Comment by danschuller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danschuller | Hacker News Reader

> Manhattan meets Maui

I think that is a stretch beyond snapping point for Hong Kong. Most days in Hong Kong I could see the air pollution obscuring buildings in the distance. It's AQI is terrible https://aqicn.org/city/hongkong/ . There are nice mountain walks and nearby islands but it is extremely dense and urban. It's one of the places Ghost in the Shell used for reference!

Also the narrative here feels mostly from the mainland China point of view; having to go and deal with "problematic" Hong Kong. But problems between Hong Kong and the mainland began when Beijing used its influence to restrict Hong Kong's traditional democracy, so only "approved" candidates could be voted into office. And since then it's increasingly clamped down on the freedoms Hong Kong previously enjoyed, most recently doing things such as removing the Tiananmen Square memorials (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-59764029). At this point the writing is on the wall and bit by bit Hong Kong will brought in step with the rest of mainland China.

Unlike the author I found the Hong Kong bureaucracy fast and effective. Enforcers "sometimes able to look the other way" sounds like corruption to me and people with better guanxi being able to bend the rules. I'd rather have the laws fair, clear and applied to all equally (though that's always going to be a gradient).

Despite all that, it's undeniable China is on the rise and that's going to be the dominant story of this century. There's potential for that to be a great boon to the world and I hope that's the reality that comes to be.

> Despite all that, it's undeniable China is on the rise and that's going to be the dominant story of this century.

I think that remains to be seen, for two major reasons:

1. Countries whose primary political system devolves into "cult of personality" tend to fare very poorly in the long run when it comes to global leadership (note, I think this warning applies to other countries besides China).

2. China has an undeniable demographic crisis on the horizon. Of course, so do many countries, so my hypothesis is that countries that are able to accept and integrate immigrants will do the best. It's an open question which country that is, but it definitely doesn't look like China.

As for demography - this being 2022, we cannot rule out that further progress in biotech will result in kids born from artificial uteruses.

Even if this is possible it is highly unlikely anything to change in the next 25 years.

Expectations are a huge part of policy.

If by 2030, first kids are born in "factories", governments will plan for the future in a different way than if they know that there are no alternatives to natural births.

This is a fairly ridiculous thing to bring up right now.

The singularity is not near, no way there are artificial wombs being used at scale before 2200.

How can you say anything about the year 2200? That is 178 years in the future.

The same time in the past was 1846, when railway was barely a thing and Morse's telegraph just entered experimental use.

That's such an interesting thought experiment!

Who would raise the artificial kids? Who would pay for it in the first place?

Maybe government. Or scarier some company.

It would be awesome if we could fully support children and education. It would be gross if the only way to do that was capitalistic incentives.

Maybe that's a sick sci-fi startup idea to pitch (more like write a book about).

Raise kids from scratch, long term 50 year roi horizon returned from the increased earning potential from having raised the kids and educated them better! I doubt VC money would go for something unless you could speed up development to get your unicorn in 5 years lol

Joking aside it seems to me the answer is way simpler and doesn't require magic tech. We still have working bodies. We just have to support them with free childcare, great education, healthcare, and other social support for parents. But we can't seem to get enough votes for that. Immigration is an easy solution too but same thing...

OK, let us run around this experiment a bit.

Given how specialization works in other areas of life, I would expect "professional parents" to emerge, adopting 5-10 artificial kids over their lifetime. Possibly even more. That could actually be a reasonable job for people who are otherwise less qualified.

In more authoritarian countries, I would expect government-run boarding schools to emerge, preparing boys for future careers in military or the Party, girls ... well, that would depend on local culture, probably.

"Joking aside it seems to me the answer is way simpler and doesn't require magic tech. We still have working bodies."

If it were so simple, some countries would be able to solve it. I would, on the other hand, say, that it is as "simple" as solving the obesity crisis: a problem that looks straightforward from a distance, but turns into a maze of nightmarish "devil's details" up close.

We do not really have working bodies. Peak fertility is in late teenage years and early twenties, but societies which highly value education must shift childbearing to much later age. And after 30, a lot of people who want to have kids are no longer capable to do so without medical help, and this process is so tedious and stressful that you will wind up with smaller families than wished for.

Already about 5 per cent of kids are born out of IVF, which indicates that the cohort of people struggling with fertility is significant.

> Already about 5 per cent of kids are born out of IVF

No, they aren’t. Assisted reproductive technology (including IVF) is involved in about 2.1% of US [0] and 0.3% of global [1] births.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/art/state-specific-surveillance/index.ht...

[1] https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2021/03/02/218...

Oh that's a scary thought. Authoritarian countries growing children for war and might. Sprinkle in some genetic engineering!

Interesting thought about gender separation in authoritarian countries too. A lot of outdated concept of gender is rooted in the role of motherhood, which in this scenario wouldn't really be a thing. More a specialized career.

Yeah I guess my meta point was a lot of people wait to have kids because of their careers and the ginormous cost of raising kids. But that's a good point about education; even with all the resources in the world it's hard to raise kids and attain grad school or higher education. But graduating college by 21 still leaves a lot of time.

I disagree with you on Hong Kong (I m now a voting citizen, for what it's worth - not much).

The problems in Hong Kong didnt start 2 years ago, they started when the UK came in, and we inherit a difficulty I know well where I come from (Europe, full of Corsica, Basque Country, Northern Ireland, Brittany, Catalonia and so on).

Beijing reacts like we all reacted 2 centuries ago, and will slowly learn to deal with it, especially if they invade Taiwan and have to stop killing because unlike Xinjiang there's nothing to mine there and only cost cost cost to maintain an aggressive colony that builds processors as only output of value.

I think the CCP is no more evil than Napoleon, and ask a Frenchman today and he'll rave about what he did that transformed eventually the country, at the cost of 200k+ young people's lives to invade Russia, if you can believe it.

Things progress and China has to experience it for themselves, sadly. There's no shortcuts that I know of for such a big place.

> ... only cost cost cost to maintain an aggressive colony that builds processors as only output of value.

Just to correct you here, the only aggressive country between these two is the Chinese side, which is "buzzing" Taiwanese airspace daily to keep them mobilized and exhausted and has built a full scale replica of central Taipei [1] in which the PLA does drills simulating its capture.

That's not peaceful, those are the heights of aggression.

If the CCP wants peace, they need to start showing it with action.

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china...

I think the GP was perfectly in line with what you're saying. They seemed to me to suggest that China will eventually invade Taiwan, and learn the hard way how bad that works out in the long run, and how costly this type of aggression is - just like the European empires learned for themselves from their own experience some few hundreds of years ago.

Yes, ofc I meant the aggressivity would come after they invade Taiwan and transform it into a colony. My English is sometimes awkward but the British could have switched to French when we invaded them. Sadly we all learned the hard way France couldnt maintain... an "aggressive colony" in England either hehehe

As a half-related aside, I think the solution is what we eventually did with the EU, a mutually assured dependency that would force everyone to keep the peace we longed for millenia, and I think the British forgot a bit too fast the vain inter massacres our ancestors rushed into at each disagreement when they yelled for Brexit to give them back their "independence".

Wish China could see it but afraid they have to try every other stupid way first :( Praying for the British and us our fishing disagreements and submarines rifraf dont escalate. Could Taiwan compromise with a soft border economic Union called the Greater China Union that would make everyone cool down ? Meh.

Independence in the quotes makes me feel concerned about the future of Europe. :-(

The CCP is not like Napoleon, bringing order out of chaos.

Hong Kong and Taiwan are way ahead of China.

Common prosperity would mean literally just leaving them alone - or even promoting and supporting their independence (!).

Healthy, free, mostly democratic and sovereign Hong Kong and Taiwan would probably be in China's best interest in every way but their nationalist view of identity. It's their choice - but let's not pretend that Hong Kong and Taiwan are gaining Napolonic bureaucracy wherein there was none before.

way ahead? On what metrics?

"leaving them alone" is straight-up naivete, especially when you consider the US military presence. I cannot imagine anyone who has seen a world map seriously advancing the idea of HK independence, it's not even what HK itself wants. Their current methods seem shortsighted and heavy-handed but China's objective of national security is eminently rational. To say it's in their best interest to leave them alone is simply absurd and clearly only accounts for Western perspectives

There is zero US military - or any other military threat related to Taiwan or Hong Kong.

While there might be some possibility of US defence of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, there is no material threat to Chinese territorial integrity otherwise - from anybody.

There's no airbases, no missiles, no naval base, no ballistic missile launch points for US forces on Taiwan.

There is zero military justification for China to invade Hong Kong or Taiwan.

The capture of Taiwan and Hong Kong is 100% a Nationalist Imperialist objective of Han Supremacy and their version of identity, history etc.

Militarily, the invasion of Taiwan is going to be extremely expensive, hugely disruptive, and will risk giant swaths of Chinese trade, their international standing and participation in so many things. In fact - it already is. China faces a great deal of pushback for their moves on both HK and Taiwan.

...

"I cannot imagine anyone who has seen a world map seriously advancing the idea of HK independence,"

There is a 100% chance, that if a choice were given to Hong Kong citizens today to either continue on the path to integrating with China - or - to be independent - they would chose independence.

Why don't we find out and give them the choice?

Hong Kong would dump China the instant they had the opportunity.

If the CCP had not moved towards controlling the political apparatus, Hong Kong would have been independent in 1997 whereupon China used the threat of violence to stop anyone from considering otherwise, as they do now: violence as the only instrument of power.

...

"way ahead? On what metrics?"

Hong Kong and Taiwan are ahead of the mainland on all metrics.

2020 GDP/capita in USD:

HK $46K Taiwan $33K China $10K

In terms of quality of life, education, healthcare, political freedoms - Hong Kong and Taiwan provide immensely better for their citizens than China ever will.

The capture of Hong Kong by China is already resulting in it's decline, the same would happen to Taiwan.

Hong Kong serves as an important financial gateway for China into the 'real world' - the only reason that financial opportunity exists is because the historical independence of Hong Kong.

No more independence - no more special financial status - and so both China and Hong Kong lose.

Really? So a deep friendship between China and Mexico would be something that the US would have no problems with? The hypocrisy is amusing. The US-Taiwan relationship is perceived as a threat, which makes complete sense from the Chinese perspective.

China has no plans of invading Hong Kong, where in the world is this nonsense from.. As for the consequences of invading Taiwan, of course. Which is why I am very certain it will not happen.

> There is a 100% chance, that if a choice were given to Hong Kong citizens today to either continue on the path to integrating with China - or - to be independent - they would chose independence.

There is no other way to describe this other than complete bullshit. There are polls. Hong Kong citizens can be communicated with. I suggest you find them and do that. And while you're at it, explain how Hong Kong will survive economically and resource-wise in this fantasy scenario. There's no point in continuing any discussion when these basic facts cannot be agreed on. This is a laughably naive idea that is only feasible through Western delusion.

Re: economic comparisons, fair enough, I let myself be dunked on by framing the question in that way. It's skewed by the long tail of rural Chinese - _especially_ in the case of Hong Kong, which cannot be fairly compared to China as a whole, but I wasn't clear. I'd just suggest looking at growth metrics instead. Taiwan and HK economic stagnation is an old story.

"explain how Hong Kong will survive economically and resource-wise in this fantasy scenario. "

? How did Hong Kong survive before 1997 without being part of China ?

? How does Singapore, a small state exist without being part of a major nation ?

How does any nation 'survive' on it's own?

The question is upside down:

Hong Kong flourished while 'not being part of China'.

Now they are going downhill as 'part of China'.

The question is 'How will Hong Kong survive now that it's under the thumb of China'.

It probably won't - it will become a much less important city.

--- "There is no other way to describe this other than complete bullshit."

This is deluded. Probably from propaganda.

To believe that the obsequious and fearful 'kowtowing' by many in Hong Kong amounts to a real expression of their will, is not reality.

There is an easy solution: give Hong Kong the right to vote for itself, and elect it's own members of government as it chooses, not chosen by the CCP.

What are you afraid of?

That people would completely reject China given the chance?

That other parts of China would want to do the same?

It's probably true, and something to consider.

> way ahead? On what metrics?

GDP/c, PPP/c, HDI, World Happiness Report, Global Health Security Index, World Press Freedom Index, ...

Source that HK does not want democracy or independence? Polling I've seen and what I've generally read is democracy is wanted by a strong majority.

simply the first result from google, among many https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-security-poll-ex...

Except what was deemed acceptable two centuries ago is no longer acceptable now.

Napooleon also abolished the Spanish Inquisition. Invading Russia was always a stupid move.

> I think the CCP is no more evil than Napoleon

The comparison is laughable. Napoleon didn't starve millions of his own citizens.

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