This is really bad and definitely triggers memorys of the Tiananmen massacre. I'm very interested how the rest of the world is going to react to these developments considering the position of China only got stronger since the Tinanmen situation. I recognized that the reaction of e.g. Germany was considerably weaker to the HK protests than e.g. the Arab Spring protests, but I guess we just have to wait and see.
> China only got stronger since the Tinanmen situation
It's a rather remarkable difference at this point.
The US economy was 16 times larger than China at the end of 1989. Japan was nine times larger. China was only about 45% larger than South Korea back then.
China's military spending today is equal to at least a third the size of its economy in 1989 inflation adjusted.
There's a reason why there are no major protests occurring in the Middle East re Xinjiang. One would expect an enormous outpouring of anger and protest, boycott, mass demonstrations and burnings of the Chinese flag and Xi's effigy 24/7. They know it won't make any difference and it'll just anger China; they have almost zero influence to affect China's behavior. Most of the world feels that way.
I can understand Middle Eastern and muslim majority governments taking that view. I don't understand the ordinary Muslim believer that is prepared to go out and protest against America or Europe thinking that way. Why should they care? After all the reasons you give for treading carefully against China all apply to the US and the west just as much.
Take Pakistan. It gets billions in military and economic aid from the west and does a lot of trade with the US and Europe, but protests against the west are common. I really don't get what it is about China that, in the eyes of the Muslim man in the street, gives it a free pass to mass intern and re-educate muslims into not being muslims.
I honestly don’t think that China will do anything like that again. Because of how their economy is so intertwined with the rest of the world, they can’t afford another brutal crackdown.
I am sure they will go in, but I’m also sure they have more sophisticated crowd control methods available to them.
Remember Prince Bonesaw? Saudi Arabia is a laughingstock of a country that can't do anything for itself, and yet we didn't do anything about them murdering a reporter with a green card.
To be honest, the developed world hasn't convinced me it cares enough about human rights to risk its economic relationship with China over them. I'm really not sure how political leaders would react to Tiananmen 2.0.
The self-censorship on the part of the Western heads of state thus far has been a testament of the PRC's clout unto itself.
I think most likely what will happen is that the Chinese govt will refrain from overt confrontation and rather wait out the protestors to get fatigued and slowly dissipate.
1. Local police was sent, it either did nothing or deserted
2. Troops from BJ itself were sent in, largely the same happened
3. Liaoning military region troops were called, they fared just a bit better than BJ troops, made few attack attempts, but nevertheless withdrew
4. Finally, as Beijing was getting more and more desperate, Shaanxi military region troops - "the primitives," were called and given a total cart blance. They made a blood bath
Not to detract from your point that it took them a while to find troops willing to actually follow their orders, but you got some details wrong. Neither Liaoning nor Shaanxi were military regions at the time, Liaoning province belonging to the Shenyang Military Region and Shaanxi being part of the Lanzhou Military Region. The troops that were finally called in were part of the Beijing Military Region, mostly from Hebei province (24th, 27th, 38th and 65th armies) and Shanxi (63rd army). (Note that Shaanxi and Shanxi are different provinces.)
And if it turns out (because times have changed) they no longer have enough "primitives" to do their dirty work for them - combined with all the cameras running, these days -
I think some people in HK are deliberately trying to force the Mainland government to bring in the tanks. Otherwise why would they start beating up Mainlander travelers?
As incomes rise in China people will demand other things from the government than food, shelter and a comfortable middle class life. Hong Kong was ahead of the rest of China since they have been living pretty liberal under UK rule and were more prosperous. Whatever they do in Hong Kong now will not stop from things happening all over China at a given point.
This was the theory during the Clinton administration and, to be blunt, that theory has been wrong.
The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom. The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Please, please do not take a free China for granted. Do not think that change — that democracy and freedom — is inevitable. It’s not.
"The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom. The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline."
I wouldn't be so quick to chalk this up to some sort of spontaneous decision originating with the Chinese people.
Remember that any sort of political dissent or organization tends to be quickly and effectively quashed in China by the authorities. Leaders and activists are imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or "reeducated". The media and education systems are tightly controlled to only show and teach what the authorities want, and as a result the rest of the population (minus the "counterrevolutinary" leaders and activists, who've been weeded out) has been manipulated to think the way the authorities want them to think and say things the authorities want them to say, and if they don't there are very real consequences.
That said, as long as mainland China is prosperous and more and more people are lifted out of poverty, it's unlikely to have a real revolution. HK is in a different position, as they were already prosperous and have faced worsening conditions since they've been under the Chinese yoke.
> The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom.
Joel Garreau once said (IIRC) "To not have the problems of your parents is to not have problems." If you grew up worried about hunger, and now you have enough to eat, life is good. Political freedom? Might be nice, but not a big problem.
For the next generation, though, who grew up with enough food to eat...
> The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Ouch. But it hurts because it's true. I'm hoping it's only temporary, but yeah, the west at the moment is not exactly a shining advertisement for how great democracy is...
> The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom.
Yes, in the face of a dystopian surveillance apparatus and a Party that will not hesitate to commit mass murder to maintain power, Chinese citizens are understandably reticent to publicly ask for _anything_ besides basic subsistence and stability.
As life conditions improve, the change is inevitable. Not liberal democracy, but some radical change.
Chinese middle class may not demand democracy but they are clearly unhappy with the judiciary. Some kinds of checks and balances and independent juridical system is where it may start.
Maybe we should look how some European monarchies gradually transformed over centuries.
Freedom and democracy aren't inevitable, but occasional revolutions and civil wars are inevitable in China. They've had quite a few and there's a good chance we'll see another one in our lifetimes. The next revolution probably won't produce a liberal democracy.
Never underestimate the persuasive power of a regime murdering several thousand people in plain sight. I remember thinking the same thing about the Arab Spring in 2009.
I generally agree with you but it's a lot easier for the west to turn a blind eye to the middle east or Africa (especially post fracking) than it is to turn a blind eye to the far east. By virtue of their standards of living, deep economic ties and stable governments the more developed parts of the far east are basically honorary Europe in the west's mind and that comes with higher expectations of civility.
It's really hard to predict where the "fuck it, you've gone too far, we can't do nothing this time" line is. Remember, basically everyone else in Asia is rooting for the west to cut china off economically so they can fill China's manufacturing role.
I agree that unless the Chinese really butcher people it will be business as usual but the chance of some viral video lighting a fire under the politician's asses is not to be discounted, especially when the current US administration has taken a policy line that means they will play up these kinds of things for negotiating leverage.
Edit: by "honorary Europe" I mean they have similar standards of living, similar strong and stable government institutions and with that comes the expectation that they won't just drive tanks over people at the drop of a hat. Basically, they're rich enough that we expect them to handle the problem in what we consider the "right way".
AFAICT, that’s ironically that’s the main reason why the CCP can paint the protesters in a bad light.
Look at what happened in Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc. Do you want your country to become like that? Do you want to welcome an American intervention, and the joy and prosperity it brought to Iraq? Do you want to invite Western management of capitalism and the success it wrought in Russia in the 90’s?
You can disagree with the CCP’s premise, but US actions in the Middle East, and perceived US meddling in the world has done more to reinforce the CCP’s rule than any other country. And if there’s one thing East Asian cultures really dislike in society, it’s uncleanliness and disharmony. In particular, China’s history is one civil war and famine after another, with a period of peace in between, and the West seems to fundamentally misunderstand how they think over there.
I’d wager that the CCP can open fire with machine guns on the protesters and they might even be cheered on in the mainland. But they probably won’t, perhaps even fearing in the back of their mind what an example that will set in some later time. How would they justify that? That it’s okay to light into American-supported protesters? Who have had it so good for so long in the gilded city of theirs? And make no mistake, there is a tone of anti-mainland on the HK’ers part that can be easily construed as snobbery as well. That would all be a sort of nationalism you can’t walk back on easily.
To that end, you should not suppose that when a revolution in China — as it inevitably will — will be produce a government friendly to your values. It did not happen in Russia, it hasn’t been happening anywhere in the Middle East, even in Iraq where the US poured a trillion into the effort, and Europe is arguably weaker for what has been happening there as well.
China is a behemoth. Even if they storm Hong Kong with soldiers and beat the protesters bloody, many leaders won't stand up to China, mainly because Pooh Bear is a bully and too many countries rely on China financially.
The history of HK is essentially the rule of the central government (UK or China) and the local overlords (The few families and their lackeys the triads). HK's prosperity was largely the result of Cold War and I'm afraid that is gone forever (unless of course the world goes on that route again).
Russia seems to be trying to build crazy dead hand nuclear cruise missiles and America is talking openly about militarizing space. I would say we are back on the entrance ramp to that route.
China is where the USA was in the 1950s; lots of industrial growth but lots of pollutions, a population happy about all the new wealth and not willing to protest.
China has a different culture. One reason that western people having protesting culture because of historically authoritarians are less powerful and less cruel than the eastern ones. Take the 'nine familial exterminations'[0] as an example.
It will most likely become a totally different cyberpunk society, with modern cities and massive surveillance coexist, instead of being another US.
There's lots of demand for protest in China, protest just happens to be among the few illegal acts successfully suppressed in China.
The two countries are absolutely incomparable on these particular points. Prosperity alone does not quell protests, most protests in the U.S. are decidedly bourgeois.
People in the Middle East did exactly that, only to lose everything they had before.
Doesn't look like China will fall for this again after the West has gone out of its way setting up examples around the world to convince them it doesn't work.
(I don’t remember where I read this now.) Chinese view of a govt is fundamentally different from the West. They don’t see their govt as apart from them. Govt is like an extended family there. Viewed from his angle it’s not hard to understand why they’d want an authoritarian govt let alone tolerate it.
> Whatever they do in Hong Kong now will not stop from things happening all over China at a given point.
It's interesting how 30 years ago, western economists were trying to sell everybody how moving all our industries to China will eventually turn the latter into a democracy because economic growth and democracy goes hand in hand.
30 years later, the Chinese communist party has never been as powerful as it is today and they are still employing the same barbaric methods to crush any form of rebellion, as seen with how they are dealing with the Uyghur.
It's a fragile kind of power. If Xi croaks tomorrow morning, god knows whether the current power structures will stay intact. There are lots and lots of factions that have very different interests.
if they actually believed “markets” to lead to democracy, that seems to me they conflated democracy (rule of the people) with capitalism (rule of capital)...
my opinion: they are not at all the same thing, and it was naive to think it would happen in china (markets existed a long time before capitalism even existed and democracy was quite the no-show for a long time)
American delusions. I thought that the wide support for Trump's trade war was in part an admission of your politicians that precisely that sort of liberalization of China failed.
> Hong Kong was ahead of the rest of China since they have been living pretty liberal under UK rule and were more prosperous.
No. HK people are not enjoying enough middle-class comfort and prosperity.
Precisely, HK's income inequality is even worse than mainland China (0.537 vs. 0.467). And because HK has historically been more liberal, it's a subject of many rich and powerful, especially the demand from mainland people drives the real estate price even further [3].
HK's violent street protest is because there isn't a strong and significant middle class group. Otherwise, we all know for sure that middle class are never politically radical, nor are they willing to sacrifice their livelihood for the so-called freedom.
These are fake news to foment Hong Kong protestors by conflating facts. I hope such fake news do not become part of HN.
You are absolutely right Hong Kong cannot even provide proper shelter or health system or good education to more than 40% of its people, who live in a space smaller than prison cell. All these protests are due to this simmering discontent.
I do not think living in a prison cell size apartment and then being hold hostage to mortgage for life working for 14 rich billionaires of the city is ahead of it's time.
Hong Kong is just paying price of its own reliance on get rich quick through property and closed China. First one destroyed innovation and second one is no longer true. Today Chinese cities are way ahead in innovation and technology, they also have a property bubble but not as severe as Hong Kong. Hope they learn lesson from Hong Kong.
When it suited Hong Kong they asked China to reinterpret basic law for their own benefit against basic human rights separating spouses and kids and they still do it with impunity and all people in Hong Kong are happy with that reinterpretation. You cross line once you cannot go back, this is what Hong Kong asked for and got it. Moreover Hong Kong is a Chinese territory so everything applicable in China apply except few exception as defined in basic law.
If what you say is true, about simmering discontent in HK due to conditions worse than in China. Why don't the HK people just move to China? Are there any rules against that?
Sigh. Hopefully we won't get a repeat of the Tiananmen square massacre. I've not seen any nations speak out about the HK protests. Unlike, say, when many expressed support for the Arab Spring.
How much money did private enterprise make from the Arab Spring? Hundred billion or so?
To pretend like it was a moral issue is insane. Most people don't care in the slightest in democratic countries. Virtually every country involved in sending troops couldn't point to it on a map nor talk about the region with any sort of knowledge.
We walked in and replaced Hussein with ISIS. It will go down as 21st century Vietnam.
China has nukes. Absolutely nothing will happen regardless, just like 30 years ago. Perhaps some more outrage on twitter I guess?
China has shown (again) in their treatment of Hong Kong that they don't care about past agreements. The least that anyone can do, even in the presence of nukes, is to get their business out of China, and that is already happening to some degree. And of course be welcoming to people who choose to emigrate from Hong Kong.
Your timeline is a bit muddled here: the invasion of Iraq (involving a great many Western countries) was in 2003, the Arab Spring (where Western countries by and large steered well clear) was in 2010.
The previous strongmen regimes were rather better for foreign investors than the current regimes and foreign investors would probably rather have seen stable governments gradually improving rights for foreign investors (certainly as an investor in one of those countries at the time through my work, from a purely business perspective I would have preferred a more peaceful path towards democracy). I don't think foreign investors were cheerleading the Arab spring therefore.
Kind of agree, but it's still sad to see authoritarian China take Hong Kong by force, against their will, while other nations stay deaf to their cries for help.
At least some serious sanctions / embargo on some chinese industries as a direct result of their actions in Hong Kong would be good.
"We are calling for peace, for order, for dialogue … we certainly call on China to be very careful and very respectful in how it deals with people who have legitimate concerns in Hong Kong," Trudeau told a televised news conference in Toronto.
The Arab spring is probably a bad example. The west got a bit over-enthusiastic about the Arab Spring which turns out to be more of an Islamist Spring. I don't think many people think it was a good idea to destabilize Libya and Syria in hindsight.
It was a terrible idea. I think Libya was better with the dictator they got rid off with the aid of the airstrikes. Same thing with Syria. The warring parties should have been left to sort it out among themselves. Naive interventions tend to have lots of unintended (harmful) consequences.
Unlike the governments of the countries in the Arab Spring, China knows the west won't try anything (overtly), so a statement would only look foolish and help their claims that the protests are orchestrated, rather than serving as a warning.
"In the Joint Declaration, the PRC Government stated that it had decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories) with effect from 1 July 1997, and the UK Government declared that it would hand over Hong Kong to the PRC with effect from 1 July 1997. The PRC Government also declared its basic policies regarding Hong Kong in the document.
In accordance with the "one country, two systems" principle agreed between the UK and the PRC, the socialist system of PRC would not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years until 2047." [1]
I might be misinformed but it looks to me like a lot of protests in Hong Kong are state orchestrated.
The escalation in protests seemed very sharp. The ransacking of parliament appeared to have been allowed. There was no police presence at all. Almost as if they were being purposefully held back.
I might just have my tin foil hat on. I wouldn't be surprised though if Chinese groups have escalated mostly peaceful protests while police have been held back to create a situation which requires full Chinese state involvement.
From what I’ve read (which obviously is removed from the “ground” and has bias) China has inserted agent provocateurs, but haven’t coöpted the movement to that degree. It appears to be mostly grass roots though some of the lighter moderates evaporating leaving the moderates and hard core protesters to fight on which results in heavier tactics.
Assuming that a powerful nation has not deeply owned every large-scale protest is in my experience extremely naive. Either the protest has no teeth or it's penetrated all the way to the top with either government agents or extensive surveillance. This means that action outside of what the government feels like dealing with means arrests (no matter how temporary) and that any action that is taken means that the government does not care or will use it with an ulterior agenda.
It sort of bothers me how conspiracy theorist this sounds, but I know for a fact that this is the case.
> The ransacking of parliament appeared to have been allowed. There was no police presence at all. Almost as if they were being purposefully held back.
I personally thinks this comes after there were more confrontations before, and there was a lot of public outcry over the use of force. (It being justified or not)
There was initially a large police presence inside the parliament (LegCo), but they all retreated after protestors became increasingly violent, I think it was mostly a tactical decision, it would've been impossible for the police to push back, so all they could do was hold their grounds. If protestors stormed in while the police was still there, it would've been a very difficult and violent confrontations. So I think they decided to fall back, and give protestors space.
And from previous protests, the police has never held back, they've always cracked down once the protests got out of control, don't really see what they would do so now, and just one time.
Oh man they absolutely cannot come into Hong Kong, it would be a totally stupid move. Honestly in the grand scheme of things they can afford for Hong Kong to just descend into chaos and completely collapse economically or whatever. The minute they send troops over the whole picture changes and everyone loses
> they absolutely cannot come into Hong Kong, it would be a totally stupid move
Strategically, for China? Yes. Politically, for Xi? Maybe not. Remember that Xi is a dictator. Moves that boost him in the short term at China’s long-term expense are on the board.
Xi is very much a dictator, but he also needs money to maintain his dictatorship. HK for all its faults and bads is still quite important to the Chinese economy.
We should have applied the same policy of containment to China, that was used against the Soviet Union. But instead we let our greed get in the way, and now we've created an (arguably) evil superpower.
We didn’t because initially we capitalized on the USSR and China’s split and took advantage of it politically. The enemy of my enemy is my friend type deal...
Then at some point we realized China with its large labor pool, low wages and no effective safety legislation was a good place to build all our junk for cheap.
It's working out fine for 'us,' mostly. Putin has exhausted his only card though, the energy card, which was used to give Russia's economy a jump; now there's no follow-up maneuver. The Russian people have of course started to take notice of that fact. Russia is an increasingly inconsequential regional power, with a relatively weak and small economy (now smaller than Canada; about to be smaller than Australia). Generally they pose zero threat to the US and Western Europe in their present form; at least so long as NATO remains intact. Their military is weak and broken, they can't afford to maintain it properly - much less upgrade it - so they've shifted to magic scary super weapon propaganda and PR desperation.
It's Belarus and Ukraine primarily at issue, not Poland.
Poland is doing great overall, they've almost entirely left Russia's orbit in terms of overt influence. Their economic output per capita is beginning to embarrass Russia, it's now 50% higher than Russia's figure (that gap will increase). Poland is starting to push into the upper tier of the middle income nations, with a real shot at leaving that group and moving into the upper economic tier in the next two decades, along with the Baltic states.
Russia can't do much to countries like Poland, the Baltics or eg Romania. They know that of course. They can and will persistently, aggressively mess with Belarus (forced union) and Ukraine (constantly seek to destabilize & split it) however. In Russia's ideal world, they keep those two nations impoverished beneath Russia's economic level, so that Russia can perpetually lord over them; then given enough time figure out a way to de facto annex all or a lot of their territory. The people running Russia - including Putin - believe that is all really Russian territory.
When this guy says "military", we need some specificity. Is this the People's Liberation Army, or the People's Armed Police? They may look the same on the surface but they are very very different organizations with different uses and implications. Stuff I've already read suggests the PAP is in Shenzhen on standby, not the PLA.
Readit News
Edit: Grammar
It's a rather remarkable difference at this point.
The US economy was 16 times larger than China at the end of 1989. Japan was nine times larger. China was only about 45% larger than South Korea back then.
China's military spending today is equal to at least a third the size of its economy in 1989 inflation adjusted.
There's a reason why there are no major protests occurring in the Middle East re Xinjiang. One would expect an enormous outpouring of anger and protest, boycott, mass demonstrations and burnings of the Chinese flag and Xi's effigy 24/7. They know it won't make any difference and it'll just anger China; they have almost zero influence to affect China's behavior. Most of the world feels that way.
Take Pakistan. It gets billions in military and economic aid from the west and does a lot of trade with the US and Europe, but protests against the west are common. I really don't get what it is about China that, in the eyes of the Muslim man in the street, gives it a free pass to mass intern and re-educate muslims into not being muslims.
I am sure they will go in, but I’m also sure they have more sophisticated crowd control methods available to them.
The self-censorship on the part of the Western heads of state thus far has been a testament of the PRC's clout unto itself.
It certainly looks bad. But let us not forget how the US treats our own "Tank Man", Chelsea Manning.
1. Local police was sent, it either did nothing or deserted
2. Troops from BJ itself were sent in, largely the same happened
3. Liaoning military region troops were called, they fared just a bit better than BJ troops, made few attack attempts, but nevertheless withdrew
4. Finally, as Beijing was getting more and more desperate, Shaanxi military region troops - "the primitives," were called and given a total cart blance. They made a blood bath
Also, even they weren't particularly loyal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_dur...
What then?
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The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom. The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Please, please do not take a free China for granted. Do not think that change — that democracy and freedom — is inevitable. It’s not.
I wouldn't be so quick to chalk this up to some sort of spontaneous decision originating with the Chinese people.
Remember that any sort of political dissent or organization tends to be quickly and effectively quashed in China by the authorities. Leaders and activists are imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or "reeducated". The media and education systems are tightly controlled to only show and teach what the authorities want, and as a result the rest of the population (minus the "counterrevolutinary" leaders and activists, who've been weeded out) has been manipulated to think the way the authorities want them to think and say things the authorities want them to say, and if they don't there are very real consequences.
That said, as long as mainland China is prosperous and more and more people are lifted out of poverty, it's unlikely to have a real revolution. HK is in a different position, as they were already prosperous and have faced worsening conditions since they've been under the Chinese yoke.
Joel Garreau once said (IIRC) "To not have the problems of your parents is to not have problems." If you grew up worried about hunger, and now you have enough to eat, life is good. Political freedom? Might be nice, but not a big problem.
For the next generation, though, who grew up with enough food to eat...
> The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline.
Ouch. But it hurts because it's true. I'm hoping it's only temporary, but yeah, the west at the moment is not exactly a shining advertisement for how great democracy is...
Yes, in the face of a dystopian surveillance apparatus and a Party that will not hesitate to commit mass murder to maintain power, Chinese citizens are understandably reticent to publicly ask for _anything_ besides basic subsistence and stability.
Chinese middle class may not demand democracy but they are clearly unhappy with the judiciary. Some kinds of checks and balances and independent juridical system is where it may start.
Maybe we should look how some European monarchies gradually transformed over centuries.
It's really hard to predict where the "fuck it, you've gone too far, we can't do nothing this time" line is. Remember, basically everyone else in Asia is rooting for the west to cut china off economically so they can fill China's manufacturing role.
I agree that unless the Chinese really butcher people it will be business as usual but the chance of some viral video lighting a fire under the politician's asses is not to be discounted, especially when the current US administration has taken a policy line that means they will play up these kinds of things for negotiating leverage.
Edit: by "honorary Europe" I mean they have similar standards of living, similar strong and stable government institutions and with that comes the expectation that they won't just drive tanks over people at the drop of a hat. Basically, they're rich enough that we expect them to handle the problem in what we consider the "right way".
Look at what happened in Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc. Do you want your country to become like that? Do you want to welcome an American intervention, and the joy and prosperity it brought to Iraq? Do you want to invite Western management of capitalism and the success it wrought in Russia in the 90’s?
You can disagree with the CCP’s premise, but US actions in the Middle East, and perceived US meddling in the world has done more to reinforce the CCP’s rule than any other country. And if there’s one thing East Asian cultures really dislike in society, it’s uncleanliness and disharmony. In particular, China’s history is one civil war and famine after another, with a period of peace in between, and the West seems to fundamentally misunderstand how they think over there.
I’d wager that the CCP can open fire with machine guns on the protesters and they might even be cheered on in the mainland. But they probably won’t, perhaps even fearing in the back of their mind what an example that will set in some later time. How would they justify that? That it’s okay to light into American-supported protesters? Who have had it so good for so long in the gilded city of theirs? And make no mistake, there is a tone of anti-mainland on the HK’ers part that can be easily construed as snobbery as well. That would all be a sort of nationalism you can’t walk back on easily.
To that end, you should not suppose that when a revolution in China — as it inevitably will — will be produce a government friendly to your values. It did not happen in Russia, it hasn’t been happening anywhere in the Middle East, even in Iraq where the US poured a trillion into the effort, and Europe is arguably weaker for what has been happening there as well.
"Violence usually works."
Maybe we both figure it's a way to get GDP up...
It will most likely become a totally different cyberpunk society, with modern cities and massive surveillance coexist, instead of being another US.
The two countries are absolutely incomparable on these particular points. Prosperity alone does not quell protests, most protests in the U.S. are decidedly bourgeois.
Doesn't look like China will fall for this again after the West has gone out of its way setting up examples around the world to convince them it doesn't work.
It's interesting how 30 years ago, western economists were trying to sell everybody how moving all our industries to China will eventually turn the latter into a democracy because economic growth and democracy goes hand in hand.
30 years later, the Chinese communist party has never been as powerful as it is today and they are still employing the same barbaric methods to crush any form of rebellion, as seen with how they are dealing with the Uyghur.
my opinion: they are not at all the same thing, and it was naive to think it would happen in china (markets existed a long time before capitalism even existed and democracy was quite the no-show for a long time)
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No. HK people are not enjoying enough middle-class comfort and prosperity.
Precisely, HK's income inequality is even worse than mainland China (0.537 vs. 0.467). And because HK has historically been more liberal, it's a subject of many rich and powerful, especially the demand from mainland people drives the real estate price even further [3].
HK's violent street protest is because there isn't a strong and significant middle class group. Otherwise, we all know for sure that middle class are never politically radical, nor are they willing to sacrifice their livelihood for the so-called freedom.
[1] https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/09/hong-kong-household-in...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250400/inequality-of-inc...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/correction-not-a-crisis-in-h...
> Precisely, HK's income inequality is even worse than mainland China
I'm not claiming you are wrong but inequality may not be tied to prosperity directly.
For example, I have £10,000,000 and all the people on my street only have £1000,000. That's high inequality.
Someone in rural china has RMB 2,000, the rest of the village has RMB 1,000
Much less inequality but I'd prefer the former to the latter.
You are absolutely right Hong Kong cannot even provide proper shelter or health system or good education to more than 40% of its people, who live in a space smaller than prison cell. All these protests are due to this simmering discontent.
I do not think living in a prison cell size apartment and then being hold hostage to mortgage for life working for 14 rich billionaires of the city is ahead of it's time.
Hong Kong is just paying price of its own reliance on get rich quick through property and closed China. First one destroyed innovation and second one is no longer true. Today Chinese cities are way ahead in innovation and technology, they also have a property bubble but not as severe as Hong Kong. Hope they learn lesson from Hong Kong.
When it suited Hong Kong they asked China to reinterpret basic law for their own benefit against basic human rights separating spouses and kids and they still do it with impunity and all people in Hong Kong are happy with that reinterpretation. You cross line once you cannot go back, this is what Hong Kong asked for and got it. Moreover Hong Kong is a Chinese territory so everything applicable in China apply except few exception as defined in basic law.
If not, why are they staying in HK?
Dead Comment
To pretend like it was a moral issue is insane. Most people don't care in the slightest in democratic countries. Virtually every country involved in sending troops couldn't point to it on a map nor talk about the region with any sort of knowledge. We walked in and replaced Hussein with ISIS. It will go down as 21st century Vietnam.
China has nukes. Absolutely nothing will happen regardless, just like 30 years ago. Perhaps some more outrage on twitter I guess?
China has shown (again) in their treatment of Hong Kong that they don't care about past agreements. The least that anyone can do, even in the presence of nukes, is to get their business out of China, and that is already happening to some degree. And of course be welcoming to people who choose to emigrate from Hong Kong.
Who and how? Outside of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions, which were huge excuses to hand over pallets of untraceable bills to US contractors.
Quite a few telecoms etc companies lost money and assets in the strife. Or contracts with the collapsed governments.
At least some serious sanctions / embargo on some chinese industries as a direct result of their actions in Hong Kong would be good.
"We are calling for peace, for order, for dialogue … we certainly call on China to be very careful and very respectful in how it deals with people who have legitimate concerns in Hong Kong," Trudeau told a televised news conference in Toronto.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-concerned-hong-kong...
"In the Joint Declaration, the PRC Government stated that it had decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories) with effect from 1 July 1997, and the UK Government declared that it would hand over Hong Kong to the PRC with effect from 1 July 1997. The PRC Government also declared its basic policies regarding Hong Kong in the document.
In accordance with the "one country, two systems" principle agreed between the UK and the PRC, the socialist system of PRC would not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years until 2047." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
Deleted Comment
The escalation in protests seemed very sharp. The ransacking of parliament appeared to have been allowed. There was no police presence at all. Almost as if they were being purposefully held back.
I might just have my tin foil hat on. I wouldn't be surprised though if Chinese groups have escalated mostly peaceful protests while police have been held back to create a situation which requires full Chinese state involvement.
It sort of bothers me how conspiracy theorist this sounds, but I know for a fact that this is the case.
I personally thinks this comes after there were more confrontations before, and there was a lot of public outcry over the use of force. (It being justified or not)
There was initially a large police presence inside the parliament (LegCo), but they all retreated after protestors became increasingly violent, I think it was mostly a tactical decision, it would've been impossible for the police to push back, so all they could do was hold their grounds. If protestors stormed in while the police was still there, it would've been a very difficult and violent confrontations. So I think they decided to fall back, and give protestors space.
And from previous protests, the police has never held back, they've always cracked down once the protests got out of control, don't really see what they would do so now, and just one time.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon...
Nationalism will not be tolerated.
Strategically, for China? Yes. Politically, for Xi? Maybe not. Remember that Xi is a dictator. Moves that boost him in the short term at China’s long-term expense are on the board.
That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.
Then at some point we realized China with its large labor pool, low wages and no effective safety legislation was a good place to build all our junk for cheap.
It's Belarus and Ukraine primarily at issue, not Poland.
Poland is doing great overall, they've almost entirely left Russia's orbit in terms of overt influence. Their economic output per capita is beginning to embarrass Russia, it's now 50% higher than Russia's figure (that gap will increase). Poland is starting to push into the upper tier of the middle income nations, with a real shot at leaving that group and moving into the upper economic tier in the next two decades, along with the Baltic states.
Russia can't do much to countries like Poland, the Baltics or eg Romania. They know that of course. They can and will persistently, aggressively mess with Belarus (forced union) and Ukraine (constantly seek to destabilize & split it) however. In Russia's ideal world, they keep those two nations impoverished beneath Russia's economic level, so that Russia can perpetually lord over them; then given enough time figure out a way to de facto annex all or a lot of their territory. The people running Russia - including Putin - believe that is all really Russian territory.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/212...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows...