I was living in Hong Kong when the protests first started and stayed through the entire 2019 year.
First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.
Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically.
Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government.
It's just absolutely false that "a vast majority of the locals hated the protests". See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1]. There was also a District Council election in November 2019 in which the establishment (pro-government) parties were utterly wiped out [2].
To your second point, HK's housing situation is an unmitigated disaster that undoubtedly contributed to the overall atmosphere of discontent with the government, but it was not a proximate cause of the protests.
To your third point, merely going to a foreign government and asking them to put pressure on your home government would not remotely reach the bar for a treason conviction in the U.S. This idea that what Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai did would be considered sedition or treason in Western democracies is something that everyone in China seems to "know" that just isn't so.
They literally petitioned US gov to sanction HK politicians, and drew up lists, which US did. That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.
Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate. Lets not pretend any west reporting on HK was/is legitimate.
I was at the 2019 Tiananmen Square vigil that kick started the protests.
Don't mistake the local population being sympathetic to some of the protester's messages over supporting the protests. When the protestors became disruptive and violent, I distinctly remembered most locals did not want the protests to continue anymore.
People aren't property. Hong Kong belongs to Hong Kong people. If you ask a typical Chinese people to explain why Hong Kong or Taiwan belong to China, they will never at any point consider the will of the born and raised there. They will instead blabber on about history how they used to belong to "them", where the delusion of identity leads them to believe something of the past once belonging to someone else, now belongs to them because of this arbitrary "us" and "china".
They have no capacity to consider the living breathing humans alive in the current era and attempt to derive from first principles what is best for everyone.
It's well reported matter public record that hundreds of thousands people protested, daily. And it's trivial to find polling that showed that about two thirds of Hong Kongers supported the protests, while only a third took your point of view.
Just because it is convenient for the CCP to coerce "confessions" about CIA involvement, and it's convenient for willing accomplices to their dishonest and cruel misrule to pretend that this is relevant, no one else needs to take this seriously.
> First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.
Not everyone is an American, and that's fine. Asians--on average--just care more that things "just work" than having more freedom to faff around. It's like Apple users versus Linux users. The Chinese government is a good government for the things that most Chinese people actually care about: economic development, building infrastructure, keeping trains running, etc. At the end of the day, most Chinese people in Hong Kong aren't missing the political freedoms that Americans would miss in their shoes, and value the things they do have that the government is good at.
The housing prices are sky high in HK because of artificial zoning and regulations, not because of geographical limitations. There are vast empty spaces that can be used for housing in HK, but the elites/politicians wouldn’t allow buildings in those areas because that would result in a collapse of real estate values and ultimately the wealth of elites.
What HK need is politicians that works for people and have a spine to go against the elites
Basically, it was pent up frustration from the youth over housing controlled by Hong Kong's property tycoons. The extradition law was just the final trigger.
A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".
It does seem most widespread revolutions only happen when the discomfort grows big enough (as the saying (1) goes, "civilisation is n missed meals away from anarchy" (n = a number below 10, I thought 3, but it's 9)).
It's interesting though, the CCP does chicken out. The last time that I remember this happening is when enough citizens in Beijing protested against their prison-like Covid restrictions, that they relaxed it within a day or two.
Same thing with Russians and the war: 2). Heck, Americans are anguishing but most are too comfortable/don't want to go through the discomfort to actually do anything against the rising fascism in their country.
A lot of Americans do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "they're doing it for the Middle Eastern people's freedom!"
> A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".
On a spectrum from like Appalachians at one end to the CCP on the other, most societies in the world are closer to the Chinese end of the spectrum. Appalachians will forgo civilization to avoid government. But most people in the world do want government to be a strict parent and maintain order and a well-functioning society. This is something that Americans completely do not understand.
> Millions of Hong Kongers were determined to keep the freedom they had enjoyed. The CCP has won, at least for now.
Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades.
It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.
The return of Hong Kong to China is the first global news item I really remember from my childhood (the death of Princess Dianna shortly thereafter being the second). One really felt a shift in england that day: this then is the final nail in the coffin of the british empire.
I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.
One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.
Through my hong kongese friends, I got pretty active in the 2019 umbrella protest. To me, one of the most impressive image of that era is the Kai Lan Egg japanese-styke manga use to show the world and the CCP what was going on.
HK topics seems to active disproportionate amount of almonds in western discourse. 10-15 years from now, new HK gen under decolonized patrioitc education going to be thoroughly Sinicized and wonder why west still can't take the L.
> We should not let Hong Kong fade away. We should not let Joshua Wong fade away. Or Jimmy Lai, or others
Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
> Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?
I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo.
Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business
They really fucked up when they started wearing Maga hats and making signs asking Donald Trump to save them. Personal feelings aside, it was a strategic mistake and completely turned China and probably a majority of HK itself against them. And obviously they did not get the intervention they were looking for.
If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.
Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking.
What happened in HK? Stupid nativist kids got disciplined for being pieces of shit, the treasonous ones jailed, and now post spanking they're partying it up on the mainland. TW should take note they're so so lucky to have that option, the alternative is Gaza.
It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence.
the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people.
However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.
As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.
A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it.
In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
> In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China.
Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country).
There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices.
In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.
This is bad American propaganda.
I’m sorry but what Hong Kong are we talking about?
And what advantages of democracy are we talking about? Unbridled inequalities fostered by a crooked ruling class with absolutely zero respect for international laws and diplomatic order?
This narrative could work when the US were still disguising their true nature. Nowadays… not so much
It's not propaganda. It's just the result of the policies that the CCP has implemented in the past, and given their death grip on politics in China, it could very well happen again should it be found advantageous to the survival of the party.
> This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.
No, it wasn't.
It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
It was right every day after the communists took over China. That's quite a few years. And it was wrong of the UK to give back Hong Kong, as can be clearly seen today as China can't be trusted to honor the treaty, and certainly not be trusted to treat its citizens with a minimum of dignity.
Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK and the fact they were treated differently from other Chinese citizens in the first place is a historic injustice rooted in the UK's desire to force Chinese citizens into opium addiction for their own profit?
Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?
Why should anyone honor an agreement with the drug dealer that attacked you so they could keep selling drugs and stole some of your property in the process?
If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.
Why should the UK have any agreement with France, who for so long agitated and sponsored terorism in the UK?
Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago?
Or russia that killed parts of our royal family?
Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936)
the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)
Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.
USA propaganda. They try to weaken any democracy so they seems the least worst option.
(Of course there is other "worst option" countries, who wants to live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Rwanda, Uganda, Etc.? [allies of usa]).
I was living in Hong Kong when the protests first started and stayed through the entire 2019 year.
First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.
Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically.
Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government.
[0]https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-cris...
[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-afford...
[2]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001
I was there too.
It's just absolutely false that "a vast majority of the locals hated the protests". See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1]. There was also a District Council election in November 2019 in which the establishment (pro-government) parties were utterly wiped out [2].
To your second point, HK's housing situation is an unmitigated disaster that undoubtedly contributed to the overall atmosphere of discontent with the government, but it was not a proximate cause of the protests.
To your third point, merely going to a foreign government and asking them to put pressure on your home government would not remotely reach the bar for a treason conviction in the U.S. This idea that what Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai did would be considered sedition or treason in Western democracies is something that everyone in China seems to "know" that just isn't so.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-hong-kongers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_local_elections
>put pressure on your home government
They literally petitioned US gov to sanction HK politicians, and drew up lists, which US did. That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.
Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate. Lets not pretend any west reporting on HK was/is legitimate.
I was at the 2019 Tiananmen Square vigil that kick started the protests.
Don't mistake the local population being sympathetic to some of the protester's messages over supporting the protests. When the protestors became disruptive and violent, I distinctly remembered most locals did not want the protests to continue anymore.
People aren't property. Hong Kong belongs to Hong Kong people. If you ask a typical Chinese people to explain why Hong Kong or Taiwan belong to China, they will never at any point consider the will of the born and raised there. They will instead blabber on about history how they used to belong to "them", where the delusion of identity leads them to believe something of the past once belonging to someone else, now belongs to them because of this arbitrary "us" and "china". They have no capacity to consider the living breathing humans alive in the current era and attempt to derive from first principles what is best for everyone.
No one said people are property. Hong Kong people still enjoy disproportionally high quality of life compared to Mainland Chinese people.
The biggest reason for this is because of China. Hong Kong acts as a financial hub for business between China and the outside world.
In fact, they are ranked #14 world wide in GDP PPP per capita.[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
It's well reported matter public record that hundreds of thousands people protested, daily. And it's trivial to find polling that showed that about two thirds of Hong Kongers supported the protests, while only a third took your point of view.
Just because it is convenient for the CCP to coerce "confessions" about CIA involvement, and it's convenient for willing accomplices to their dishonest and cruel misrule to pretend that this is relevant, no one else needs to take this seriously.
Reported by who? The famously neutral The Guardian?
There were large participation in non-violent protests in the beginning.
By the time it got violent, it was almost all just students and the youth protesting. It lasted for almost an entire year.
> First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.
Not everyone is an American, and that's fine. Asians--on average--just care more that things "just work" than having more freedom to faff around. It's like Apple users versus Linux users. The Chinese government is a good government for the things that most Chinese people actually care about: economic development, building infrastructure, keeping trains running, etc. At the end of the day, most Chinese people in Hong Kong aren't missing the political freedoms that Americans would miss in their shoes, and value the things they do have that the government is good at.
The housing prices are sky high in HK because of artificial zoning and regulations, not because of geographical limitations. There are vast empty spaces that can be used for housing in HK, but the elites/politicians wouldn’t allow buildings in those areas because that would result in a collapse of real estate values and ultimately the wealth of elites.
What HK need is politicians that works for people and have a spine to go against the elites
Yes, exactly. See this report: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3030209...
Basically, it was pent up frustration from the youth over housing controlled by Hong Kong's property tycoons. The extradition law was just the final trigger.
A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".
It does seem most widespread revolutions only happen when the discomfort grows big enough (as the saying (1) goes, "civilisation is n missed meals away from anarchy" (n = a number below 10, I thought 3, but it's 9)).
It's interesting though, the CCP does chicken out. The last time that I remember this happening is when enough citizens in Beijing protested against their prison-like Covid restrictions, that they relaxed it within a day or two.
Same thing with Russians and the war: 2). Heck, Americans are anguishing but most are too comfortable/don't want to go through the discomfort to actually do anything against the rising fascism in their country.
1) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/05/02/nine-meals/
2) https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/06/war-of-the-worl...
A lot of Americans do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "they're doing it for the Middle Eastern people's freedom!"
Feels like you wrote this without reading my comment to the end, where I do point out with Americans it's not much different.
Or to spread democracy across the world and to protect human rights…
> A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".
On a spectrum from like Appalachians at one end to the CCP on the other, most societies in the world are closer to the Chinese end of the spectrum. Appalachians will forgo civilization to avoid government. But most people in the world do want government to be a strict parent and maintain order and a well-functioning society. This is something that Americans completely do not understand.
> the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them
Totally false
> Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot
If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.
China belongs to Taiwan if you want to go down that route.
ICE is so healthy…
You're right. Violent authoritarian thugs are bad. There should be systems in place to sweep them away. Ideally, through peaceful means.
I'd be interested to see what has been implemented with regard to this under the stewardship of the CCP.
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> Millions of Hong Kongers were determined to keep the freedom they had enjoyed. The CCP has won, at least for now.
Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades.
It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.
The return of Hong Kong to China is the first global news item I really remember from my childhood (the death of Princess Dianna shortly thereafter being the second). One really felt a shift in england that day: this then is the final nail in the coffin of the british empire.
I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.
One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.
Through my hong kongese friends, I got pretty active in the 2019 umbrella protest. To me, one of the most impressive image of that era is the Kai Lan Egg japanese-styke manga use to show the world and the CCP what was going on.
https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-...
Wow that artist is nice. Reading that unlocked a memory of this animated video
https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"
it is so depressing even after this many years. Thanks for sharing the video, I forgot about it ..
HK topics seems to active disproportionate amount of almonds in western discourse. 10-15 years from now, new HK gen under decolonized patrioitc education going to be thoroughly Sinicized and wonder why west still can't take the L.
> We should not let Hong Kong fade away. We should not let Joshua Wong fade away. Or Jimmy Lai, or others
Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
> Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?
I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo.
Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business
> I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo.
Fair enough, but many have the ability to empathise with people even if they don’t know them personally.
True, but empathy and calling for actions is two different things
Here's how it started
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing
A guy commited homicide and walks free after 19 months in jail.
And those "Free Hong Kong" protesters were for him, not against him.
They really fucked up when they started wearing Maga hats and making signs asking Donald Trump to save them. Personal feelings aside, it was a strategic mistake and completely turned China and probably a majority of HK itself against them. And obviously they did not get the intervention they were looking for.
If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.
Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910
At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.
Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.
What happened in HK? Stupid nativist kids got disciplined for being pieces of shit, the treasonous ones jailed, and now post spanking they're partying it up on the mainland. TW should take note they're so so lucky to have that option, the alternative is Gaza.
> Taiwan should take note
It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence.
the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people.
However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.
As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.
So, America good, China bad?
America? It was the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
>"So, America good, China bad?"
No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it.
In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
> In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
This is a Western view of things.
Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China.
Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country).
There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices.
In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.
This is bad American propaganda. I’m sorry but what Hong Kong are we talking about? And what advantages of democracy are we talking about? Unbridled inequalities fostered by a crooked ruling class with absolutely zero respect for international laws and diplomatic order? This narrative could work when the US were still disguising their true nature. Nowadays… not so much
[flagged]
the usa propaganda is strong on you
It's not propaganda. It's just the result of the policies that the CCP has implemented in the past, and given their death grip on politics in China, it could very well happen again should it be found advantageous to the survival of the party.
Even the CCP admits the starvations they created under Mao dude.
...and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.
Well no. This series of events happened exactly because the laws set up by colonial British would let loose a murderer.
Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.
> This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.
No, it wasn't.
It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
> How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
Are you suggesting that flooding a country with opium so that the ruling classes would sell them tea, causing huge addiction, is somehow immoral?
Its not the british empires finest moment. mind you, france, portugal and the USA were very happy to collude with us to get decent trading terms.
(hence why there are some really well preserved portugese style neighbourhoods in Macau )
Note that the lease was on the mainland part of Hong Kong. The island was conquered outright and Britain formally owned it in perpetuity.
It was right every day after the communists took over China. That's quite a few years. And it was wrong of the UK to give back Hong Kong, as can be clearly seen today as China can't be trusted to honor the treaty, and certainly not be trusted to treat its citizens with a minimum of dignity.
Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK and the fact they were treated differently from other Chinese citizens in the first place is a historic injustice rooted in the UK's desire to force Chinese citizens into opium addiction for their own profit?
Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?
Why should one party to an agreement hold the other party accountable to the terms of the agreement?
Why should anyone honor an agreement with the drug dealer that attacked you so they could keep selling drugs and stole some of your property in the process?
If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.
Why should the UK have any agreement with France, who for so long agitated and sponsored terorism in the UK?
Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago?
Or russia that killed parts of our royal family?
Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936)
the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)
Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.
USA propaganda. They try to weaken any democracy so they seems the least worst option. (Of course there is other "worst option" countries, who wants to live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Rwanda, Uganda, Etc.? [allies of usa]).
Propaganda of what?
If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.
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