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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 developme

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.
  - adventured 7y ago
    > After all the reasons you give for treading carefully against China all apply to the US and the west just as much. That's not true. The US is susceptible to humiliation and reputation erosion when it comes to human rights. China, largely, is not. The Muslim prisoners - Abu Ghraib - being tortured wearing black bags, the infamous photos that were leaked (and sparked large protests across the Middle East), was an embarrassing scandal for years in the US and globally. It rather painfully tarnished the US when it comes to having authority to speak on human rights. And that's just one of several prominent examples from the past 20 years. Obama promised to close Guantanamo specifically because of that type of reputation damage. Guantanamo is an issue about 1,000 times smaller in terms of impact, than what's going on in Xinjiang and yet it was a huge human rights scandal for the US that persists in tarnish to this day. It's routinely mentioned even now and the US gets lambasted for it. These things are a big credibility destroyer for a liberal democracy. Go watch footage, or read polling/surveys, of what Western Europeans said and thought about the US from ~1948 to ~1991. Then compare it to today. That's the reputation hit the US has taken, the moral ground it has ceded. It has a tangible negative impact on the ability of the US to operate as a superpower, when your allies question your moral standing. The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. The positive reputation gain that you acquire from doing something like that, is largely wiped out when you do something like torture Muslims in those infamous photos at Abu Ghraib. China does not operate on any reputation basis when it comes to human rights. They do not depend on US-style allies, of which they have almost none. They almost entirely disregard such reputation concerns. Quite the opposite, they defend their authoritarian approach with direct threats to anyone that opposes how their government does things.
    - levosmetalo 7y ago
      > The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. Bullshit. The US went to Kosovo war to show Europe they are bunch of incompetents, and to show others it doesn’t pay of to be Russian ally, like Serbia. There was no genocide on muslims, there was only a fight of regular troops against separatist terrorists, which were supported by various international Islam terrorist groups.
baybal2 7y ago
If you have a better memory, this is how it was: 1. Local police was sent, it either did nothing or deserted 2. Troops from BJ itself were sent in, largely the same happened 3. Liaoning military region troops were called, they fared just a bit better than BJ troops, made few attack attempts, but nevertheless withdrew 4. Finally, as Beijing was getting more and more desperate, Shaanxi military region troops - "the primitives," were called and given a total cart blance. They made a blood bath
- tropicalia 7y ago
  And if it turns out (because times have changed) they no longer have enough "primitives" to do their dirty work for them - combined with all the cameras running, these days - What then?
  - dangerface 7y ago
    > And if it turns out (because times have changed) they no longer have enough "primitives" to do their dirty work for them It has always been the case that the powerful squash uprisings by getting half the poor to kill the other half this has been the case regardless of the country for thousands of years, to think otherwise is naive. > combined with all the cameras running They killed protestors in Tiananmen square precisely because it was in front of cameras so the world would know the lengths they would goto in order to maintain power. China has never faced any negative consequences for the massacre because every one got the message.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Not to detract from your point that it took them a while to find troops willing to actually follow their orders, but you got some details wrong. Neither Liaoning nor Shaanxi were military regions at the time, Liaoning province belonging to the Shenyang Military Region and Shaanxi being part of the Lanzhou Military Region. The troops that were finally called in were part of the Beijing Military Region, mostly from Hebei province (24th, 27th, 38th and 65th armies) and Shanxi (63rd army). (Note that Shaanxi and Shanxi are different provinces.) Also, even they weren't particularly loyal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_during_the_1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_dur...
empath75 7y ago
I honestly don’t think that China will do anything like that again. Because of how their economy is so intertwined with the rest of the world, they can’t afford another brutal crackdown. I am sure they will go in, but I’m also sure they have more sophisticated crowd control methods available to them.
- wbl 7y ago
  Remember Prince Bonesaw? Saudi Arabia is a laughingstock of a country that can't do anything for itself, and yet we didn't do anything about them murdering a reporter with a green card.
  - joelx 7y ago
    Nations that are free today will not be free tomorrow. People today have been too afraid to stand up to dictators, and dictators are encroaching everywhere.
- billfruit 7y ago
  I think most likely what will happen is that the Chinese govt will refrain from overt confrontation and rather wait out the protestors to get fatigued and slowly dissipate.
- chibg10 7y ago
  To be honest, the developed world hasn't convinced me it cares enough about human rights to risk its economic relationship with China over them. I'm really not sure how political leaders would react to Tiananmen 2.0. The self-censorship on the part of the Western heads of state thus far has been a testament of the PRC's clout unto itself.
resters 7y ago
> This is really bad and definitely triggers memorys of the Tiananmen massacre. It certainly looks bad. But let us not forget how the US treats our own "Tank Man", Chelsea Manning.
echaozh 7y ago
I think some people in HK are deliberately trying to force the Mainland government to bring in the tanks. Otherwise why would they start beating up Mainlander travelers?
- joelx 7y ago
  This appears to be a Chinese totalitarian state shill account.
- thefringthing 7y ago
  Heads up: This user seems to be a mainlander, the vast majority of whose comments are defending the Chinese government on various issues. (Hong Kong, Falun Dafa, the Social Credit System, etc.)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

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.
- adventured 7y ago
  > After all the reasons you give for treading carefully against China all apply to the US and the west just as much. That's not true. The US is susceptible to humiliation and reputation erosion when it comes to human rights. China, largely, is not. The Muslim prisoners - Abu Ghraib - being tortured wearing black bags, the infamous photos that were leaked (and sparked large protests across the Middle East), was an embarrassing scandal for years in the US and globally. It rather painfully tarnished the US when it comes to having authority to speak on human rights. And that's just one of several prominent examples from the past 20 years. Obama promised to close Guantanamo specifically because of that type of reputation damage. Guantanamo is an issue about 1,000 times smaller in terms of impact, than what's going on in Xinjiang and yet it was a huge human rights scandal for the US that persists in tarnish to this day. It's routinely mentioned even now and the US gets lambasted for it. These things are a big credibility destroyer for a liberal democracy. Go watch footage, or read polling/surveys, of what Western Europeans said and thought about the US from ~1948 to ~1991. Then compare it to today. That's the reputation hit the US has taken, the moral ground it has ceded. It has a tangible negative impact on the ability of the US to operate as a superpower, when your allies question your moral standing. The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. The positive reputation gain that you acquire from doing something like that, is largely wiped out when you do something like torture Muslims in those infamous photos at Abu Ghraib. China does not operate on any reputation basis when it comes to human rights. They do not depend on US-style allies, of which they have almost none. They almost entirely disregard such reputation concerns. Quite the opposite, they defend their authoritarian approach with direct threats to anyone that opposes how their government does things.
  - levosmetalo 7y ago
    > The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. Bullshit. The US went to Kosovo war to show Europe they are bunch of incompetents, and to show others it doesn’t pay of to be Russian ally, like Serbia. There was no genocide on muslims, there was only a fight of regular troops against separatist terrorists, which were supported by various international Islam terrorist groups.

baybal2 7y ago

If you have a better memory, this is how it was: 1. Local police was sent, it either did nothing or deserted 2. Troops from BJ itself were sent in, largely the same happened 3. Liaoning military region troops were called, they fared just a bit better than BJ troops, made few attack attempts, but nevertheless withdrew 4. Finally, as Beijing was getting more and more desperate, Shaanxi military region troops - "the primitives," were called and given a total cart blance. They made a blood bath

tropicalia 7y ago
And if it turns out (because times have changed) they no longer have enough "primitives" to do their dirty work for them - combined with all the cameras running, these days - What then?
- dangerface 7y ago
  > And if it turns out (because times have changed) they no longer have enough "primitives" to do their dirty work for them It has always been the case that the powerful squash uprisings by getting half the poor to kill the other half this has been the case regardless of the country for thousands of years, to think otherwise is naive. > combined with all the cameras running They killed protestors in Tiananmen square precisely because it was in front of cameras so the world would know the lengths they would goto in order to maintain power. China has never faced any negative consequences for the massacre because every one got the message.
yorwba 7y ago
Not to detract from your point that it took them a while to find troops willing to actually follow their orders, but you got some details wrong. Neither Liaoning nor Shaanxi were military regions at the time, Liaoning province belonging to the Shenyang Military Region and Shaanxi being part of the Lanzhou Military Region. The troops that were finally called in were part of the Beijing Military Region, mostly from Hebei province (24th, 27th, 38th and 65th armies) and Shanxi (63rd army). (Note that Shaanxi and Shanxi are different provinces.) Also, even they weren't particularly loyal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_during_the_1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_dur...

empath75 7y ago

I honestly don’t think that China will do anything like that again. Because of how their economy is so intertwined with the rest of the world, they can’t afford another brutal crackdown. I am sure they will go in, but I’m also sure they have more sophisticated crowd control methods available to them.

wbl 7y ago
Remember Prince Bonesaw? Saudi Arabia is a laughingstock of a country that can't do anything for itself, and yet we didn't do anything about them murdering a reporter with a green card.
- joelx 7y ago
  Nations that are free today will not be free tomorrow. People today have been too afraid to stand up to dictators, and dictators are encroaching everywhere.
billfruit 7y ago
I think most likely what will happen is that the Chinese govt will refrain from overt confrontation and rather wait out the protestors to get fatigued and slowly dissipate.
chibg10 7y ago
To be honest, the developed world hasn't convinced me it cares enough about human rights to risk its economic relationship with China over them. I'm really not sure how political leaders would react to Tiananmen 2.0. The self-censorship on the part of the Western heads of state thus far has been a testament of the PRC's clout unto itself.

resters 7y ago

> This is really bad and definitely triggers memorys of the Tiananmen massacre. It certainly looks bad. But let us not forget how the US treats our own "Tank Man", Chelsea Manning.

echaozh 7y ago

I think some people in HK are deliberately trying to force the Mainland government to bring in the tanks. Otherwise why would they start beating up Mainlander travelers?

joelx 7y ago
This appears to be a Chinese totalitarian state shill account.
thefringthing 7y ago
Heads up: This user seems to be a mainlander, the vast majority of whose comments are defending the Chinese government on various issues. (Hong Kong, Falun Dafa, the Social Credit System, etc.)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]