restrictions, trade restrictions and Cold War style proxy wars.
Also things like giving HK BBO holders a route to British citizenship, which has high levels of support across the political spectrum and could probably be expanded further.
It has an amphibious force to land a division, more with requisitioned civilian vessels, and it has thermonuclear weapons to threaten chokepoints — more than enough to get the peninsula.
UK is not a small military. With mobilised territorials, and first line conscripts, it will be as much as 10-12 divisions ready on short order.
"The following morning, Sunday 13 June, Clark arrived at Jackson's HQ in Skopje. It was pointed out to Clark that the Russians were isolated and could not be reinforced by air and that Russian support had been a vital part of getting a peace agreement; antagonising them would only be counterproductive. Clark refused to accept this and continued to order that the runway be blocked, claiming to be supported by the NATO Secretary-General.[2] Jackson refused to enforce Clark's orders, reportedly telling him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."[5] When again directly ordered to block the runway, Jackson suggested that British tanks and armoured cars would be more suitable, in the knowledge that this would almost certainly be vetoed by the British government. Clark agreed."
What you are suggesting here is that the British would start World War III of their own accord and that Nato would follow them if they did so.
Not a chance.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/how-james-blu...
This is a general problem, not limited to China. A good percentage of the world population is ready to believe just about anything, no matter how outrageous. Witness the whole COVID denial movement as one example.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-people-fall-for-con...
Accept it is a fact that people who you thought is unreasonable thought precisely the same about you.
Why would it be wrong or unexpected for people to go to war if their country was attacked?
The Chinese have seen their country invaded and sold piecemeal and have been striving to 'fight back' and to stand on their own two feet. That reaction started before the communist party was even created and the party is just an expression of it.
Ultimately HK will be fully reabsorbed back into the rest of China. That was always the plan and that was always going to happen. That said, HK is still separate so China is still broadly abiding by the declaration.
What the West needs to realize is that China is no longer a pushover that can be bullied at will. There is still a whiff of colonialism when Western media discuss HK.
Does any major power?
Or these guys: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/asia/white-house-fa...
Or this: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793895401/iraqi-parliament-vo...
Yet just because someone acts badly, doesn’t mean we the People should lower standards for the whole world.
Today, the Big Tech companies might not actively support this kind of censorship, but they aren’t aggressively working against it as I thought they would 15 years ago.
China has jurisdiction over the factories that make virtually everything that powers the US economy.
E.g. quietly accept the new oppression, but actively seek out and assist anyone in HK who wants to leave to gain access to high quality human capital and good will.
The resulting collapse of HK as it empties could be shown to everyone interacting with China that this could be their future.
The best way is through humor. A great example is the Winnie the Pooh meme. The meme wasn’t even that funny but the CCP’s reaction to it is absolutely hilarious. It made Winnie the Pooh an anti CCP symbol and it raised global awareness of the CCP’s authoritarianism.
Winnie the Pooh won’t overthrow the CCP by itself, but the process of revolution is slow and you have to play the long game.
When used that way, democracy sounds like an absolutely good thing which it is not; it's just a way to organize power...
And as history has proven many times, dictatorships never end well.
Democracy is one of the few things to be an absolute good thing. It have many flaws, but still I would't live in a dictatorship like the one established by URSS or Chinese Communist Party, where you could easily disappear if you say something troublesome for people in power. This is not just power organization, it's plain survival.
The West has no more say in it than China has a say in Catalonia or Scotland independence, Texas or California secession. Or their governing models
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
To the bigger question, since world border defining wars have become an historic unacceptable concept, how much power should be given to smaller subgroups into shaping their own, and the larger group, policy and borders
"The West" had long realized that the might makes right. Once country has achieve certain level of power the only thing that makes those to adhere to some treaty is their mutual willingness. If country does not see any it can and will ignore it. There is no abstract enforcer up above that can make parties of that level stick to the agreement.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/15/russia-withdraws-fr...