23 ms·

Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

394 points by janantala 7y ago

griffoa 7y ago
And Reddit is censoring like there is no tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/cpnqce/reddit_is_actively_curating_and_removing_chinese/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/cpnqce/reddit_i... Tencent has a stake in Reddit. The following movies are Tencent movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Pictures Hence the lack of a Taiwanese flag on the back of Tom Cruise like in the first movie. I can assure you there will probably also be no gay people in any of these movies. This is getting out of hand. The Chinese government is leaking into our world and popping up everywhere now.
Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
Just a side note: 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 Hong Kong government was quick to withdrawn and eventually kill that bill but the protest got bigger regardless as they see the government is too pro-China 3.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.
- thenaturalist 7y ago
  What's your source for claims 3 & 4?
  - darkhorn 7y ago
    You can see their propaganda here https://reddit.com/r/sino https://reddit.com/r/sino This is pro-China propaganda sub-reddit. For example if you write something that they don't like then they are going to ban you for life. Very interesting, it is like from Soviet Union or North Korea.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  The pictures we're seeing is of cops beating, rubber-shooting and tear-gassing protesters in tight spaces without obvious provocation.
  - Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
    Every story has two sides and things on the other side - police officers bitten to bleed or eyes flashed by high power laser pointers. The sad thing is, we gotta take whatever the media feeds us:)
    - tgragnato 7y ago
      HKers are protesting because (for historical and economical reasons) they have been blessed by an incredible fortune, a fortune that's shaming away. We could talk about reasons and sides, but that's misleading and unproductive. The sad reality is that China is a "Unitary one-party socialist republic", a bad euphemism for an undemocratic country ruled by a single dictatorial party. There's a lot of misinformation surrounding the violence of protesters, but let's not forget that these officers are protecting the interests of a regime.
  - rruieews 7y ago
    Here are videos of protestors beating cops and other innocent bystanders, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1nW7Oa3mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1nW7Oa3mc
    - ptx 7y ago
      The video looks consistent with that I've heard reported elsewhere: Protestors are not attacking people, only symbols of the Chinese government. The violence that has been perpetrated has been directed towards the protestors, e.g. the knife attack on a protestor, the fireworks shot at protestors (seen in the video) and various excesses of the police.
- harimau777 7y ago
  Is it generally thought that the protesters attacking police are legitimate protesters as opposed to agent provocateurs?
  - Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
    They could be provocateurs, and sadly there’s no way to verify this for now. My point is, to judge things fair and square you gotta hear from both sides:D
    - rorykoehler 7y ago
      Having read all your comments it seems your point is to introduce doubt and muddy the waters. It's a classic propaganda tactic which is routinely employed by the CCP. It might work on reddit but it will take more than that here.
      - girvo 7y ago
        I certainly hope that it requires more than that here. It seems pretty transparent to me, but others are defending it, so I’m unsure if we’re really as immune as we’d like to think
- paganel 7y ago
  > and eventually kill that 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.
- lewi 7y ago
  Claims without citations, 5 day old account, comment history shows user is from china: not sure if I'd trust the comment.
  - majia 7y ago
    Please follow HN guidelines and refrain from personal attack. Assume good faith and be substantive.
    - rorykoehler 7y ago
      What wasn't substantive about the GP's post? It was factual to a fault.
      - majia 7y ago
        Being substantive means replying to the actual argument instead of questioning the credibility of the person who makes an argument.
        rorykoehler 7y ago
        The OP started without substance while trying to smear HKers fighting for their freedom from the authoritarian CCP so why attack the person who highlights the suspicious nature of the accusers account? We live in a world of ever increasing propaganda. Pointing it out is as substantive as it gets. If anything your message is better suited for the OP. They did exactly what you are flagging the child comment for.
        majia 7y ago
        If you think OP is smearing, you can refute his argument with facts and flag his comment. It’s a human bias to think someone whom we disagree with has a malicious agenda. Democracy can survive the worst oppression, but will perish if we fail to conduct civilized discussion and start accusing and labeling each other when we disagree.
- hcheung 7y ago
  > is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people. You called "elected" by a group consists of 1200 people as elected by Hong Kong people?
  - Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
    There is no perfect election format, even if the presidential election of US is often discussed for possible modifications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election#Proposed_changes_to_the_election_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
    - hcheung 7y ago
      At least it is voted by the people no matter how imperfect it is. 1200 people is hardly a definition of "by people".
      - yyhhsj0521 7y ago
        It's an electoral college system. By this logic, the US president is elected by only 538 "people".
        loyukfai 7y ago
        AFAIK, those 538 people follow the decisions made earlier by the majority people. Those 1200 definitely aren't. Yes, the US system may not be perfect, but to put both on the same balance is such a misleading comparison.
- PlasticTank 7y ago
  > Hong Kong, at least on paper, is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people 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.
  - loyukfai 7y ago
    Also, half of the Legislative Council are elected by "functional constituency" including even agriculture and fishery. These constituencies are largely pro-establishment and anti-democratic. 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-bans-democrat-lau-siu-lai-standing-kowloon-west-election/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/12/breaking-hong-kong-ban...
- Riverheart 7y ago
  "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" 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.
Tharkun 7y ago
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.
- icebraining 7y ago
  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.
  - dukoid 7y ago
    I suspect the real reason is fear of retaliation from China... Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Norway_relations#2010:_Nobel_Peace_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Norway_relations...
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Sure, both are consequences of the same overall point: the west doesn't have the same power over China that it had over the AS countries.
      - mcny 7y ago
        > Sure, both are consequences of the same overall point: the west doesn't have the same power over China that it had over the AS countries. China PR (the de facto mainland government) already blames the US for Hong Kong protests. Things will get worse if we do something overt. https://archive.fo/VHiXL https://archive.fo/VHiXL
- A2017U1 7y ago
  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?
xfs 7y ago
Actual news: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chinese-armed-police-truck-convoy-rolls-city-near-hong-kong https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chin...
- teknologist 7y ago
  SCMP has become a CCP mouthpiece after Jack Ma bought it.
  - the_duke 7y ago
    The post doesn't contain much in terms of commentary, but it does include a quote describing this as a "psychological warfare tactic", so it doesn't seem to be that biased yet.
  - majia 7y ago
    SCMP still publishes a lot of anti CCP articles and is banned in China.
  - loyukfai 7y ago
    Very much untrue, CCTV, People's Daily, Global Times, now those are CCP mouthpieces. That being said, one is not being unreasonable to suspect their level of editorial independence could be influenced.
    - teknologist 7y ago
      The "whataboutism" of naming other media outlets doesn't really help your argument here. You only just have to open the SCMP front page to find them calling military deployments in a stadium near Hong Kong "drills", citing anonymous sources that say "they are not of concern" and quoting liberally from anonymous posters on Chinese message boards spouting hate.
      - loyukfai 7y ago
        I just did and I couldn't find the thing you mentioned, mind to share the link?
fasthandle 7y ago
Hong Kong reddit has the top coverage of HK.
- decoyworker 7y ago
  Live thread that I've been following: https://old.reddit.com/live/133sixros7tu5/ https://old.reddit.com/live/133sixros7tu5/
hjanssen 7y ago
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. Edit: Grammar
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  It has already given Trump ideas. Huge ideas.
- adventured 7y ago
  > 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.
  - simonh 7y ago
    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.
trilila 7y ago
Strange how putrid governments find members of society happy to oppress other members of the society. Such as those soldiers happily waiting to execute orders against the freedoms of their fellow citizens.
- ptah 7y ago
  i think the communist party has successfully managed to get most citizens to view themselves as part of a larger community more than as individuals
- MaximumYComb 7y ago
  I'm assuming you're privileged enough to have never been an enlisted soldier in a military? This isn't hordes of men clamouring to "oppress" someone. Often people are conscripted or come from such a poor background that enlistment helps their life significantly. 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.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Most of those troops will be from rural regions. Everything they know about the wider world is told to them by state media and their commanders.
    - kzrdude 7y ago
      Can we say the same of the soldiers the US sent to Iraq?
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Sadly the Chinese govt plays no games. See Tienanmen, Tibet or million+ Muslims in concentration camps. Here they are "just restoring law and order" against vandals, a critical role of any government, so very few critics will be heard.
chroem- 7y ago
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.
- jonathanyc 7y ago
  How’s Russia working out for us and for the Russian people these days? Or Belarus, or Poland?
  - chroem- 7y ago
    At least they're not getting rolled over by tanks.
    - YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
      did you know russian army drove tanks at people in multiple cities when soviet union fell apart? google january 20th tragedy, warning: its graphic
      - free652 7y ago
        Like this one? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom
        YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
        while thats a different tragedy resulted from incompetence of soviet assigned government, no, I am referring to what they did in 3 different countries. 1-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January 2-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_9_tragedy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_9_tragedy 3-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)
  - adventured 7y ago
CapricornNoble 7y ago
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. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2125880/china-brings-peoples-armed-police-under-control-top http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/212... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows-dramatic-video-chinese-army-preparing-hong-kong-invasion https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows...
Quiark 7y ago
~~This is basically fake news, or a hoax, a very popular one. The videos are not current.~~ 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.
- robert_foss 7y ago
  Citation required.
- nerdy 7y ago
  Do you have any links to previous posting(s) of the videos? When are they from?
- jckt 7y ago
  I actually thought that the whole "mainland infiltrates HK police" conspiracy was just PRC-phobia (which is a real problem in HK when it becomes xenophobic, sadly) but there's actually been evidence of it (albeit not much). If you're interested you can find videos of a riot policeman saying 「退後一點」 to protesters (and other weird sentences), which is extremely awkward in Cantonese (instead Cantonese would be 「褪後啲」 or something, sounds totally different), especially if you're in an intense situation.
timwaagh 7y ago
China got away with it once but escalation is in principle a sign of weak government. Compare a nation like France which mostly waited it out.
- nnx 7y ago
  Don’t think France “mostly waited it out” when there has been more injured yellow vests than HKers so far: 2 more or less connected deaths, 1 person lost lower arm, and at least 24 lost an eye, including one of the most pacific yellow vest leader Jerome Rodrigues https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/14/europe/france-bastille-day-injured-yellow-vests-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/14/europe/france-bastille-day-in... 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...
  - wtdata 7y ago
    That's a very biased take on what happened in France. 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-violent-in-france/1327559 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/-yellow-vest-protests-grow-v... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-vests-facebook-live https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-ve... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47666245 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47666245
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - sunseb 7y ago
      I live in France, and I must say I am offended by your comment! People burning cars and destroying property are not yellow vests, they are antifa groups and their job is to bring chaos to discredit the yellow vests movement. http://lemurjaune.fr/ http://lemurjaune.fr/
    - 7y ago
heraclius 7y ago
The reason to send in the PLA would be to increase the level of violence, but there’s no reason to risk the backlash of sending them in when the HK police can do the job too—even if the Central People’s Government were to suddenly decide that live ammunition is needed, they would still be able to rely on the HK police. The deployment of troops is therefore almost certainly, as was noted in the SCMP, a statement of intent as opposed to a sign that there will be a deployment of troops.
- rdtsc 7y ago
  They think the HK police might not follow orders and shoot their own neighbors, friends and family. An army division from a different region, properly instructed (brainwashed) can do “wonders” in terms of viciousness and brutally.
tus88 7y ago
The title makes it sound like Shenzen is not part of China. You don't "enter" part of your own country.
- mc32 7y ago
  Do you think “amassing” would sound better even if it described the actions on the ground more accurately?
- gerbilly 7y ago
  If you are a military force, there absolutely is a concept of entering your own territory, going back to the Rubicon. 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.
  - tus88 7y ago
    I would have been happy with deployed.
    - RobertKerans 7y ago
      Enter implies attacking force, deployed does not, so deployed is not correct in the context of the article.
- cyberbanjo 7y ago
  Deployed to?
- loceng 7y ago
  Well, yes, language does have its inherent tone that culture adopts - "arriving to Shenzen" certainly sounds like a normal behaviour, however this seems anything but normal.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > The title makes it sound like Shenzen is not part of China. You don't "enter" part of your own country. 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.
ackbar03 7y ago
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
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > 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.
  - loyukfai 7y ago
    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. That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.
    - ackbar03 7y ago
      I think hks importance is extremely arguable. Hks gdp is barely 3 percent of china's with a stalling growth rate. I've worked in both Shanghai and Hong Kong and I can say a lot of the large cities are much much nicer in China now. You also have a lot things like hackathons and events where you see lots of young creative people who really want to make things. In Hong Kong the culture is more towards looking good in a suit and networking, a side effect of the dominance of financial industry. Personally I think that ship has long sailed and it's not particularly anyone's fault.
      - loyukfai 7y ago
        Not everything can be measured by GDP though. For instance, HK can become a buffer point or backup plan should the trade war further escalates. Not to mention that many CCP members have a lot of investment in Hong Kong, a collapse of the HK economy, should the PLA be deployed, would be quite problematic. But I generally agree with your observations.
SilkRoadie 7y ago
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.
- mc32 7y ago
  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.
  - krageon 7y ago
    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.
    - dmd 7y ago
      If you really know this for a fact, you should contact https://www.nytimes.com/tips https://www.nytimes.com/tips But I'm guessing by 'fact' you mean 'I'm very convinced of my own opinions'.
      - krageon 7y ago
        I don't live in the United States, I do know it for a fact and I will not sabotage my own life or those of the people I care about just because you would love to read some drama in the papers. The net result of that would be that in a month or two nobody would remember it, and lives would still be ruined. It is almost mystifyingly selfish of you to ask this of me, especially when you souse it with your fairly hostile closing remark.
enterx 7y ago
looks like censorship.
tombh 7y ago
Why aren't we talking more about the history of HK's creation, namely the Opium wars? I suspect that the majority of people that feel strongly about China's behaviour don't actually have any idea what the British did to China in the middle of the 19th century, namely: in the style of a mafia get 10s of millions of Chinese addicted to Opium and then go to war with them when China tried to put an end to the trade. It is by all today's measures what I'm sure the majority of people would call evil. 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.
- wtdata 7y ago
  What does that got to do with anything? Why do people keep bringing centuries old examples of the shortcomings of western civilization, to apologize for the very present disregards against human rights in many non-western countries? 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
adamnemecek 7y ago
How can I get involved?
dep_b 7y ago
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.
- Jgrubb 7y ago
  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.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    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".
    - krageon 7y ago
      What do you mean when you say "honorary Europe", because I am certain it does not mean what I expect it to mean: A fundamentally fair and well-functioning society with very few if any governmental killings and high stability within it's borders.
JudasGoat 7y ago
Agitators will be sent in to commit acts that justify a military takeover. It's a familiar plot.
hsnewman 7y ago
I'm praying for those poor people, it looks like they will have their freedom taken soon.
wtdata 7y ago
Some major news networks are covering the event as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehicles-gather-in-shenzen-hong-kong-protests-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehi... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/hong-kong-protests-china-media-says-military-assembles-nearby.html 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.
sfthrower89 7y ago
It has been interesting reading the comments on related articles. PRC clearly has many 10s of thousands of trolls on staff to spread mis-information and leave broken English pro-China comments on basically every comment section in the world.
ThinkBeat 7y ago
Whoever is behind the current protests in Hong Kong. (possibly US possibly China, perhaps it has changed). is forcing China to act in a brutal manner. 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.
- whytaka 7y ago
  Occupy Wall Street and the Wisconsin congressional sit-in comes to mind. They both eventually ended without great violence.
- d0100 7y ago
  This whole comment is disturbing on so many levels.
- chadcmulligan 7y ago
  > The protesters took it way too far. 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
  - yyhhsj0521 7y ago
    > protest is their right > 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.
apexalpha 7y ago
What's with the apologists in here saying the US is behind it all and copying other Chinese talking points?
- MagnumOpus 7y ago
  Note the heavy creation of new accounts who parrot similar sets of talking points. State-sponsored posting has reached HN. Surprising to me, we are a vanishingly small niche audience -- but it lets you draw conclusions about the extent of wumaodang activity in other venues.
nobodyandproud 7y ago
Cooler heads will say this is a show and a first warning to HK.
- markus_zhang 7y ago
  Indeed. And a warning more to the HK overlords than to the protesters.
apo 7y ago
The only thing worse for an authoritarian regime than making a show of force and following up on it is to make the show of force and not follow up on it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chewz 7y ago
West wasn't ready to die for Danzig in 1939 and isn't ready to die for Hong-Kong in 2019. The result could be similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F
- StreamBright 7y ago
  This is a bit far fetched. Hongkong is part of China, it has been part of it for a long time. UK rule was a blip in that and it was a 99 years lease anyways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hong_Kong
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - chewz 7y ago
    Still it makes me a little angry, we have 8 milion nice, young pro-democratic protesters in Hong-Kong facing communist tanks and we aren't even going to drop a single rocket on Beijing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      I am not sure where the 8 millions is from, the number of protesters are much less. Would you want to start a world war over HK?
      - chewz 7y ago
        War no, confrontation yes.
        thenewwazoo 7y ago
        Pick up your rifle, then, soldier.
        7y ago
La-ang 7y ago
It's on
partiallypro 7y ago
Trump just blinked this morning on his China tariffs; if that's not a green light for the Chinese military to act on Hong Kong, I don't know what is.
twhitmore 7y ago
Everybody, now is the time to email your local Chinese embassy. Carrie Lam, the top HK politician. Michael Tien and Ronnie Wong, leading pro-establishment politicians. 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.
hindsightbias 7y ago
“HKU poll: Only 3.1% of young Hongkongers identify as Chinese, marking 20 year low“ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hongkongers-identify-chinese-marking-20-year-low/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon... Nationalism will not be tolerated.
pimmen 7y ago
What I don't understand is the sentiment that if the people of Hong Kong's rights are suppressed, they should just protest in a way that's tidy, quiet and convenient for the government. That's not how Sun Yat Sen rolled, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution
BlueonMount 7y ago
I’m an ordinary HK resident, software engineer, living in Kowloon and work in HK island. I see the protesters breaking laws, damaging properties, obstructing traffic, causing the entire society to grind to halt. Their actions are not unlike mobs and they disrupt social order almost everywhere. I don’t know under what circumstances mainland military can get involved, but I hope when they do, law and order can be restored in my city.
- Epskampie 7y ago
  I don’t want to doubt your words without reason, but can you offer any proof that you are who you say, and not someone paid to sway opinions?
  - billfruit 7y ago
    In the other hand most of the reporting in the west is obviously giving the violence perpetrated by the protestors a free pass. From what I gather the protestors can no longer be called nonviolent.
  - BlueonMount 7y ago
    You can ask me things someone like me is supposed to know, see if I pass your Turing test.
    - Epskampie 7y ago
      I’ve been thinking, but it’s hard for me to come up with questions like that, not being from China/HK myself. Let me ask you this: do you feel the protestors are trying to protect your freedoms, or give you new ones?
- bouncycastle 7y ago
  So what are you going to do, when one day you wake up and find that wikipedia.org is blocked, as many other sites, when Hong Kong comes under the Great Firewall of China? It will be definitely too late to protest about it then.
hmx48 7y ago
Extremely disturbing
nathanhammond 7y ago
I'm currently in Hong Kong and have been here since before the protests began. This saber-rattling has been ongoing. This is an escalation, certainly, but it is not a new message being sent to Hong Kong and it falls mostly on deaf ears. Over the past approximately two months: - July 2019: With the pretense of preparation for the Chinese 70th anniversary celebrations, there were reportedly 190,000 police officers in Zhanjiang. [1] - July 31, 2019: PLA releases a propaganda video showing military practicing riot drills. Notably it has English subtitles implying its target audience. [2] - August 1, 2019: Approximately 12,000 police participated in anti-riot drills in Shenzhen. [3] - August 13, 2019: Military hardware shown moving into Shenzhen. [4] Everybody in Hong Kong already knows that their way of life is lost in the event that China gets involved. The Hongkonger's daily press conference said as much. [5] If either of the PLA or Shenzhen police become involved the outcome is predetermined, thus the relatively nihilistic mood. A local Hongkonger wrote this article for Dissent Magazine which also adds additional color. [6] Responding to other comments, the fears of a Tiananmen Square type incident are likely unfounded given the prevalence of video from all of the ongoing protests. State Media Propaganda does not work when presented to a global audience. Any event of that nature would presumably be one economic gamble too far for the CCP. * [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3020784/china-mobilises-190000-police-officers-70th-anniversary https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3020784/chi... [2] https://www.scmp.com/video/hong-kong/3020985/chinese-armys-hong-kong-garrison-releases-video-showing-anti-riot-drills https://www.scmp.com/video/hong-kong/3020985/chinese-armys-h... [3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3021597/chinese-police-mass-12000-anti-riot-officers-shenzhen-drill https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3021597/chi... [4] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chinese-armed-police-truck-convoy-rolls-city-near-hong-kong https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chin... [5] https://twitter.com/anti_elab/status/1161064639515389952 https://twitter.com/anti_elab/status/1161064639515389952 [6] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hong-kongs-fight-for-life https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hong-kongs-f...
varren 7y ago
Politics on HN... well, was hoping to see here discussion of protesters gadgets or government tools or some sophisticated communication protocols / equipment / organisation. Something about protesters use of lasers in an attempt to block riot police at Hong Kong airport

394 points by janantala 7y ago

And Reddit is censoring like there is no tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/cpnqce/reddit_is_actively_curating_and_removing_chinese/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/cpnqce/reddit_i... Tencent has a stake in Reddit. The following movies are Tencent movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Pictures Hence the lack of a Taiwanese flag on the back of Tom Cruise like in the first movie. I can assure you there will probably also be no gay people in any of these movies. This is getting out of hand. The Chinese government is leaking into our world and popping up everywhere now.

Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago

Just a side note: 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.

thenaturalist 7y ago
What's your source for claims 3 & 4?
- darkhorn 7y ago
  You can see their propaganda here https://reddit.com/r/sino https://reddit.com/r/sino This is pro-China propaganda sub-reddit. For example if you write something that they don't like then they are going to ban you for life. Very interesting, it is like from Soviet Union or North Korea.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
The pictures we're seeing is of cops beating, rubber-shooting and tear-gassing protesters in tight spaces without obvious provocation.
- Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
  Every story has two sides and things on the other side - police officers bitten to bleed or eyes flashed by high power laser pointers. The sad thing is, we gotta take whatever the media feeds us:)
  - tgragnato 7y ago
    HKers are protesting because (for historical and economical reasons) they have been blessed by an incredible fortune, a fortune that's shaming away. We could talk about reasons and sides, but that's misleading and unproductive. The sad reality is that China is a "Unitary one-party socialist republic", a bad euphemism for an undemocratic country ruled by a single dictatorial party. There's a lot of misinformation surrounding the violence of protesters, but let's not forget that these officers are protecting the interests of a regime.
- rruieews 7y ago
  Here are videos of protestors beating cops and other innocent bystanders, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1nW7Oa3mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1nW7Oa3mc
  - ptx 7y ago
    The video looks consistent with that I've heard reported elsewhere: Protestors are not attacking people, only symbols of the Chinese government. The violence that has been perpetrated has been directed towards the protestors, e.g. the knife attack on a protestor, the fireworks shot at protestors (seen in the video) and various excesses of the police.
harimau777 7y ago
Is it generally thought that the protesters attacking police are legitimate protesters as opposed to agent provocateurs?
- Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
  They could be provocateurs, and sadly there’s no way to verify this for now. My point is, to judge things fair and square you gotta hear from both sides:D
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    Having read all your comments it seems your point is to introduce doubt and muddy the waters. It's a classic propaganda tactic which is routinely employed by the CCP. It might work on reddit but it will take more than that here.
    - girvo 7y ago
      I certainly hope that it requires more than that here. It seems pretty transparent to me, but others are defending it, so I’m unsure if we’re really as immune as we’d like to think
paganel 7y ago
> and eventually kill that 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.
lewi 7y ago
Claims without citations, 5 day old account, comment history shows user is from china: not sure if I'd trust the comment.
- majia 7y ago
  Please follow HN guidelines and refrain from personal attack. Assume good faith and be substantive.
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    What wasn't substantive about the GP's post? It was factual to a fault.
    - majia 7y ago
      Being substantive means replying to the actual argument instead of questioning the credibility of the person who makes an argument.
      - rorykoehler 7y ago
        The OP started without substance while trying to smear HKers fighting for their freedom from the authoritarian CCP so why attack the person who highlights the suspicious nature of the accusers account? We live in a world of ever increasing propaganda. Pointing it out is as substantive as it gets. If anything your message is better suited for the OP. They did exactly what you are flagging the child comment for.
        majia 7y ago
        If you think OP is smearing, you can refute his argument with facts and flag his comment. It’s a human bias to think someone whom we disagree with has a malicious agenda. Democracy can survive the worst oppression, but will perish if we fail to conduct civilized discussion and start accusing and labeling each other when we disagree.
hcheung 7y ago
> is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people. You called "elected" by a group consists of 1200 people as elected by Hong Kong people?
- Tigah_pawszzz 7y ago
  There is no perfect election format, even if the presidential election of US is often discussed for possible modifications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election#Proposed_changes_to_the_election_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
  - hcheung 7y ago
    At least it is voted by the people no matter how imperfect it is. 1200 people is hardly a definition of "by people".
    - yyhhsj0521 7y ago
      It's an electoral college system. By this logic, the US president is elected by only 538 "people".
      - loyukfai 7y ago
        AFAIK, those 538 people follow the decisions made earlier by the majority people. Those 1200 definitely aren't. Yes, the US system may not be perfect, but to put both on the same balance is such a misleading comparison.
PlasticTank 7y ago
> Hong Kong, at least on paper, is ruled by a governing entity elected by Hong Kong people 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.
- loyukfai 7y ago
  Also, half of the Legislative Council are elected by "functional constituency" including even agriculture and fishery. These constituencies are largely pro-establishment and anti-democratic. 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-bans-democrat-lau-siu-lai-standing-kowloon-west-election/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/12/breaking-hong-kong-ban...
Riverheart 7y ago
"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" 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.

Tharkun 7y ago

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.

icebraining 7y ago
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.
- dukoid 7y ago
  I suspect the real reason is fear of retaliation from China... Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Norway_relations#2010:_Nobel_Peace_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Norway_relations...
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Sure, both are consequences of the same overall point: the west doesn't have the same power over China that it had over the AS countries.
    - mcny 7y ago
      > Sure, both are consequences of the same overall point: the west doesn't have the same power over China that it had over the AS countries. China PR (the de facto mainland government) already blames the US for Hong Kong protests. Things will get worse if we do something overt. https://archive.fo/VHiXL https://archive.fo/VHiXL
A2017U1 7y ago
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?

xfs 7y ago

Actual news: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chinese-armed-police-truck-convoy-rolls-city-near-hong-kong https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chin...

teknologist 7y ago
SCMP has become a CCP mouthpiece after Jack Ma bought it.
- the_duke 7y ago
  The post doesn't contain much in terms of commentary, but it does include a quote describing this as a "psychological warfare tactic", so it doesn't seem to be that biased yet.
- majia 7y ago
  SCMP still publishes a lot of anti CCP articles and is banned in China.
- loyukfai 7y ago
  Very much untrue, CCTV, People's Daily, Global Times, now those are CCP mouthpieces. That being said, one is not being unreasonable to suspect their level of editorial independence could be influenced.
  - teknologist 7y ago
    The "whataboutism" of naming other media outlets doesn't really help your argument here. You only just have to open the SCMP front page to find them calling military deployments in a stadium near Hong Kong "drills", citing anonymous sources that say "they are not of concern" and quoting liberally from anonymous posters on Chinese message boards spouting hate.
    - loyukfai 7y ago
      I just did and I couldn't find the thing you mentioned, mind to share the link?

fasthandle 7y ago

Hong Kong reddit has the top coverage of HK.

decoyworker 7y ago
Live thread that I've been following: https://old.reddit.com/live/133sixros7tu5/ https://old.reddit.com/live/133sixros7tu5/

hjanssen 7y ago

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. Edit: Grammar

killjoywashere 7y ago
It has already given Trump ideas. Huge ideas.
adventured 7y ago
> 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.
- simonh 7y ago
  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.

trilila 7y ago

Strange how putrid governments find members of society happy to oppress other members of the society. Such as those soldiers happily waiting to execute orders against the freedoms of their fellow citizens.

ptah 7y ago
i think the communist party has successfully managed to get most citizens to view themselves as part of a larger community more than as individuals
MaximumYComb 7y ago
I'm assuming you're privileged enough to have never been an enlisted soldier in a military? This isn't hordes of men clamouring to "oppress" someone. Often people are conscripted or come from such a poor background that enlistment helps their life significantly. 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.
- simonh 7y ago
  Most of those troops will be from rural regions. Everything they know about the wider world is told to them by state media and their commanders.
  - kzrdude 7y ago
    Can we say the same of the soldiers the US sent to Iraq?

onetimemanytime 7y ago

Sadly the Chinese govt plays no games. See Tienanmen, Tibet or million+ Muslims in concentration camps. Here they are "just restoring law and order" against vandals, a critical role of any government, so very few critics will be heard.

chroem- 7y ago

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.

jonathanyc 7y ago
How’s Russia working out for us and for the Russian people these days? Or Belarus, or Poland?
- chroem- 7y ago
  At least they're not getting rolled over by tanks.
  - YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
    did you know russian army drove tanks at people in multiple cities when soviet union fell apart? google january 20th tragedy, warning: its graphic
    - free652 7y ago
      Like this one? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom
      - YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
        while thats a different tragedy resulted from incompetence of soviet assigned government, no, I am referring to what they did in 3 different countries. 1-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January 2-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_9_tragedy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_9_tragedy 3-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)
- adventured 7y ago

CapricornNoble 7y ago

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. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2125880/china-brings-peoples-armed-police-under-control-top http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/212... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows-dramatic-video-chinese-army-preparing-hong-kong-invasion https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/global-times-shows...

Quiark 7y ago

~~This is basically fake news, or a hoax, a very popular one. The videos are not current.~~ 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.

robert_foss 7y ago
Citation required.
nerdy 7y ago
Do you have any links to previous posting(s) of the videos? When are they from?
jckt 7y ago
I actually thought that the whole "mainland infiltrates HK police" conspiracy was just PRC-phobia (which is a real problem in HK when it becomes xenophobic, sadly) but there's actually been evidence of it (albeit not much). If you're interested you can find videos of a riot policeman saying 「退後一點」 to protesters (and other weird sentences), which is extremely awkward in Cantonese (instead Cantonese would be 「褪後啲」 or something, sounds totally different), especially if you're in an intense situation.

timwaagh 7y ago

China got away with it once but escalation is in principle a sign of weak government. Compare a nation like France which mostly waited it out.

nnx 7y ago
Don’t think France “mostly waited it out” when there has been more injured yellow vests than HKers so far: 2 more or less connected deaths, 1 person lost lower arm, and at least 24 lost an eye, including one of the most pacific yellow vest leader Jerome Rodrigues https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/14/europe/france-bastille-day-injured-yellow-vests-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/14/europe/france-bastille-day-in... 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...
- wtdata 7y ago
  That's a very biased take on what happened in France. 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-violent-in-france/1327559 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/-yellow-vest-protests-grow-v... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-vests-facebook-live https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-ve... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47666245 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47666245
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sunseb 7y ago
    I live in France, and I must say I am offended by your comment! People burning cars and destroying property are not yellow vests, they are antifa groups and their job is to bring chaos to discredit the yellow vests movement. http://lemurjaune.fr/ http://lemurjaune.fr/
  - 7y ago

heraclius 7y ago

The reason to send in the PLA would be to increase the level of violence, but there’s no reason to risk the backlash of sending them in when the HK police can do the job too—even if the Central People’s Government were to suddenly decide that live ammunition is needed, they would still be able to rely on the HK police. The deployment of troops is therefore almost certainly, as was noted in the SCMP, a statement of intent as opposed to a sign that there will be a deployment of troops.

rdtsc 7y ago
They think the HK police might not follow orders and shoot their own neighbors, friends and family. An army division from a different region, properly instructed (brainwashed) can do “wonders” in terms of viciousness and brutally.

tus88 7y ago

The title makes it sound like Shenzen is not part of China. You don't "enter" part of your own country.

mc32 7y ago
Do you think “amassing” would sound better even if it described the actions on the ground more accurately?
gerbilly 7y ago
If you are a military force, there absolutely is a concept of entering your own territory, going back to the Rubicon. 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.
- tus88 7y ago
  I would have been happy with deployed.
  - RobertKerans 7y ago
    Enter implies attacking force, deployed does not, so deployed is not correct in the context of the article.
cyberbanjo 7y ago
Deployed to?
loceng 7y ago
Well, yes, language does have its inherent tone that culture adopts - "arriving to Shenzen" certainly sounds like a normal behaviour, however this seems anything but normal.
baybal2 7y ago
> The title makes it sound like Shenzen is not part of China. You don't "enter" part of your own country. 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.

ackbar03 7y ago

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

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> 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.
- loyukfai 7y ago
  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. That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.
  - ackbar03 7y ago
    I think hks importance is extremely arguable. Hks gdp is barely 3 percent of china's with a stalling growth rate. I've worked in both Shanghai and Hong Kong and I can say a lot of the large cities are much much nicer in China now. You also have a lot things like hackathons and events where you see lots of young creative people who really want to make things. In Hong Kong the culture is more towards looking good in a suit and networking, a side effect of the dominance of financial industry. Personally I think that ship has long sailed and it's not particularly anyone's fault.
    - loyukfai 7y ago
      Not everything can be measured by GDP though. For instance, HK can become a buffer point or backup plan should the trade war further escalates. Not to mention that many CCP members have a lot of investment in Hong Kong, a collapse of the HK economy, should the PLA be deployed, would be quite problematic. But I generally agree with your observations.

SilkRoadie 7y ago

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.

mc32 7y ago
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.
- krageon 7y ago
  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.
  - dmd 7y ago
    If you really know this for a fact, you should contact https://www.nytimes.com/tips https://www.nytimes.com/tips But I'm guessing by 'fact' you mean 'I'm very convinced of my own opinions'.
    - krageon 7y ago
      I don't live in the United States, I do know it for a fact and I will not sabotage my own life or those of the people I care about just because you would love to read some drama in the papers. The net result of that would be that in a month or two nobody would remember it, and lives would still be ruined. It is almost mystifyingly selfish of you to ask this of me, especially when you souse it with your fairly hostile closing remark.

enterx 7y ago

looks like censorship.

tombh 7y ago

Why aren't we talking more about the history of HK's creation, namely the Opium wars? I suspect that the majority of people that feel strongly about China's behaviour don't actually have any idea what the British did to China in the middle of the 19th century, namely: in the style of a mafia get 10s of millions of Chinese addicted to Opium and then go to war with them when China tried to put an end to the trade. It is by all today's measures what I'm sure the majority of people would call evil. 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.

wtdata 7y ago
What does that got to do with anything? Why do people keep bringing centuries old examples of the shortcomings of western civilization, to apologize for the very present disregards against human rights in many non-western countries? 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

adamnemecek 7y ago

How can I get involved?

dep_b 7y ago

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.

Jgrubb 7y ago
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.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  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".
  - krageon 7y ago
    What do you mean when you say "honorary Europe", because I am certain it does not mean what I expect it to mean: A fundamentally fair and well-functioning society with very few if any governmental killings and high stability within it's borders.

JudasGoat 7y ago

Agitators will be sent in to commit acts that justify a military takeover. It's a familiar plot.

hsnewman 7y ago

I'm praying for those poor people, it looks like they will have their freedom taken soon.

wtdata 7y ago

Some major news networks are covering the event as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehicles-gather-in-shenzen-hong-kong-protests-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/videos-chinese-military-vehi... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/hong-kong-protests-china-media-says-military-assembles-nearby.html 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.

sfthrower89 7y ago

It has been interesting reading the comments on related articles. PRC clearly has many 10s of thousands of trolls on staff to spread mis-information and leave broken English pro-China comments on basically every comment section in the world.

ThinkBeat 7y ago

Whoever is behind the current protests in Hong Kong. (possibly US possibly China, perhaps it has changed). is forcing China to act in a brutal manner. 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.

whytaka 7y ago
Occupy Wall Street and the Wisconsin congressional sit-in comes to mind. They both eventually ended without great violence.
d0100 7y ago
This whole comment is disturbing on so many levels.
chadcmulligan 7y ago
> The protesters took it way too far. 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
- yyhhsj0521 7y ago
  > protest is their right > 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.

apexalpha 7y ago

What's with the apologists in here saying the US is behind it all and copying other Chinese talking points?

MagnumOpus 7y ago
Note the heavy creation of new accounts who parrot similar sets of talking points. State-sponsored posting has reached HN. Surprising to me, we are a vanishingly small niche audience -- but it lets you draw conclusions about the extent of wumaodang activity in other venues.

nobodyandproud 7y ago

Cooler heads will say this is a show and a first warning to HK.

markus_zhang 7y ago
Indeed. And a warning more to the HK overlords than to the protesters.

apo 7y ago

The only thing worse for an authoritarian regime than making a show of force and following up on it is to make the show of force and not follow up on it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

chewz 7y ago

West wasn't ready to die for Danzig in 1939 and isn't ready to die for Hong-Kong in 2019. The result could be similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F

StreamBright 7y ago
This is a bit far fetched. Hongkong is part of China, it has been part of it for a long time. UK rule was a blip in that and it was a 99 years lease anyways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hong_Kong
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- chewz 7y ago
  Still it makes me a little angry, we have 8 milion nice, young pro-democratic protesters in Hong-Kong facing communist tanks and we aren't even going to drop a single rocket on Beijing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    I am not sure where the 8 millions is from, the number of protesters are much less. Would you want to start a world war over HK?
    - chewz 7y ago
      War no, confrontation yes.
      - thenewwazoo 7y ago
        Pick up your rifle, then, soldier.
      - 7y ago

La-ang 7y ago

It's on

partiallypro 7y ago

Trump just blinked this morning on his China tariffs; if that's not a green light for the Chinese military to act on Hong Kong, I don't know what is.

twhitmore 7y ago

Everybody, now is the time to email your local Chinese embassy. Carrie Lam, the top HK politician. Michael Tien and Ronnie Wong, leading pro-establishment politicians. 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.

hindsightbias 7y ago

“HKU poll: Only 3.1% of young Hongkongers identify as Chinese, marking 20 year low“ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hongkongers-identify-chinese-marking-20-year-low/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon... Nationalism will not be tolerated.

pimmen 7y ago

What I don't understand is the sentiment that if the people of Hong Kong's rights are suppressed, they should just protest in a way that's tidy, quiet and convenient for the government. That's not how Sun Yat Sen rolled, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution

BlueonMount 7y ago

I’m an ordinary HK resident, software engineer, living in Kowloon and work in HK island. I see the protesters breaking laws, damaging properties, obstructing traffic, causing the entire society to grind to halt. Their actions are not unlike mobs and they disrupt social order almost everywhere. I don’t know under what circumstances mainland military can get involved, but I hope when they do, law and order can be restored in my city.

Epskampie 7y ago
I don’t want to doubt your words without reason, but can you offer any proof that you are who you say, and not someone paid to sway opinions?
- billfruit 7y ago
  In the other hand most of the reporting in the west is obviously giving the violence perpetrated by the protestors a free pass. From what I gather the protestors can no longer be called nonviolent.
- BlueonMount 7y ago
  You can ask me things someone like me is supposed to know, see if I pass your Turing test.
  - Epskampie 7y ago
    I’ve been thinking, but it’s hard for me to come up with questions like that, not being from China/HK myself. Let me ask you this: do you feel the protestors are trying to protect your freedoms, or give you new ones?
bouncycastle 7y ago
So what are you going to do, when one day you wake up and find that wikipedia.org is blocked, as many other sites, when Hong Kong comes under the Great Firewall of China? It will be definitely too late to protest about it then.

hmx48 7y ago

Extremely disturbing

nathanhammond 7y ago

I'm currently in Hong Kong and have been here since before the protests began. This saber-rattling has been ongoing. This is an escalation, certainly, but it is not a new message being sent to Hong Kong and it falls mostly on deaf ears. Over the past approximately two months: - July 2019: With the pretense of preparation for the Chinese 70th anniversary celebrations, there were reportedly 190,000 police officers in Zhanjiang. [1] - July 31, 2019: PLA releases a propaganda video showing military practicing riot drills. Notably it has English subtitles implying its target audience. [2] - August 1, 2019: Approximately 12,000 police participated in anti-riot drills in Shenzhen. [3] - August 13, 2019: Military hardware shown moving into Shenzhen. [4] Everybody in Hong Kong already knows that their way of life is lost in the event that China gets involved. The Hongkonger's daily press conference said as much. [5] If either of the PLA or Shenzhen police become involved the outcome is predetermined, thus the relatively nihilistic mood. A local Hongkonger wrote this article for Dissent Magazine which also adds additional color. [6] Responding to other comments, the fears of a Tiananmen Square type incident are likely unfounded given the prevalence of video from all of the ongoing protests. State Media Propaganda does not work when presented to a global audience. Any event of that nature would presumably be one economic gamble too far for the CCP. * [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3020784/china-mobilises-190000-police-officers-70th-anniversary https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3020784/chi... [2] https://www.scmp.com/video/hong-kong/3020985/chinese-armys-hong-kong-garrison-releases-video-showing-anti-riot-drills https://www.scmp.com/video/hong-kong/3020985/chinese-armys-h... [3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3021597/chinese-police-mass-12000-anti-riot-officers-shenzhen-drill https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3021597/chi... [4] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chinese-armed-police-truck-convoy-rolls-city-near-hong-kong https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3022479/chin... [5] https://twitter.com/anti_elab/status/1161064639515389952 https://twitter.com/anti_elab/status/1161064639515389952 [6] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hong-kongs-fight-for-life https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hong-kongs-f...

varren 7y ago

Politics on HN... well, was hoping to see here discussion of protesters gadgets or government tools or some sophisticated communication protocols / equipment / organisation. Something about protesters use of lasers in an attempt to block riot police at Hong Kong airport