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)
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?
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
1. Hong Kong, at least on paper, is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people. Mainland party hasn’t acted yet because, again, on paper, this is a Hong Kong issue. But things could get messy when Hong Kong government cries for help
2. The protest started when a bill that many feared could be used to target and deport anti-China citizens. Hong Kong government was quick to withdrawn and eventually kill that bill but the protest got bigger regardless as they see the government is too pro-China
3. Many protesters are now actively attacking police force even if unprovoked. Some even send threats to police officer’s families whilst some caught getting cash handed to them for taking part in protests by foreigners
4. Sentiment in mainland China is mostly against these protests as they see Hong Kong benefits financially a lot from China since its return, and Hong Kong’s real issue is its ever increasing wealth gap
Getting back to the news itself, this is indeed very alarming.
No such bill is killed "for good" as long as the people who proposed it are still in power and the protesters know that.
> Many protesters are now actively attacking police force even if unprovoked.
If true this is very regrettable, but once you go up against the institution which has the monopoly of using violence what other realistic means are there? Afaik they did try the non-violent way a couple of years back but those protests gave no concrete results and their leaders were eventually arrested nonetheless.
Except it's not, top leadership is elected by a small council of business owners and other high ranking members of society, the people they are allowed to vote for are selected by Beijing and anyone they don't like is vetoed out.
And in the last election, the government was able to even disqualify candidates from the general election.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/12/breaking-hong-kong-ban...
You called "elected" by a group consists of 1200 people as elected by Hong Kong people?
There was public opposition since it was proposed in February but they only backed down in the presence of overwhelming public outcry and blamed the public for misunderstanding the intent of the bill. They were not "quick" nor were they easily persuaded to back down. They could easily reintroduce it after protests died down.
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?
When a country deploys it's own troops internally, as opposed to the police, it's often a forerunner to martial law or civil war.
Believe me or not, 10 years ago Shenzhen had a wall around it to separate if from the rest of the country.
For all intent and purposes, SZ does feels like almost like a different country. Not to the same extend as HK, but still.
It will be definitely too late to protest about it then.
After the first 6 months in the military, you'll have been broken enough to have lost a lot of sense of individuality and are willing to just blindly follow orders. After your initial training, you're likely dumped into an established unit where you are at the very bottom of the totem pole. Until about 20 years ago in western militaries, you'd experience physical violence on the first day of your first posting into a "real" unit just to show you your place. I'm assuming this still happens in China. If there are soldiers in those trucks it is very likely they haven't been told a single thing about their mission.
It's very easy to live your comfortable life and talk about how evil the individual soldiers are but in reality, the troops holding the rifles on the ground are simply a tool of those higher.
From the description:
Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti...
The result could be similar.
> West wasn't ready to die for Danzig in 1939
by linking a Wikipedia that argues that this slogan was a fringe opinion that was promptly disavowed by political leaders and had _very_ limited political or societal impact in general doesn't really help make a case.
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.
That being said, one is not being unreasonable to suspect their level of editorial independence could be influenced.
They cannot have this form of anarchy and disturbance.
Actually, the US would have acted harshly already if it was on US soil. I can't think of any protesters invading congress and not getting shot at. Stopping traffic at an airport? Yeah that is not going to happen for very long.
China must act. Any nation would act at this point.
It will come with much suffering and it is almost completely unnecessary. The protesters took it way too far. It will also make China look bad on the international stage, especially with the Us controlling the western narrative.
Perhaps still China can find an alternative approach. I hope so.
Why do you say this? HK is still a nominally free society and protest is their right
> China must act. Any nation would act at this point.
that's not a given, and why must they act against peaceful protest? Lining up para-military tanks against a civilian population is not something that most nations would do. It's clearly designed to intimidate.
> Perhaps still China can find an alternative approach. I hope so.
The alternative approach is pretty obvious to any democratic nation
> act against peaceful protest
But violent protest is not a right. With Molotov cocktails being thrown around and lasers used to burn the polices' eyes, it's not "peaceful protest" anymore.
However, I'd like to point out that the shutdown of the airport is how the protest should look like. People being peaceful, so no one's getting hurt and there's no police showing up.
I am of course not at all advocating today's Chinese violence. I just don't understand how any of us have a leg to stand on in feeling outraged. This is the world, the so-called modern world, that, by using mobile phones and modern medicine, we've implicitly signed up for. HK is but one example of the price of modernity. What if native Americans or indigenous Australians rose up in the same way, asking for their land back? Or Indians and Africans rose up asking for their natural resources and slave labour back?
The real "crime" here is that we're so morally bankrupt and out of touch with history that all we can do is watch and tweet hashtags. Globalisation is here to stay. The quality of Western life is fundamentally dependent on Chinese labour, manufacturing and technology. We don't get to reap the benefits of that and at the same time arrogantly and unreflectively denounce their political policies. And to repeat, this is not a justification of China's recent stance on HK or any of its other foreign or domestic policies.
Perhaps we should boycott everything Chinese? Of course that is never going to happen. But we can at least help each other remember how exactly the West came to be. Though of course we don't because we're the top dogs and no one is forcing us to. Which I might argue is the true source of the outrage that most of us feel in hearing the news from HK: outrage that something is actually forcing us to reflect on our own circumstances. And what better scapegoat to deflect those difficult emotions than a quintessentially foreign, little understood far far-away culture.
Because the people of Hong Kong have no responsibility for the Opium Wars perhaps? I'm not sure what you are actually suggesting.
>The real "crime" here is that we're so morally bankrupt and out of touch with history that all we can do is watch and tweet hashtags.
Ok, what do you want to do?
I'm suggesting that, figuratively, if you actually knew that you lived by a volcano, the emotional shock caused by its eruption could be tempered by some foresight.
The Opium Trade and Wars were evil and at a massive scale, I just don't see how that can be spun any other way. How was this ever going to turn out any differently? Like I said the only reason we're so outraged is because we obliterated every other nation to the point that they'll never be able to rise up.
Specially in a case where the legacy that is being put in question is exactly the culture of respect for human rights, civil liberties and democracy brought by an Western nation, that is now under threat by an autocratic power: The central Government of China.
There is a term coined specifically for that: Whataboutism
Again, I must repeat, I do not at all condone China's lack of respect for human rights. All I am saying is that people need to know the actual context of the situation. If HK had come into being due to centuries of mutual, conflict-free trade, then I think this would be different situation. The fact is though that HK is the legacy of a sustained, coordinated, state-level, brutal and greedy campaign to extract as much money as possible from the Chinese.
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.
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.
EDIT: It is true China is doing some military performance in SZ to scare off the protesters. But the PLA has not entered HK as that would seem unwise.
What is happening instead is Chinese police or army likely working inside the HK police force.
In many ways, french police did repress protesters in a much more brutal way than HK police has done so far. Of course having PLA in the city would be a different story however...
The protesters were burning cars and destroying public and private property to vast extents, besides throwing Molotov cocktails at the police.
The yellow vests went way, way beyond their right to protest.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/-yellow-vest-protests-grow-v...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-ve...
An army division from a different region, properly instructed (brainwashed) can do “wonders” in terms of viciousness and brutally.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon...
Nationalism will not be tolerated.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/212...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows...
Let them know dialogue & political solutions are needed, violence is not acceptable, and that PEOPLE ARE WATCHING AND CARE.
Your voice can make a difference to the political calculus. But time is very short. You must act now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehi...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/hong-kong-protests-china-med...
P.S.: On a side note, it's quite sickening to see how much American society is divided, that even the original Twitter thread became flooded with people talking about Trump and blaming him for what is happening in Hong Kong. It is absolutely ridiculous to an outsider to see this behavior.
Here they are "just restoring law and order" against vandals, a critical role of any government, so very few critics will be heard.
