Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial
bbc.com
bbc.com
America was a major force behind post-War decolonization. It was one of our terms of the European peace.
Based on military ranking:
#5 SK, #6 UK, #7 France, #8 Japan, #9 Turkey, #10 Italy, #11 Brazil, #12 Pakistan, #14 Germany, #15 Israel, #17 Spain, #18 Australia, and if it were allowed to, #20 Ukraine.
Based on economic power: I won't even bother, only China, India, Russia aren't US allies in the top 30 or so, by GDP.
The US was a world police but it wasn't alone. Yes, it was far bigger than all its allies taken separately, but those allies could more than double its power.
What the US is doing now is a tragedy that will unfold over many decades.
[1] Based on https://www.businessinsider.com/most-powerful-militaries-202... (if you have a better ranking, please link it).
This breaks down as soon as you stop looking at abstract rankings and dive into the specific logistic realities of force projection. France and to a lesser extent the UK are reasonably capable, but there's no math that adds up to anything approaching America's capabilities.
So,
$(US) + $(ALLIES) > $(US)
$(ALLIES) - $(US) < $(ALLIES)
Tariffs (check - Smoot Hawley), American isolationism (check - America First), I guess we won't be far from the economic crisis (not checked yet - Great Depression).
At best, the US will slowly turn into Qing China. Unrivalled in its sphere of influence, stagnant and complacent. The US has always had a very strong anti-scientific undercurrent and a lot of it was kept in check by importing foreign elites wholesale (fairly sure the US public school system up to university level is nothing to write home about, on average). If the US turns against foreigners, most of the good ones will stop coming.
But Europeans definitely do not want that and up to a point, that's a good thing, yet Europe still needs a big enough force as a deterrent, and it currently does not have that.
Yes, all the European-aligned states you mention should currently be opposed to USA [or at least the fascist regime ruling it], because of the threats to Denmark/Greenland. UK, Aus should be particularly aligned against USA because of the threats to Canada (as part of the UK royalty's commonwealth).
Trusting the post-democracy, post-constitutional USA we find ourselves with is major folly. We might as well climb in bed with Russia.
Even just a few days ago congress approved $800M in funding for Ukraine.
A lot of the UK seems to be struggling with their loss of Empire even 80 years later.
They ran out of money, 2 world wars bankrupted them.
With the second war destroying a lot of the country and calling to rebuild at home. This is a fundamental difference with the US. I don't blame the UK for focusing at home for a while to rebuild.
WW2 did not 'destroy' the UK. It wasn't subjected to any of the horrors of ground warfare, and the Blitz failed to inflict any meaningful damage on it.
What WW2 did destroy was the UK government's ability and will to finance the sort of repression that was necessary to maintain a globe-spanning empire. Churchill in his pigheaded hubris could scream from the rooftops about India forever remaining British, but Clement wasn't going to kill people over it.
(In contrast, France lost the ability, but not the will, which is why it fought a few wars in Vietnam and Algiers, instead of letting their colonial subjects have self-rule and independence sans bloodshed.)
c. 40,000[1]–43,000 civilians killed[2]
c. 46,000–139,000 injured[2] Two million houses damaged or destroyed (60 percent of these in London)
Sure.. Okay.. France was worse, France is also no longer a world influence it was once.
> Sure.. Okay.. France was worse,
Don't look at Metropolitan France, two thirds of it got to sit the war out as a puppet state.
Look further east. How many houses were 'damaged or destroyed' in Germany, Poland, the USSR..?
This isn't a suffering Olympics, but compared to war expenditures, the cost of rebuilding the damage inflicted to the Isles was a rounding error. Those expenditures (and their associated debts) were what crippled Britain's ability to maintain an empire, not the cost of rebuilding.
---
[1] That sort of thing was a normal day over there. A normal one - not even a bad one.
My point is the UK decided to rebuild at home after significant damages in their capital city, and I agree with them.
A lot of EU was destroyed and had to rebuild, the US wasn't and was able to boom.
Most of Europe has lower GDP per capita than the poorest states of the US, yet the lifestyle of European citizens in those countries is much better than the lifestyle of the poorest Americans. American growth is built on the backs of piss-poor healthcare, shoddy education and an overinflated perception of the tech sector which holds the rest of the world hostage (but not for long).
Cost inflation isn't unique to the United States.
Europe isn't a single country.
> yet the lifestyle of European citizens in those countries is much better than the lifestyle of the poorest Americans
Does this include the Romani people? Does this include the Ukranians being attacked by Russia?
Greece's housing cost burden is higher than 30 US states. Not all regions in the USA have faced serious property cost pressures. [1] [2]
"Day to day stuff" is a very broad category, and that includes items that are flat or decreasing in cost. In that sense I will point out that VAT is much higher in the EU than sales tax in most US states, with VAT rates of >20% being very common while the highest combined sales tax in the USA is just over 10%. Sales tax/VAT is a very regressive tax that harms the poor the most. For someone on the poor end of the spectrum in Europe, buying something like a computer or television is a greater burden than someone in the US.
I'm reminded of the natural gas price spikes in 2022 in Europe, and of how the EU's average electricity price is about 2-3x higher than it is in the US. The US has an extremely stable supply of basic needs like energy and food.
Education costs have been flat or lower than the rate of inflation in the US since roughly 2016, so for the last 10 years the idea that education is becoming more expensive in the USA has been squarely false. [3]
Healthcare, I'll give you that one, the US is not faring well. But we can look at some systems in Europe having their own difficulties like the UK and Spain and it's not like healthcare isn't a challenge elsewhere. I will also point out that the US does have public healthcare for the poorest (Medicaid) and for all people over 65 years old (Medicare), and Medicare is a standout in quality among public healthcare systems in some outcome categories.
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/europes-housing-cost-burden...
[2] https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/measures/cost...
[3] https://educationdata.org/college-tuition-inflation-rate
Really? Because IIRC, Britain has been steadily declining for over a century.
> The US recoevered from the 2008 crisis way better than everyone else, and nobody really understands why yet.
And Poland avoided the recession entirely.
The UK had a framework to liquidate financial institutions that was similar to the US, and this was deployed in early 2008 with Northern Rock and B&B. The end result was a multi-billion pound profit to the government.
Gordon Brown then decided that he needed to lead the global economy (and he has written, at the last count, two books which explain in significant detail that he was a thought leader and economic visionary through this period) by bailing out banks that were large employers in his constituency. With RBS, this involved investing at a very high valuation and then shutting down all the profitable parts of the bank, the loss was £20-30bn. With HBOS, he forced the only safe bank to acquire them, this resulted in the safe bank going bankrupt a year after the financial crisis ended in the US, and another multi-billion pound loss.
The US benefitted massively from having one of the most successful financial executives of the period, Hank Paulson, running the economy rather than (essentially) a random man from Edinburgh who have never had a job in the private sector (apart from law, obv) but held a seat with a huge number of constituents working at the banks he should have been shutting down (Brown himself had never worked in the private sector at all, parachuted into a safe seat after his doctorate). Geithner nearly suffered from that same fault, but did well with TARP (again though, iirc, this was Paulson's plan).
A country with a business friendly, low regulatory environment, coupled with a high work ethic and poor work/life balance, if nothing else, is not going to be a country that falls behind.
Americans complain a lot, and the system isn't that comfortable or respectful, but they aren't facing existential economic irrelevance.
Quite the opposite. The US quickly recovered from 2008 thanks to tech. Tech that the rest of the world wasn't able to keep up with thanks to it being a heavily regulated environment (patents, copyright, etc.).
I don't see how that's relevant to much post-2008 in the tech sector, which is primarily software driven and where China has very intentionally built their own walled garden.
Every techie with skill and an idea in the EU said "F-this, I'm going to the US to start my company" which lead to others saying "F-this, I'm going to the US for tech work". There is no one to point the finger at, because even today, this is exactly what Europeans want. They just haven't put the pieces together to link "heavy regulation and very worker/consumer friendly environment" with "Nobody wants to plant their seeds here". Instead it seems the EUs plan is to just continually fine foreign tech companies to make up for the barren infertile business lands they cultivated.
Germany is a borderline shrinking economy with workers averaging 400 hours less time at work per year than their American counterparts. And this is celebrated like it's some kind of triumph. Everyday I wish I could violently shake Europeans and beg them to open their eyes. Economic strain will fracture all of Europe.
The EU has chosen stagnation, which seems fine at first but looks worse and worse as all the people (or nations in this case) who didn't make that choice continue to grow. Unless you have a closed, close knit community like the Amish, stagnation does not end well.
If true (seems dubious to me), that's a ~20% difference. The difference in wages is a lot larger than that though, at least for tech workers. So that doesn't really explain why German tech can't compete against US tech.
Also, there's quite a bit of evidence that a better work/life balance improves productivity.
I think vacation time is a red herring. My guess is that the various forms of worker protection, making it impossible or very laborious+expensive to get rid of disfunctional team members, are a much larger factor.
But also, let's not forget that the major difference between the state of the economy in the US and the EU is Silicon Valley. Without its tech companies, the US doesn't amount to all that much anymore. This could also be explained as a historical fluke with lots of momentum.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html
1805 for the US (slightly more than the OECD average) vs. 1335 for Germany, which works the least.
Germany can't compete with US wages in tech because their companies don't generate as much revenue or profit, either per employee or in total.
> Also, there's quite a bit of evidence that a better work/life balance improves productivity.
There is, and the US is more productive per hour worked than the EU. Maybe that work/life balance in the US isn't as bad as reddit would have you believe.
> I think vacation time is a red herring. My guess is that the various forms of worker protection, making it impossible or very laborious+expensive to get rid of disfunctional team members, are a much larger factor.
An emphasis on regulation over productivity is the core issue IMO, including mandates for paid time off. By incentivizing leisure and bureaucracy designed to stifle change (both for the better and for the worse), you're effectively punishing highly productive individuals.
> But also, let's not forget that the major difference between the state of the economy in the US and the EU is Silicon Valley. Without its tech companies, the US doesn't amount to all that much anymore. This could also be explained as a historical fluke with lots of momentum.
No, productivity in the US is higher than the EU in nearly every sector: https://eei-institute.eu/publications/understanding-the-eu-u...
It's not a fluke. Like every other organization, the EU is getting what it encourages, which is stagnation and a lack of productivity. They will have to adapt at some point, the only question is how painful that process will be.
Right, because, thanks to heavy regulation driven by the USA, it is illegal to compete on a direct basis. The only hope Germany could have is to compete on being more innovative, but how do you out-innovate when you don't have much of a revenue basis to use to fund innovation and are trying to challenge businesses in the USA that have secured the moat that gives an effectively unlimited money printer? Not going to happen.
Like was pointed out earlier, you cannot successfully operate in a highly regulated environment (well, except where those regulations are to your favour, as is the case for Silicon Valley tech). While Europe tends to want more balance in IP laws, what practical choice does Germany have but to comply to the USA's demands? There is no benefit to Germany in allowing Dinsey nearly endless copyright terms, but the USA has a lot of leverage that it isn't afraid to use and that is something everyone else does have to concern themselves with.
Given that virtually no one else on Earth agrees with that claim on its surface, do you care to explain what you mean, or are you just going to repeat it and move on each time?
And to be clear, pointing at copyright extensions for IP like Mickey Mouse is not a compelling argument, because it in no way prevents a German company from producing a product like Instagram, Claude, AWS, or virtually anything else that was launched in the US in the last 20+ years, both because its irrelevant and because the companies responsible for those products also had to operate under the same regulatory regime you're talking about.
So? I know what I mean.
> because it in no way prevents a German company from producing a product like Instagram, Claude, AWS, or virtually anything else that was launched in the US in the last 20+ years
Aside from all the patents, trademarks, copyright, etc. that would make it impossible to reproduce. You could create something that kind of like sort of the same to a squinting onlooker, but the users are going to know that they are nothing alike.
In theory you can innovate to provide something that is actually better, not just the same, but can you actually when you are up against moat-ed money printers?
No one else who has responded to you does, so you'd think you'd care, but I guess that makes the chances of a meaningful dialogue very clear.
> Aside from all the patents, trademarks, copyright, etc. that would make it impossible to reproduce. You could create something that kind of like sort of the same to a squinting onlooker, but the users are going to know that they are nothing alike.
Again, what specifically are you talking about? Not only does all of that regulation exist in the EU (plus many others, which is what makes your claim about heavy regulation in the US so bizarre), but there are numerous alternatives to each product I mentioned in the US (I specifically picked ones that did not create a new product category for this reason).
What is it about the regulatory policies in the US that allows US competitors to exist, but not EU ones?
For what reason? Not my problem. It makes no difference to me.
> What is it about the regulatory policies in the US that allows US competitors to exist, but not EU ones?
Where do you think these competitors are, even if based in the USA? I'd much rather support my neighbour, but I have no idea how to find the Instagram not owned by Zuckerberg and friends and, quite frankly, despite your insistence, I am quite certain it doesn't exist. There is really no chance of it existing as if anyone tried to complete on a direct basis, the law would see that they be shut down immediately.
I can find photo sharing services with different usage models, but you would be hard-pressed to think of those as being direct competitors. Perhaps that is where things break down here, though? Not noticing the usage of "direct" in the earlier comment?
While a direct competitor can just straight up copy other parties, indirect competition requires innovation. That brings us back to the question of how do you innovate when you don't have revenues to support investing in innovation?
In fact tech isn't even the largest sector of the US economy, finance is.
For a more relatable example, it's kind of like how agriculture manufacturing (machinery, fertilizer, etc) is a larger sector of the economy than agriculture itself. All well and good when everything is functioning, but if agriculture collapsed, it becomes pretty obvious that said manufacturing would go down with it. It is no help that it is a larger sector.
In modern economies supporting sectors will almost always be larger than the "core" industries they support.
The UK choosing to shut down most of its native financial sector is a good example. With RBS it was particularly mad because the government ended up being a massive shareholder and then they chose to shut down all the profitable parts of the business, and double-down on the worst parts. Natwest rates franchise was probably worth £5bn, they basically shut the unit down in entirety (and a lot of those people went to large hedge funds and just went back to generating hundreds in millions in revenue) meaning that the taxpayer lost tens of billions AND the economy was knee-capped for decades.
This is taken as an example to show that even when the incentives were there, the government took a decision for nakedly political reasons. In the opposite direction, they folded HBOS into Lloyds, this was done to protect Scotland (both the PM and the Chancellor had a large number of constituents who would have lost their job if these banks were shut down...they were bailed out) and the result was Lloyds needing a bailout about one year after the banking crisis ended in the US. Again, this was sold to the public as the result of "risky casino bankers on huge bonuses"...in reality, it was just poorly paid commercial bankers lending very large amounts of money to people who couldn't ever it pay back AND politicians then making terrible choices with other people's money to boost their chances in some byelection no-one remembers.
This attitude permeates almost everything the UK does. Schools, politics first. Healthcare, politics first. Electricity, politics first.
I genuinely do not understand how anyone can't look at the scale of political intervention into the economy in the UK and not understand why this might lead to lower growth than the US. In Scotland, the government is 60% of the economy, this higher than Communist states with no legal private sector, it is an incredible number. If you look at income distribution, after-tax income under £100k is as flat or flatter than Communist states too, again this is incredible.
What is surprising is that the UK's economy is growing so quickly. The supply-side in most sectors is almost completely gone, in some economically-significant sectors you have regulators effectively managing companies, very few workers have economically useful skills because of the strong incentives in place to acquire non-economic skills...and the economy is still growing faster than most of Europe. To be fair, almost all of that immigration of low-skilled labour into the UK which is going to be absolute time-bomb financially and the rapid growth in public-sector pay has also helped consumption (even more so, the UK is running a deficit of 5% of GDP with revenues growing 4%/year in an economy that is shrinking in per capita terms...obviously, this is not sustainable)...but growth is still way higher than reason would dictate.
Comparing this to the US is not serious in any way. You have a country that prioritises growth beyond reason and are comparing that with a country which is hostile to change beyond reason. There is no possible comparison. The decisions every government since 1997 has made have been intended to reduce growth, people happily voted for this, and are now upset that the economy is shit...why?
Maybe you can afford Universal Health Care after all...
I'm convinced that the federal government doing more and more things is the root cause if the increasing toxicity of American politics. The further removed a populace is from their representatives the less control they have and the worse they feel. Everything should always be done at the most local level that it is possible to do it. Some things have to be done at a relatively high level, but Americans have increasingly been jumping straight to "this is a job for the federal government" when very often state, or even city governments in some cases, would be perfectly capable.
However, the feds already siphon about as much tax as the populace can bear just on accomplishing what it is allowed to do, so there is basically nothing left for the states to implement these kind of measures.
You couldn't just have the states take over these responsibilities and have nothing else change. My suggestion is in fact a pretty radical change in how the US federal government works. I'm not under any illusion that this is likely to happen. The ratchet of power unfortunately only goes in one direction.
What do you mean that the countries are poorer? Are you just thinking about the gross salary people get per month, or is there something else in this calculation?
The fact that people get health care, parental leave, can freely move between countries, able to afford having a child, have emergency services that arrive relatively quick and all those things mean that a country is not poor, and the countries that don't have those, are "poorer", at least in my mind. When I think "poor country" I don't think about the GDP, but how well the citizens and residents are protected by ills.
I'd say its uncomparable directly, or very, very hard. You can say visit both places and walk around and see the general state of the country and its people, compare capitals. This is where money is spent (or not).
Not going into happiness, stress levels, depression/anxiety and meds consumption, obesity levels or longevity, that would be too easy I agree. Although this is also money related, more than anything else.
This pales in comparison to some of the elephant in the room ways most common ways to go broke, which is to say get something like a child support judgement against you (20% pretax, like 26+% post-tax in middle income brackets) or have an alimony payment (these conveniently don't generally show up in bankruptcy statistics because they are not dischargeable). Medical debt can at least be discharged in bankruptcy.
Example: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-i...
And why, in free market land, is a buyer of services and medication, not allowed to negotiate prices?
Because W Bush decided to forbid that while simultaneously forcing the fed'gov to pay for it
"we need to pay face value because big companies need the money for their R&D" was the discussion years ago IIRC. it's BS, but that was the narrative.
Adding the rest of the population to the existing public insurance system would not cost much financially, but it would be a political catastrophe for whatever party implemented it if it didn't go well.
In short, I don't think anyone seriously argues the US can't afford universal health care, but the real and perceived risk of change is seen as too great politically.
It's not surprising per se but it does put things in perspective that Texas has a bigger footprint than every country in Europe.
It's actually pretty fun and interesting the different bubbles we all live in, for better or worse.
Those people are dead. They did great things. But it's irrelevant to their standing and influence today.
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/indians-predated-new...
https://sd2.org/bibha-chowdhuri-a-woman-of-firsts-with-no-re...
> After the war ended, Cecil Powell, a British physicist, continued the research in England using similar methods with more sensitive plates, detecting a new particle and winning him the Nobel Prize in 1950. Chowdhury and Bose’s work was acknowledged in his book, but their recognition quickly faded.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/01/hidden...
You can place a state/country on top of another country and see the true size. Helps to make up for the improper sizing caused by map projections.
I use it to help my lovely dutch friends realize why I can't just bike to work. :)
The purpose of the thing is to try to put things into perspective, like "Portugal is about the size of Indiana", or "California's economy is about the size of Germany". It compares three numbers, two of which are not money!
I'm not trying to claim every American only care about money, only that when Americans compare countries, they tend to compare monetary values like GDP, gross salaries or other similar values, and your weekend hack (cool at it is) fitted that pattern I've seen before.
Again, obviously not all Americans are the same as each other, then elections wouldn't be needed for starters, and I'm sorry if my comment came off as dismissive or harsh, it really wasn't my intention, I just aimed to share a reoccurring pattern I come across.
BTW the population figure for Czechia is NaN, for some reason,
(I guess Wikipedia and the UN call it "the Czech Republic" so my update also renamed it...)
But there are many similar examples in agriculture, manufacturing, etc.
Of course no freedoms are unlimited, so I'm not sure why are you reading this literally?
> The question is, were they useful?
Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about the lack of freedom under British rule, and you ask if it was useful for HKers? While there are a lot of people in HK who are not happy about what China is doing now, there is almost no one who would take British rule over that. I actually talked with people about it in person when I was in HK.
On the books maybe. But for instance, America defines treason so narrowly that nobody has been convicted of it since WW2. Americans are free to sing praise of China, Russia, North Korea, whoever they like no matter how unjustified. Unless Congress has declared a war, which hasn't happened since WW2, you can talk as much smack about America or praise opposing regimes as much as you like.
They gave the Soviets the atomic bomb designs, permanently changing the global power balance!
The west could conceivably have liberated the Soviet block after WW2 and the post war world would have been a much better place, including a non communist China. That's my guess at least. Impossible to know, of course.
In reality, the Rosenberg documents wasn't very decisive. Stalin already had the Manhattan Project blueprints from Klaus Fuchs.
I don't think that the West had any chance to liberate the Soviet bloc (I'm assuming what you meant is the Warsaw Pact countries). The Red Army was simply too big, too powerful, and too experienced at the end of WW2. Even using the few atomic bombs available between 1945-1949 (when the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon), the USSR was just too big a country, with too many people.
And if you look at the willingness to take casualties that the Red Army demonstrated while fighting the Nazis, trying to take on the USSR would have been folly.
The West was spent after WW2 (as were the Soviets), with no appetite for further conflict. Even the US was tired of war, and only the drumbeat against the Red Menace did much to motivate the populace.
But I agree that turning on an ally, sacrificing millions more of your soldiers etc at that point would have been a very hard sell. I'm sure I would have been opposed to it at the time.
> The west could conceivably have liberated the Soviet block after WW2
This is dubious, for several reasons: Public sentiment, starting another major war immediately after they thought they'd catch a break from war for a while. The premise of America building enough nukes to actually get the Soviets on their knees instead of provoking them to steamroll the rest of Europe instead. The ability of American forces, in the late 40s and early 50s, to get nuclear armed bombers over the appropriate targets in Russia.
Japan was already defeated, and two bombs proved enough to make them admit it. That context doesn't hold true for the Soviets; they may well have tanked several bombs to major cities then proceeded to fight a conventional war instead of surrender.
Almost as fascinating is how often in the late 40's and early 50's we threatened the USSR with nuclear weapons. Don't leave Iran quickly enough? We'll blast you. Amazing and scary how the world has survived so far...
Perhaps, but what you cannot do in over thirty states is criticise Israel and then do business with a government organisation.
Also, if Lai genuinely believed (as I think he must have done) that the US was going to help in any way then he was delusional. In almost every case, "freedom" fighters end up relying on the resources of hostile foreign governments to continue their activities. There is no way that the US was going to offer anything other than a publicity stunt.
[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3017868...
As in the 20th century, it means to cultivate moral, and thereby political, opposition to imprisoning activists.
It’s a soft power the US has gradually lost.
it was always BS
now everybody can see
thats the only difference
"The colonial government used the Control of Publications Consolidation Ordinance (1951) to regulate publications and suppress freedom of the press. One notable case resulted in the suppression of the newspaper Ta Kung Pao for six months (later reduced to 12 days) for its criticism of the colonial government's deportation of the Federation of Trade Unions-backed fire relief organisation officials and use of live fire against protestors. Deportation was also used as a method to control politics in education. Lo Tong, a principal at a pro-Beijing, patriotic middle school, had been deported in 1950 for raising the People's Republic of China (PRC) flag and singing the national anthem at his school." [1]
Now of course we'd all prefer Western-style freedoms but the narrative on HK is highly skewed and hypocritical, with HK used as a pawn in the broader anti-China narrative.
Even Singapore isn't exactly rosy but it is a friend of the West so it's fine.
The current administration is overtly doing what was previously done covertly. Dictators are acceptable as long as it is politically convenient. One of the most recent cases is Pakistan, where the army has taken over, and EU and Commonwealth election monitors did not issue even election monitor report even after two years. Instead, they have facilitated the murder and killing of Pakistani civilians. But maybe Pakistanis are brown-skinned, so for them, democracy is not allowed.
Pakistan should be under sanctions, but it is not, as it is providing ammunition for Ukraine. That is the biggest problem of the West: their hypocrisy. They are calling for democracy in Hong Kong, as that serves their own agendas, but will say nothing about an apartheid state like Israel."
"Imran Khan, the former prime minister, has been jailed without trial for the last two-plus years and has been kept in solitary confinement for months out of those. How many newspapers mention it in the West or make it a news topic? But this Hong Kong (HK) Jimmy Lai conviction will be the headlines in most of the Western media a clear example of propaganda to rile up the population against China and socialism.
This is why I laugh when people here on Hacker News mention China's control of media and its propaganda, when the Western media is no better than them. At least many Chinese citizens know they are being propagandized against and can filter it out."
Democracy/liberalism/civil liberties etc. isn't 100% or not at all.
Being free to talk about the horrible things happening doesn't appear to stop them from happening so what exactly is your point here?
better is a continuum across many dimensions. Therefore when you say "no better than" you're saying "worse than".
I'm not saying Western media is good, but it's really hard to argue that it's worse than the Chinese media, given the headline story above and our freedom to discuss it here and elsewhere.
Both can be bad, but one is more bad than the other.
As originally used, the city on a hill comment was about aspirations, not achievements. IOW, the US was aspiring to be the city on the hill, not that it was.
And then JumpCrissCross's comment says that the US has stopped even aspiring to be the city on the hill.
It's a comment saying the US has fallen. How is that absurdly self-congratulatory?
It's the entrenchment of a particular kind of parasitic elite.
The logic that made them into "elites" has turned in on itself and is now self-cannibalizing.
The saving grace is only the capacity for the American people to see through this, but with the derangement of information pathways we're increasingly at the behest of these people and their narratives that only serve their aggrandizement.
All the talk about "saving the west" or "individualism" or the some other talk of spirit that these preachers sermon about, is only to serve themselves and no one else.
"Calling out evil" is another one of those victims to their self-serving motivations. Along with "climate change", "environmentalism", "democracy", "freedom", or a whole host of otherwise genuinely noble causes.
But I actually don't think it's that hard to understand that (1) the US has significantly compromised moral authority, but also (2) China bad and (3) there's important differences of scale of moral offense depending on what you are talking about. You can land a perfectly coherent point about, say, China's hostile takeover of Hong Kong being bad, it's military ramp up to seize Taiwan by 2027 being bad. But too often, I think bad faith actors will intentionally exploit the complexity to try and muddy the waters, and the only reason it seems like it's hard to articulate the distinction online is because of motivated performances.
Of course there Poe's law element too, which is that you should never underestimate the ability of people online becoming confused about politically charged topics, but in this case I think it's a bit of column a, a bit of column b synergistically amplifying one another.
I guess it is, since it goes against American interests. I don't really know why everyone is crying for him, he knew exactly who he was playing for.
The logic of whataboutism is fascinating, because as long as someone is deemed a bad enough actor, their statements have the effect of dynamically rewriting reality in real time to be the opposite of whatever Bad Actor says. Which, to my mind, gives them too much power. It's simpler to just believe in objective reality, believe that language works roughly according to a correspondence theory of truth and that statements are or are not legitimate on account of their corresponding to reality, which isn't something you can determine based on character alone.
But I admit on some level this might be a misunderstanding of whataboutism, because it's holding it to a standard of intellectual consistency that it's not aspiring to.
A:"You should stop doing X because X is wrong and evil and you are wrong and evil if you continue doing X!"
B:"But you beat your wife."
Where X != "beating one's wife".
Here the B's argument is: "But you do X yourself!". This is not an attack on moral character but a direct refutation of A's argument. If A really thought X is wrong and evil then A would not be doing X. And if A really considers itself wrong and evil then it should be figuring a way to stop doing X first, or, at least, concurrently with demanding that from B. Either way, A is not very persuasive.
But he will somehow find a way to make it about him.
Also as a reminder, back in 1993 Richard Gere was banned from the Oscars for 20 years for advocating for Tibet (https://www.foxnews.com/media/richard-gere-speaks-out-nearly...). American institutions have been declining/corrupted for a lot longer than the current administration.
First, look how forgotten Puerto Rico is.
An lest one suggest that it was the result of a peaceful referendum, know that the US congres apologised for the entire project, including the migration of mainland Americans who helped swing the referendum.
"City-upon-a-hill" is marketing and has never been grounded in fact. It’s hubris and arrogance. The US is viewed as that place if you get on the wrong side of, it will bomb you or replace your government through coercion. It outspends every country on "defense" to ensure this.
History is littered with plenty of examples where the US favored a more authoritarian or "evil" government over less, sometimes even installing them. Arab Spring is a recent example where you saw governments replaced with the US' help, while leaving some notable monarchies alone.
In reality, the US employs its foreign policy for its own interests. It’s always been like that.
That said, the US doesn't need to be perfect to still be an example of providing freedom for its own citizens.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
> On 19 March 2011, a NATO-led coalition began a military intervention into the ongoing Libyan Civil War to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 (UNSCR 1973).
Compared to the South America stuff, this is saintly and angelic behavior helping out the world in every way. It's not the US alone, it's a coalition that expands beyond NATO, there's a UN resolution...
In fact bringing this up as a "bad behavior" example proves just how much of a shining city on a hill the US has been around the world. It's been bad, but it's also done lots of good stuff.
I'm not an expert in US foreign policy so I'll refrain from entering the debate itself, I just think you're not arguing against what the OP is actually saying.
> > On 19 March 2011, a NATO-led coalition
Contradicting yourself ?
Quite the opposite. Actually states don't have interests - interest groups do - and those of them who are friends with the state get to install theirs as the state's.
People have interests. To promote those interests, they organise. Sometimes as interest groups within states. Sometimes as business corporations. Sometimes as states.
Is that a country to be admired by all others or resented.
Sometimes I'm not even sure it's for it's own interests.
Except for Germany 1945, Eastern Europe 1989, South Korea, etc. pp.
America has had a lot of less-than-ethical military adventurism, but it's also incorrect to say every instance of it was self-serving.
What happend in SK at the times was an authoritarian, maybe even police state. Not especially 'democratic'.
1989? Not that hard when 'mother russia' is collapsing, and occupied otherwise. For some decades, at least.
From the article: "(...) his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act" – so... yeah, exactly. Germany 1945.
Huh? Soviet Union did the heavy lifting there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site and
and culminating in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
The "heave lifting" you refer to was mostly paid for and organized by the Lend-Lease Act. There would have been no eastern front without it.
Now that changed, at least in my social circle, and US being moralistic is seen as hypocrisy.
Hold up... So you're saying that they're actually not trying to preserve freedom in the UK and have arrested hundreds of people over twitter memes?!
In all seriousness, you're approximately as free in HK as you are in the UK. In HK, don't promote democracy or insult the government in Beijing. In the UK, don't suggest that diversity isn't Our Greatest Strength.
Every society these days has an untouchable third rail. None are without beams in their own eyes.
Many freedom-focused people without direct experience of disability, bullying or discrimination have no way to relate to that concept, and the echo chamber amplifies the intellectually dishonest takes until they take hold. Which is exactly what the angry, seething, downtrodden richest people in the world seem to want right now. I wonder why. What a sorry, hopeless state we've allowed to happen. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, sure, but the ones who've worked hardest to develop theirs should be weighted the most. Now a Russian bot has the same value on a platform as a nuclear scientist or, dare I say it, a real journalist. Because it's entertaining and tickles some dangling dopamine receptors. I'm sure people will wind their necks in when the ultimate result has finally played out and we'll cycle back to cooler heads prevailing, but I fear we'll have to go there first before we get back.
Yes I took the bait, but no regrets, I'll die on this hill. Hate bullies and liars with a passion.
Yeah, you're talking about speech controls. But, surely, yours are noble and theirs are ignoble.
The definition of "hate speech" over there is very broad, and "punching down" is a questionable concept to begin with.
Being a city on the hill is a cudgel, not a halo. It’s always been used in a self-serving way, and always against enemies.
Who is someone who points out the flaws of their enemies but never the flaws of themselves or their friends, even though they are all equally likely to commit the same crimes?[1] That is a scoundrel. Not someone that anyone needs to wait to Call Out anyone on anything.
That it is (in this context) a self-admitted “aspiration” is the laughable part. No one else gets credit for “aspiring” (just words) to be a city on a hill. Except if it’s us.
[1] Being generous here.
Bread and circuses. Everyone is comfortable and entertained to the point of drooling. They won't be leaving their cozy warm houses with TV and video games to do anything. Brain isn't built that way. If it were, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic. It'll always be short-term rewards over long-term most of the time for most people.
On the other hand, none of this is sustainable in the long-run, so it'll all come crashing down and things will work out. We'll probably be dead long before then though. Gotta go through some rough shit first.
What if it was a fake all along and was just a facade and social media exposed it?
South Korea was a dictatorship just 35 something years ago. And its been run by criminals and oligarchs even as a democracy. SK is not an example you can use to say anything about democracy globally.
mass de-regulation, tax avoidance, effective end of anti-trust killed it
social media was just the tool-of-the-day to break democracy
- Network (1976)
Anywhere with any real government though, it's dead. My theory is the period of classical liberalism in the world was largely a result of the brief period where firearms were the main form of warfare, which represented a short period in history where violence was most decentralized and the government had the least leverage. Before that it was years to train archers or swordsman, after that fighter jets/ missiles / technology tilted back in power of government. In the golden era of the age of the firearm one person was basically one vote of violence (giving the populace the greater leverage); whereas before/after that time each vote was heavily weighted by a government actor.
I grew up in a place you could call “rural South America” (specifically in a rural border town between Brazil and Uruguay) and at the time didn’t feel free there, but these days there’s a lot I think I could appreciate about the place if I were to go back (I’ve been living in the US for the past 13 years).
It's a very common usage in America, focusing on "Freedom from X" rather than "Freedom to do Y", the latter of which often needs some sort of societal protection, most often provided by said government.
I think the true decline begun earlier though, around the Thatcher-Reagan era, with the erosion of all kinds of state ownership and control of our economy and broad attacks on organised labour.
Concentration of wealth and power was (and is) the highest in communist dictatorships - literally a handful (i.e. less than 5) people control pretty much everything in Cuba. North Korea is ruled with an iron fist by 1 guy - that is some concentration of power, right? In Communist Romania / East Germany power was concentrated in 2 people (a couple). In USSR power was concentrated in the 7 members of PolitBuro. In China power used to be concentrated in the hands of Mao Zhedong, now it seems it is concentrated in the hands of Xi Ping (but I could be wrong about Xi Ping. Maybe he shares some power with other people). I could go on forever, baby!!!
Capitalism has its problems but capitalism is quite fine all kinds of political systems - see German capitalism before, during, and following Hitler's rule.
Concentrations of power seem bad, regardless of the mechanisms that do the concentrating.
From the end of WWII until the fall of communism, the public in the West (as opposed to the elites) enjoyed much better treatment, and prospered more than ever before or since. This would include both fiscal gains, and the public's opinion being truly taken into consideration. This is mainly because the elites were afraid of people turning socialist / communist, so they gave them a reason to actually be invested in the system. Once that threat of communism evaporated, the elites could proceed to gut the majority as in the previous centuries with no fear whatsoever.
My comments:
I'm not sure I agree with that, though, too simplistic. On the other hand, I also think that people have a rose-tinted view of what "democracy" always was - with enough money / media control and a bit of time, you can convince the majority of anything, anywhere. Letting people prosper does make it easier. Maybe it did play a bit of a role. A counter argument is that (independent) media coverage made the Vietnam war unpopular, and then the US pulled out because of that, a miracle of democracy which never really came close to happening again ever after.
But I think the USSR itself murdered any real chances of communism's further spread in 1968, when they invaded Czechoslovakia. (The Hungarian thing in 1956 isn't nearly as important because of country's undeniable previous Axis affiliation; few had sympathy for that back then). The US and west in general couldn't get rid of their Woody Guthries, and their Klaus Fuchses, until USSR did it for them through sheer idiocy. But after that, was communism really a threat?
But I do think that the 1950s policies were affected by the war (+ Korean war) even more than communism itself. All these traumatized vets, desensitized to violence, were now back home, and the elites were truly afraid. But that doesn't seem like it brought democracy in today's sense of the word? There's a reason why feminism regressed in the 50s - letting men be little despots in their own (cheaply bought) homes was the least the government could do. But that seems to have lasted only until the mid 60s, then the Vietnam thing happened, ... Let's not go further.
So if all the world is against the establishment, it only makes sense that shit holes become better places and better place become shit holes.
That's it I suspect that these moments can be quite fragile. Turkey was crashed, Georgia was crashed, Belarus was crashed, Russia was crashed, Ukraine is fighting generational war, Serbia is teetering, Bulgaria is on to something but its only a spark ATM. However, the crashed ones also did not stabilize, they just become brutal and visibly oppressed and IMHO anything still can happen.
The UK throwing a very big rock at a thin glass house.
I don’t agree with any such laws in any country, but I think it’s important to point out the hypocrisy here
And all that. We're all evil at one point or another, from someone's perspective.
Especially when it comes to China and Russia, people seem to think they're about as bad as the West when nothing could be further from the truth.
Maybe thats due to more people from the hard right haunting this place, or the general shift of the tech crowd to the right. I'm not sure what it is exactly.
That quote gets bent very far out of context. You could use it to justify any inaction under that interpretation, on the theory that you are not qualified to take it simply due to being imperfect.
Not sure where you get this from?
For me it means even "evil" people/countries can raise valid points, nothing more, nothing less.
Christ, we need more woodworking classes for kids on the tech path.
Christ, we really need reading comprehension classes and ideally poetry classes or something similar, since people are unable to read more than the actual characters today it seems... Seems extra problematic in software/programming circles, maybe we need to add arts classes to science programs too?
Well, I didn't, I referenced exactly what I wanted to reference. It's OK to go back into the cave now.
Can we not simply condemn that?
It's not whataboutism to point up the current messed up situation is not unrelated to the behavior of the UK, and their fingerprints are all over it. Of course things aren't static and new actors have changed the conversation, but this doesn't absolve them and they shouldn't be pointing fingers.
If you’re saying historically as an imperial power we’ve done terrible stuff we can all agree with that!
Since it fell from power, the UK does everything the US wants.
However, historically it set up a lot of bad things that happened in the Middle East, China, Africa, etc. The UK cannot untangle itself from it, "it's all in the past", because history is terribly influenced by things in the past, by definition.
Authorities and government? Yes. Even if the current ones weren't born when history was made, it's their duty to understand the history of the country they are governing, and of how past decisions shaped the world as it currently is.
> I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.
The history of Hong Kong itself is deeply influenced by Great Britain's actions (as well as other world powers, of course), and it doesn't start with mainland China's takeover.
Another example of UK's actions deeply influencing the current world, unrelated to China, is Iran (and well, the Middle East in general). So the UK cannot simply point fingers at others and forget about how they helped shape the situation.
One can also ask how HK ended up with English language and common law in the first place… though that wasn’t so recent.
Now you’re just condemning what you’ve already done. Why should anyone respect it? At some point you loose respect and eventually you just look confused.
Unfortunately, just like whataboutism can be a disingenuous rhetorical device, so is anti-whataboutism. Sometimes the comparison is relevant, sometimes it's not. In this case, I think it is.
Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.
If you find this line of argumentation compelling there’s no discussing anything with you.
There is nothing logically wrong with hypocrisy. I tell my toddlers not to do stuff I do all the time.
The problem with hypocrisy comes when one party is assumed to have more rights than the other. In this case, why would Britain (or the US's) government be allowed to be more corrupt than China's?
I assume Britain is brought up due to the British government's historic role in Hong Kong and China.
Sinking half a dozen ships in international waters is a crime.
Sanity would ask for intercepting those boats in your waters, and that's it, controlling what's in them, who are these people and send them in front of a court if they breached your law, on your soil (or waters).
Yet we are at the point nobody raises the voice where sinking civilian ships on the basis it's drug smugglers (without providing a proof, let alone the fact that even if it was true it's still insane) has any leftover of decency or justice.
Or calling for the annexation of Greenland and Panama by any means.
Or bombing Iran on the basis that it's developing nuclear weapons on behalf of the Israeli government (which is an act of war if Iran could wage it, the US does not get to decide who can have a nuclear weapon and who does not).
The list of breaches in decency or law is basically infinite.
Instead of letting more countries develop these weapons, we should work on denuclearizing all countries, starting with the US and Russia and their insane arsenals! And maybe build a unified international legal framework for civilian nuclear developments and applications from energy to medical outside of the "security council's" ferule!
A nuclear war cannot be won, thus never fought!
Not unilaterally by Israel calling the world's superpower for help.
Your logic is as sound as "since my neighbor makes something illegal at home, I'm gonna shoot him and then call my buddy sheriff for help". It is obviously illegal.
I was replying to "the US does not get to decide who can have a nuclear weapon and who does not". As much as I agree with that... my previous comment.
We're not talking about a nuclear program.
Citation needed.
If the point in bringing up the hypocrisy is to end or distract the discussion, it is whataboutism. However, if the point is to compare two instances of a thing to make a point it’s fair game imo.
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
Neither are quite the same thing as railroading a government critic for "sedition"
What's the solution? The alternative, where we can't criticize our governments on account of their hypocrisies and imperfections, robs citizens of their check against an institution with a monopoly on violence.
> Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.
There's certainly a difference between holding countries responsible for events that have long since ceased and holding a government responsible for double standards practiced presently. The UK lacks credibility on Hong Kong when its own citizens are being jailed on the basis of overbroad hate speech regulations and when its government agencies attempt to claim extraterritorial jurisdiction over the operation of foreign social media companies. Westminister can't be so empty-headed as to believe that its actions will go unnoticed by other governments.
-@dril, 2014
With relation to the article + Grand parent, the government first of all does not write on behalf of the BBC and in fact both Labour and Conservatives especially have had massive problems with its editorial decisions.
The ideal the you cannot criticise the government in the UK and that our laws here are similar to the ones in HK is honestly not a fair parallel at all.
I think the government are extremely naive and the security services try to push them into extremely stupid decisions on encryption.
I don't think that's a fair characterisation. Recently we've convicted:
- an ex-footballer (i.e. someone with the means to mount a proper defence) for calling someone a 'diversity hire'; and
- someone burning a religious text in the street, as a protest.
And those are just successful convictions, not initiated prosecutions, or the wider chilling effects of it all.
Even if what you said were true, those two things are largely legal in the US, so I wouldn't really say it's their tabloids over-hyping it as much as they legitimately find the actual standards here questionable.
I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was deliberately trying to antagonise and abuse people upset which yes is illegal here. He could have easily made any points he wanted without abusing people. Note that he was given a suspended sentence in the hope that he would stop abusing people and has served no jail time as yet. Seems like a sensible decision.
The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.
Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about abuse online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.
Does this matter? The question is whether the UK has a moral authority to tell China off over free speech. Nobody has said that different countries don't have varying types of restrictions on speech.
Even if I agreed with your characterisation of the US, you're talking about visitors, not residents or citizens. The UK also regularly denies visas for speech.
You're defending against whataboutism from China to the UK by invoking whataboutism from the UK to the US here.
> I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was harassing people online which yes is illegal here.
No, harassment is a specific and different offence. He was convicted specifically for sending 'grossly offensive' messages, not harassing people. The definition of that crime is based on the content of the messages, not the pattern of their transmission.
> The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.
I don't really get how this refutes anything I've said. It's illegal to protest in this manner in the UK.
What is your argument here, that OK it's illegal but the punishment is not very severe so no problem? You understand that the specifics of _what_ is illegal is the criticism.
> Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about harassment online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.
Neither of these is about harassment. Or they would have been convicted of harassment.
Of course they do? Think we've descended into absurdity here if that's the claim.
Suffice to say, the Chinese response to Jimmy Lai would be along the lines of "well of course he has free speech, if only he did it in a completely different way that was acceptable to my sensibilities".
Crticisim of religion, through symbolic speech, is pretty classically part and parcel of the tenets of free speech. It's hardly some fringe belief.
Even if you think calling someone a 'diversity hire' is often untrue, or often racist, or some such thing, there are surely some cases where it is true or a legitimate criticism of hiring policy. Should we not be able to claim as much? On peril of imprisonment?
I don't think your views on this are particularly uncommon. It's just that British people don't have a history of wrestling with free speech, or its importance. Tone policing is a thought-terminating cliche in the UK.
"But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection.
"As the jury concluded, your offences exemplify behaviour that is beyond this limit – amounting to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful."
Seems like you're just lying with the 'diversity hire' content of Barton's posts aren't you?
None of this meets the bar for me, and ironically would not be illegal in China or the US, to address the original point.
Its a common fallacy to accuse alive people of hypocrisy done by other people who came before them.
He's facing life in prison right now, so this conviction puts everything on the line.
Glad to see this hitting the front page. I posted an article earlier with not much movement which was really worrying for the HK free thought movement; happy that this turned out to not be the case.
CBS just got taken over by the same cabal.
Amidst ICE grabbing people out of Home Depot parking lots in the US, China is just doing the same thing over there.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-15/home-dep...
The emphasis on "citizen" was not clear in my original comment. The OP I was replying to did not make this distinction clear with "expelling students".
Do you think, were you to talk to Alexei now, you could convince him that his life fighting dictatorship wasn’t worth it?
For China it would have made more sense long term to first "incorporate" Taiwan into their country and only after that start turning the screws on both Taiwan and Hong Kong.
And I do not think Taiwan will become Gaza if China eventually attacks - unlike Israel, China has quite a lot of enemies in the West.
PRC doesn't have any capable enemies in the west, including US, that can prevent PRC from turning TW into a Gaza. Which PRC can do with purely mainland based fires at this point. The force balance is too lopsided off PRC shores now. PRC's fleet of PL191 can basically level all of Taiwan urban areas in a few months, weeks considering other munition stockpiles. They can build a few hundred more chasis and frankyl TW->Gaza would take a couple weeks. Otherwise every inch of TW is within a few minute strikes from mainland, so resupply is out of question. There's nothing preventing TW from becoming Gaza except Xi is kind of nice bro.
To your narrow point of view focused on military destruction - there are other ways the West will counter a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
If China does attack Taiwan, China will be the second biggest loser.
There really aren't anything substantial, nothing the west can sustain anymore let alone in 5/10 years or 2049. It may very well be PRC is poised to be the least biggest loser, aka relative winner. IMO we're in stage where the longer PRC waits and accumulates the harder they win and frankly there's shit all west is able to do about it (on procurement side over next 10-20 years) with gap extending in PRC favor.
Plus a lot of morals go out of the window when there is a real threat and a lot on the line. Even between the new tensions with China and Japan, the US appears to be quiet: https://www.ft.com/content/bf8b5def-db4d-43ac-91cf-bea5fcfa3...
This is definitely not the sort of "protection" I would rely on.
PRC sees the writing on the wall and, being the pragmatic bunch that they are, will probably not invade Taiwan. Unless Xi really controls the country 100% (this I do not know since I am not a Chinese observer) and goes crazy like Putin did.
I don't think Ukraine can win with the way things are going unless the West joins the fighting or Russia collapses. Waiting until Russia collapses will quite possibly be a long time which will result in a Pyrrhic victory for Ukraine. They will have an entire generation of dead men at the rate things are going.
Invadin Taiwan would have a huge negative impact in China. Another poster in this thread, in the process of contradicting himself, said that the longer PRC waits the stronger they become. The conclusion then being that the best course of action for China is to never invade Taiwan. I fully subscribe to this conclusion.
Full unification is similar to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (大東亜共栄圏). The foundation would probably be some ideology centered around the area’s 3000+ years of shared Buddhism and Confucianism, rewarding wealthy multi-lingual business families more than the average person.
Something more realistic and beneficial to you (assuming you are Asian in an English-speaking country) would be world unification .
In summary, since 1997 it has for all intents and purposes been abandoned.
While that still puts in the ballpark of "top 5 cities", it's not quite the same (relative) prize as before.
Not saying I like what they did (I don't).
Then why would anyone agree to anything?
The only thing you can do about it is shaming them, sanctioning them, going to war if you really care, ...
(some obscure movie quote, probably Mark Twain or Lincoln)
It would have been better for Hong Kongers if they’d kept it, but alas here we are.
Pretty much. They are only as effective as the body trying to enforce it. The entire point of being a sovereign nation is nobody can force you to do anything. Now it is in a nation's self interest to not violate agreements and get along nicely, but sometimes the calculus changes and the punishment may not outweigh the benefits.
Everyone who advocates for basic human rights, as written in the UN's basic human rights charter, is considered a traitor, a threat to national "security", or a terrorist. They want absolutely obedient people who don't know about their own rights.
UN particapation is indeed varying level of compardour behavior, but also frequently not since you know even independant raprateurs go through filtering process frequently supported to host country to represent their geopolitical interests.
What is obviously traitorous, is shaking hands with ex head of CIA, we lie we cheat we steal Pompeo, during ongoing Sino-US geopolitical cold war, while advocating for sanctions on your own people. That's not obedience, that's treason. Like even fucking obedient people know having the right to commit treason, which Lai did, is retarded. A position an unforutnate amount of retarded HKers took to heart and frankly need to be reeducated out of.
Regardess above comment isn't even about PRC system. It's about how HKers and their supporters who thinks it's reasonable for city of 7m to have no NSL coverage while serving as intelligence hub for PRC geopolitical adversaries is delulu and unserious position. Anyone rubbing 2 brain cells together should understand how anomlous and not sustainable that arrangement was, and indeed it was never suppose to be that way if not for sheer HK arrogance to skirt NSL implementation requirements and PRC patience.
In other "normal" sovereign countries, the "national security umbrella" is defined by representatives voted by the people. Suspected violators are prosecuted by a fair court, with a jury determining the validity of the charges. I don't think either of those is the case for Hong Kong.
> Human rights > national security is frankly absurdly unserious position to take.
Again, in any state with decent democracy, the law states otherwise. A nation is formed to protect the rights of its people, not to take those rights away.
> What is obviously traitorous, is shaking hands with ex head of CIA, we lie we cheat we steal Pompeo, during ongoing Sino-US geopolitical cold war, while advocating for sanctions on your own people. That's not obedience, that's treason.
That is rarely considered a national security case in any decent democratic country. He was actually exercising his freedom of speech, as defined in the UN's basic human rights charter I mentioned earlier. Limiting which political viewpoints are "allowed" is a classical, textbook example of authoritarianism.
And let's not forget this NSL dalying was an failure of HK making, i.e. basically failed state behavior that HK incompetence generated. Frankly that's demonstration HK isn't ready for democracy at all.
And no a national is formed to sustain the nation, eitherway you can't protect people without NSL... and btw that's what PRC did, protect 1400m people from HK traitors by closing their treason lifehack loophole. It's basic statecraft.
Yes and trading secrets and espionage with geopolitical adversary is muh freedom of speech and not espionage. Again unserious, exactly why HK needs to be reeducated. You're conflating disset (speech) with collusion (treason), Lai colluded, which is unprotected speech anywhere.
The problem is not about the law itself. It is about how the law is defined, and moreover, the system of checks and balances. In a decent democracy, the national security law does not override the people's rights written in the constitution. The government is bound by the law to uphold due process and to respect people's basic rights, even if the suspect may have broken a law. While in authoritarian states, the constitution is basically just a joke. Don't you know China's absurd history of human rights violations?
> Lai gettign 3 judge speedrun because he's simply an obvious comprador traitor.
A quick search states otherwise. He was prosecuted by three government-picked judges, and there was no jury, which violates the standards of a fair trial.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/15/asia-pacific/po...
> And let's not forget this NSL dalying was an failure of HK making, i.e. basically failed state behavior that HK incompetence generated. Frankly that's demonstration HK isn't ready for democracy at all.
Democracy means the people are in power, not the dictator. If the Hong Kong people can only vote for someone that Beijing favors, then that is not democracy. It is not possible to have a democratic system that a dictator has control over, by definition.
> ...that's what PRC did, protect 1400m people from HK traitors...
If they really wanted to protect their people, they would create a true democratic system for the city. There is no reason any western country would put sanctions on a democratic entity. And don't forget the fact that they fought really hard to gain control of the city, only to later claim it is a "huge risk to national security".
> You're conflating disset (speech) with collusion (treason), Lai colluded, which is unprotected speech anywhere.
There are no normal countries that would put people into jail for mere political speech as "treason." Such laws are only applied to acts like espionage or leaking classified information, and even those cases are bound by checks and balances.
> A quick search states otherwise
That's literally what I said, a 3 judge speed run. As for jury requirement, tell that to authoritarian Netherland.
> no reason any western country would put sanctions on a democratic entity
I'm just going to leave this trivially disproven quote here for posterity. It's 2025, you can trivially ask an LLM for a list, and we're not talking about western countries, we're talking about US dollar system access which US has been sanction happy with.
> mere political speech
Again, I literally distinguished between collusion vs speech. Lai working with Pompeo to sanction HK legistlators is collusion beyond speech. Which he called for publically. Plenty of cases of people thrown in jail for just speech not even in realmn of treason in west. Anyway, this is my last response, seperate libtard fantasy with libtard reality. Reality is HK is finally a normal jurisdiction with NSL coverage, which regardless of butmuhdemocracy in execution is still more accepted normal than not.
Bollocks, there is a very good chance that the USA is going to do exactly that to the Republic of South Africa.
The relevant points on the timeline, from China's perspective, are:
China: Stop selling opium in our country. UK: How about no? China: We're kicking out your drug dealers. UK: How about an Opium War? China: Oh crap, you have way more guns. We surrender. UK: OK We're taking HK for 100 years. China: I guess we don't have any say in the matter....
A few years later... China: We get HK back now, right? UK: Yeah but we've altered the terms. Take it or leave it. China: OK. I guess.
A few years later... China: Now we have more guns so here are the new terms. Take it or leave. UK: But our deal!!
Is it possible to get a fair trial if you're an enemy of the state? Well... what defines fair and just? In accordance with the will of the Chinese people? Or are we talking about Western standards?
In which country is it possible to get a fair trial if you're an enemy of the state, especially in today's climate?
Regardless, it's presumably all relative. At least there's certainly an ordering of states I'd rather have against me, as a person living in them. Maybe Sweden?
Or if you don't like the child murder analogy: suppose an FBI employee decided to betray the US to the Soviets out of money, not ideology (cue Robert Hanssen). The US is at this point in time still executing traitors to the state. They grab this Hanssen-type, send him to the electric chair (on faulty evidence or simply "vibes" of guilt), but later it turns out this person was really guilty. Was this process fair?
Maybe Sweden if relatively fairer, like you said. I suspect not. But even if it was relatively fair, what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?
Really it's just about the definition of fairness or justness though. I'm not really disagreeing because I'm not putting forward definitions of my own either, but a lot of the comments here throw out the terms with some assumed meaning. For example, I'm pretty sure if you polled Chinese people, they wouldn't have a problem with the OP story's outcome. So does that make it democratic? Or good as a point of public policy? It's all a bit hand-wavey without specifying.
> what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?
Well we (I'm assuming) both live in the West and so we encounter the exceptionalist narrative of this place. Certainly HN is a Western forum. Most views of China held by people in the West are based on partial truths and thought-terminating cliches.
But that's kind of just how _people_ are the world over, no? Chinese people in Chinese forums have a parallel experience to this, just mirrored.
I too think the situation is probably mirrored from China's side. I hope there are some people over there who can also understand there's some middle ground, that neither side is totally right or wrong, and that we both perceive the world in half-truths and thought-terminating cliches.
And yes, because I live in the West (well, Latin America, anyway) I'm more upset about the distortions from "our" side. I don't really get to witness the Chinese side. I'm very skeptical even of what "our" side claims the distortions on the Chinese side are, since I don't get to witness them directly and I have reason to be skeptical of my side's narrative.
There have been a few cases of Somalis for example even killing government police/military and them being found not guilty in xeer court and even the government respected the decision.
Like USA-standards, or past-Western standards. Currently USA's law is 'did you pay the president a bribe to be pardoned'. CCP looks positively enlightened compared to that.
Since when did the Chinese people get a say? There is no way for them to express their "will" without overthrowing the communists. It's the will of Xi and that's it.
What makes you ask a such question? Here are some bad ideas which comes to my mind:
* you think China is inferior?
* or maybe Chinese are inferior?
* maybe you think they always lie?
* or maybe they don't have laws?
* maybe plain old racism?
Forgive me, but your question sounds so bad. Counter question, did any of war criminals get a fair trial in the USA? (I am not listing countries they did war crimes, because there are too many)
Obviously, it is that a political opponent of the administration is facing life in prison seemingly for being an outspoken critic of the administration.
I also wouldn't call him outspoken critic either. For obvious reasons, the main one being a level of economic development unknown in human history, there isn't very much to criticize outside of politics. His gripe is solely political in that he believes that a different system of government is required (one assumes with more input from people like himself, again though he isn't a politician and, afaik, has no real political positions apart from supporting Trump and NY Post-style sensationalism/xenophobia, iirc they created a meme depicting mainlanders as locusts...it is quite funny to see people who, I can only assume, are not massive fans of Trump cream themselves over the Chinese equivalent).
If you own a newspaper and use that platform to make such a request, you're likely to attract a law enforcement response wherever you are.
The best measure I can think of is per capita prison population. It's not great because it doesn't directly address fairness but it's likely related.
Two countries, with roughly the same "fairness" of courts, should, ceteris paribus, have roughly the same per-capita prison population. By that measure, China would be slightly on the fairer end 92nd lowest out of 224.
I don't remember if HK does the same thing but China divides their police into two groups. The more common type are basically public safety officers. They are unarmed but I saw a few places where the had plastic riot shields and catch poles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher#/media/File:Mancat... The armed police are only called out as needed.
The airport had a two of military guys standing at attention with rifles. They looked like a couple of wax figures until I saw them do a formal changing of the guard.
I don't know if anyone has assembled data on actual court records. How often are police charges prosecuted? How often do they go to trial? What percentage end up getting convictions? What are the average sentences?
It would also be good to decide what we're comparing it to. A rich white person in the US can expect a very different level of fairness than a poor black person. Is a random Chinese person's experience more like the rich white persons' or the poor black person's?
Yeah, sure, there's still a city there with that name. But the Hong Kong we knew is dead. What made Hong Kong what it was is dead.
Now white, professional westerners who lost control of China weep and gnash about their supposed moral superiority over China.
The mainland government want to keep it prosperous so will likely work to protect it from sanctions or international regulations.
If you’re a Russian oligarch it’s probably safer to keep your money in HK than Cayman or Switzerland these days. Even if you’re a petrostate sovereign wealth fund or non NATO central bank there’s some value in holding assets that can’t be frozen at will by the US treasury secretary.
You could argue that Signapaore and the UAE compete here but they have much more dependency on the west for security and diplomacy.
The EU is still debating after 3 years of war in Ukraine and weekly nuclear threats what to do with the Russian funds, let's be real, with the same situation in HK, the funds would have been seized within a week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_T...
And a plain reading of the Basic Law (Hong Kong's constitution) permits everything that's happened, and expecting the contrary seems like a coping mechanism. There are massive exemptions for Hong Kong's autonomy and deferrence to Beijing at Beijing's discretion, or by the Head of Hong Kong who is appointed by Beijing
I wasn't around for the handover so I'm largely exempt from the emotional marriage to an ideal Hong Kong residents and people affirming Hong Kong resident's feelings seem to have
The legislature wouldn't have to be consulted for the National Security Law to have been enacted, the article and seemingly all of the west seems to think that is a controversy when it isn't necessary
And then there is another layer where the structure of the legislature doesn't even match western ideals and wouldn't have made a difference. The legislature is 50% popular vote and 50% corporations. So even if 100% of the population voted for the same thing, they would only have 50% of the vote, and the corporations are all pro-Beijing by nature of being able to economically exist in that environment.
(Notably, the ancient City of London within London functions nearly the same way. Actually in an even more egregious way with the non-natural persons having a more extreme weighting of votes)
People act like a different founding document governs Hong Kong (Sino British joint declaration? Some comments by representatives), when it doesn't. People act like the governing document of Hong Kong was supposed to be ignored for 50 years, when something way different and way more integrated is supposed to happen at the end of the handover period.
I think there is zero path to the goals Hong Kong residents espouse and are used to. They’re imagining a different governing system than the one they live in, thats incompatible.
Game over. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Its analogous to an American finding a piece of the Declaration of Independence to confirm their views after finding the US constitution too inconvenient. A pointless exercise, levels worse than even the Federalist papers.
From talking to friends and relatives from HK I've seen huge diversity in how people think about HK, China, their relationship with each other, Mandarin, Cantonese, food, and "the West".
There are certainly large groups of HKers who would prefer for HK to seced from China. There are also many HKers who love the UK and mourn the loss of HK to China.
There are also huge swathes of the population that chaffed at being colonized. Long time residents can show you the old police barracks where British troops would beat the locals in black bag operations. They'll tell you about how the feng shui of the Bank of China Tower lead to the collapse of the British empire. They'll tell you that they spent their lives paying taxes into a "democracy" they never got to vote in.
The opinions within HK are far more diverse than we make them out to be.
So, is Israel a democracy? I guess that depends on your definition of “democracy”, and also your definition of “Israel”.
This is simply not true. There are over 2 million Arab citizens in Israel, a full 21% of Israel's population. Another 4% are Bedouin.
I’m not sure if you even read my comment, but you certainly didn’t understand it.
Perhaps if Fatah would redirect its funding away from terrorism, there would be fewer security checkpoints and more self-determination for its people.
Gaza is run by Hamas and the West Bank by Fatah. Israel does not "control [that] territory" it does not block "other particular ethnic/cultural groups from becoming citizens", nor does it "govern [it] by military law." Israel does not govern or occupy either territory.
[0]: https://www.britannica.com/event/Israels-disengagement-from-...
Btw, how many Palestinians are studying at Ari’el University in the West Bank?
In 2023, there were 214 terrorist attacks per month. Israel instituted more security checkpoints, which has resulted in a decline to 57 attacks/month this year.
And yet, 57 attacks per month still ridiculously high. What nation would tolerate that? Is it any wonder that there are security restrictions in place?
As for Ariel University, it is within a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, so Palestinians are generally opposed to its existence. (And indeed, opposed to the existence of Jews in the West Bank, which is a true form of racism and apartheid.) And yet, Ariel University does have a minority of Arab students among the Jewish majority.
If there weren't some 50 terror attacks per month coming out of the West Bank, Israel wouldn't have need for security checkpoints. If Hamas didn't invade Israel on October 7th 2023, Israel would have zero military presence in the strip like they did for 20 years prior.
Pro-Palestinian folks need to stop blaming the Jewish boogey man for Palestinian problems and start looking at the violence and hatred of Jews within their own camp.
Not to mention how the Israeli government allows over 700,000 illegal settlers to flood the West Bank and does absolutely nothing to stop them from stealing land or attacking Palestinians. The Israeli military has ultimate authority there. Like the other commenter said, it's a fantasy to claim otherwise.
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=B1ZIIDeEc5AC&pg=PA511#v=on...
As for settlers, I ask readers to observe the double standard: Jews who live in Palestinian areas are "illegal settlers" and "stealing land", but Arabs who live in Israel are entitled to free education, healthcare, citizenship, voting rights, and representation in the government.
Why the double standard?
Yes, what a catastrophe that invasion was for Arab nations and Arab population in the land.
Perhaps if those nations had not invaded Israel, and perhaps if local Arab communities had not committed violence and massacres of local Jewish communities leading up to Jewish independence in 1948, things could have turned out better for them.
And maybe things can be different tomorrow, too, if Palestinians turn away from terrorism and seeking the destruction of the world's only Jewish homeland.
But that has nothing to do with the West Bank, which is where the accusation of apartheid is most credible.
This is, of course, why pro-Israel advocates always attempt to redirect the conversation to focus specifically on the Arab citizens of Israel within the Green Line when these matters are discussed.
As for the West Bank, it's ruled by Fatah, not Israel. Israel provides for its own citizens -- regardless of ethnicity -- but it's not responsible for the citizens of foreign territories and their governments. Israel is under no obligation to provide services to foreign governments, especially those compromised by antisemitic terrorist organizations.
You've repeated this claim a few times in the thread, so sorry if this is repetitive, but just to recap:
1. Fatah is not allowed to build an airport in Palestinian territory -- the Israeli military controls its airspace.
2. Fatah is not able to determine who comes in and out of the territory -- Israel controls both its border with Israel (which I suppose is reasonable) and its border with Jordan (which is not).
3. Fatah does not control the population registry or decide who can receive a Palestinian ID card -- Israel does.
4. Fatah does not have a monopoly over the use of military force in the West Bank -- the Israeli military can (and does) operate wherever it wants to within the territory.
5. Fatah does not control who can move where within the West Bank -- there are many Israeli-only settlements and Israeli-only roads, with access controlled by the Israeli military and police. Even when moving between Palestinian areas, residents are often subject to Israeli checkpoints (with long lines).
Is Fatah allowed to control some civil matters, e.g. the education system? Sure.
I will let others reading this be the judge of whether this constitutes "Fatah control" or "Israeli control". To me, the answer is clear.
> Israel is under no obligation to provide services to foreign governments, especially those compromised by antisemitic terrorist organizations.
Obviously. Nobody is complaining, for example, that Israel doesn't provide services to Iranians or Syrians or Yemenis. Those are legitimately foreign countries that Israel doesn't control.
...
Taking a look at the rest of the thread, it seems that, having had no success justifying your ludicrous position that "Israel doesn't control the West Bank", you've instead pivoted to explaining how the fact that they control it is Palestinians' fault, or at least justifiable due to Israel's legitimate interest in preventing terrorism.
Well, which is it? Does Fatah control the West Bank, or does Israel control it but the occupation is justified?
There's a lot I could say about this topic, too, but I don't think I'll bother. Galloping from one canned talking point to the next faster than the points can be refuted is not a good-faith debating style and a waste of time to engage with.
Democracy for whom? Democracy to what end?
With respect to Iraq, it is true there was not a democracy there, but we did violate their self determination and installing an american viceroy is the opposite of democracy. Iraq had a welfare state that helped many citizens even if there were many features of the government I despise, but we destroyed it all and turned it into an experimental playground for American privatization efforts.
As an Assyrians, my nation suffered greatly under the old and the new regime, and will most certainly be eradicated.
Democracy didn't stop my assyrians from being taught Arabs and Kurds came to civilize, it didn't stop endless settlement of Arabs and Kurds, it certainty didn't stop the death threats, and most certianly didn't give us a voice that we could use, and it didn't help my nation from being forced to flee even in times of peace(like today).
After all my nation never chose to be part of said Iraq(or Turkey) and by extension it didn't chose to be part of said democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_independence_movement
The same applies to Hong Kong.
It makes me sick that the UK sends billions to Ukraine to interfere in a war we have no fundamental right to involve ourselves in, meanwhile, Hong Kong was allowed to fall with only light media coverage. It is outrageous. The politicians that oversaw it should be ashamed.
Not to mention that Carrie Lam, former leader of Hong Kong, sold her people up the river by allowing the national security law in [3]. She was even hiding out in the UK with her husband from her own countrymen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems#Imple...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems#2020_...
Gee, I wonder where it comes from
> Article 23 is an article of the Hong Kong Basic Law. It states that Hong Kong "shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies."
GOLDSTEIN: China has not allowed more freedom of speech. Publications can still be shut down for criticizing the government. And yet, China has gotten richer. It started to develop its own financial center in Shanghai. Foreign money can now flow into China without going through Hong Kong, so the Chinese Communist Party doesn't need Hong Kong as much as it used to.
This has led to more and more tension between people in Hong Kong and the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government. In 2014, there was a fight over how to choose the government official who runs Hong Kong, and a million people in Hong Kong took to the streets to protest. Just last month, the government official who runs Hong Kong wanted to pass a new law that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to China to stand trial. The people in Hong Kong said, we don't trust your mainland courts. Two million people protested in the streets, including, by the way, Jimmy Lai, who is now in his 70s.
What was it like? What was it like walking that day?
LAI: I was very excited - when you see so many people, you know, is fighting for a moral issue. We don't have guns. We don't have tanks. We don't have anything. The only thing we have the Chinese government don't is the moral authority we have, the moral courage we have.
GOLDSTEIN: The moral authority and courage, yeah.
LAI: Yes.
GOLDSTEIN: A few weeks later, on July 1, on the anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule, protesters broke into the Hong Kong legislature buildings, smashed glass walls and spray-painted graffiti. Chinese leaders see these protesters and Jimmy Lai, for that matter, as agents for foreign influence - as, you know, basically latter-day colonialists. His house has been firebombed, and there was an assassination plot against him.
LAI: I stopped thinking about this because if I let the fear frighten me, I cannot go on, you know, because with what I have taken up, I have to sustain it. I will be the last to leave. That is like a captain who cannot jump the ship.
GOLDSTEIN: I mean, you're rich. You could leave if you wanted.
LAI: Yeah. If I'm rich but an a*hole...
GOLDSTEIN: (Laughter).
LAI: ...What my kids will think about me?
GOLDSTEIN: Yeah.
LAI: You know, being rich, you can be very poor...
GOLDSTEIN: Go on. Say more.
LAI: ...Because if you only have money, you lost the meaning, you lost the dignity, you lost everything as a human being. What else do you have?
previously, these well funded democracy - regime agents would win in many places, but now the tables have turned - america now has a demagogue as president.