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What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. China is the second largest economy in the world, and has the second most powerful military. In addition, what

What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. China is the second largest economy in the world, and has the second most powerful military. In addition, what they view as the integrity of China is one of their biggest priorities. In addition, they have always viewed British control of Hong Kong as a national humiliation and are bent on erasing all traces of that memory. The way it stands right now, China can inflict a lot more pain, and is likely willing to endure more pain that the rest of the world is likely willing to inflict on China because of their behavior in Hong Kong. Basically, the fate of Hong Kong was decided in 1985 with the Sino-British Joint Declaration which ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997. If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed, and a lot more susceptible to pressure from the rest of the world, there is no hope for now.

H8crilA 7y ago
This situation we're in is making me really uneasy. WW2 was preceded by tariffs and a freezing of global trade, which messed up the German economy too much, pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism. Nazism was a response to a perceived foreign threat that "did a lot of damage to our people, and it's time for us to be the best". Say the trade war ends up badly and the Chinese debt bubble pops. How easily can the mainlanders be convinced that it's "the West", in particular America, fucking with them, as they already believe is the case in Hong Kong protests. Then collectively mobilize into a military response, starting a process that will take tens of millions of lives. We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world.
- cynicalkane 7y ago
  > pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism The hyperinflation of the early 20s has a lot of sticking power in the mind, but it was the severe deflationary crisis of 1929-32 that immediately preceded the rise of Nazism.
  - sverige 7y ago
    The hyperinflation helped create the chaos and sense of social disorder that made the Nazis' appeals to tradition so powerful for a certain segment of society. I don't think they would have been able to gain such broad tacit support without that chaos and the fear it created. That support was already in place when the financial pendulum swung the other way.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Let's not forget that the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic was, in large part, intentional. They printed money to pay the Versailles reparations, and to inflate them away. Obviously it escalated out of control, but they weren't mere innocent victims of external events.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    Serious debt crises are always eventually handled by printing money. Or, more precisely, the crises keep on going till the authorities decide to print money. It is only a question of "when". This can happen in a variety of ways, for example in the Great Depression it was handled by devaluing the dollar against the gold (Executive Order 6102 and the follow ups), in 2008 it was handled by QE. There is such a thing as excessive money printing, though. See Ray Dalio's book "Principles for navigating big debt crises" which analyzes 48 debt crises across the world, a few of them in great detail and establishes a general framework of the way those play out.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    In a sense all hyperinflations are voluntary because a key part of the dynamic is governments creating truly vast amount of new money. That being said, the Treaty of Versailles was said to be a pretty obviously punitive treaty. Famously quoted as a "Carthaginian peace" [0]. The Germans needed a party that would stand up and say they weren't going to try and honour the treaty. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Certainly. It was the French, particularly Foch who insisted on punitive, and later claimed it was too lenient. Keynes wrote a famous book "On the Consequences of Peace" roundly criticising the settlement. Essentially Versailles set in train the events that led to WW2, Nazi party notwithstanding. Ironically toward the end of WW2, the Americans promoted the Morgenthau Plan that would have barred Germany from nearly all industry, putting them back to an agrarian age and made Versailles look relatively trivial. It almost certainly extended the war. Thankfully once it became widely known it was replaced with the Marshall Plan.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Aeolun 7y ago
  > We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. That’s cool, but I think the people in HK want to live too. If the fear of upsetting someone always prevented us from acting when warranted we wouldn’t get anywhere.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. There's a hell of a lot of people out there that would risk their lives for other people's freedom. You might not personally know any (they don't tend to come from the kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds that most of HN comes from) but they're there.
- verttii 7y ago
  Nobody is waging war against China over HK. There may be blood shed but that'll be the HK locals', not any foreign nation. I don't see how this could anyhow escalate beyond HK. China can hate the USA as much as they want but from all I can see they have no intentions on waging war with the US over something as minor as HK is for them.
dillondoyle 7y ago
I've been reading a lot of these comments lately and I will be upfront that I'm highly skeptical of any china arguments on the internet. But I can't help comment on what seems like a large increase in what reads from my perspective as threats e.g. you can't do anything don't fuck with it/us. 'what can you do about this'? I think a lot can be done (and personally more should be done) especially by my government and rebuilding the traditional coalitions Trump has discarded, up to including taking a much harder stand and possibly armed confrontation as a last resort, which seems to be the not so veiled thread of online HK/China discussions over the last few weeks e.g. 'China inflict a lot more pain'
- H8crilA 7y ago
  > possibly armed confrontation as a last resort Please don't even think about starting a global armed war. We're all people here. I want to live.
  - dillondoyle 7y ago
    I dont want one either, my point is that seems to be the threat; it reads like a bully to me. Im going to keep picking on this kid you better mind your own business or face a beating
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    Everybody wants to live, but some people don’t currently get to. Do you think they will ignore this option just so you can keep living your comfortable life?
    - verttii 7y ago
      But what can we do? Invade China for what they're doing in their own city?
      - dillondoyle 7y ago
        Exert much harder economic pressure and rebuild coalitions Trump ignored, even at expense of our own economy in the short term. I've read on HN that CCP themselves has a report showing they need strong growth % to continue or face uprising from within, though I can't find a source so I don't know the truth to that #, though to me it feels like the correct step to take given what I feel are complete fundamental threats to Democracy and human rights world wide - yes in spit of problems we have in our own backyard.
consumer451 7y ago
> What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. China is the second largest economy in the world, and has the second most powerful military. While there were certainly issues with TPP[0], it would have given us some options in regards to China which we no longer have. AFAIK, that was a large part of the point of TPP. We could have had Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States in one trading block. This would have given all of these countries immense leverage when dealing with China. IMO, cancelling TPP has to be the greatest strategic blunder the USA has made in this century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
- dear 7y ago
  If China doesn't follow WTO and any international laws that go against their benefits, why do you expect this TPP would have any effect on them?
  - pbourke 7y ago
    The TPP provides an incentive for all of the countries mentioned - especially the developing ones - not to fall under China’s influence. It’s a soft power bulwark against China, and also a modern trade agreement that respected environment, workers rights and intellectual property to a greater degree than many prior agreements.
  - nerfhammer 7y ago
    China was not included in the TPP as the entire point of the TPP was to strengthen Asian economies other than China.
- magduf 7y ago
  Well it would have helped if the TPP didn't give the Copyright Cartel everything it wanted.
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  That's because the TPP contains clauses gifting an override of sovereignty and the political will of the people agaisnt Corporations. Any country attempting to regulate a modern asbestos would find themselves under massive financial penalties. You need look no further than Philip Morris v. Uruguay to understand the fundamental absolute danger of investor-state dispute settlement to the people of a country. As such, it was rightly opposed as it had been poisoned by greed against the people. The TPP was profit over people as a result. They could've opposed china with it, but some western oligarchs would've eventually weaponized it against the people. Disclaimer: I'm aware tobacco interests were explicitly carved out of the TPP. That doesn't save us from anything else in the future, it just shows the root problem of profit over people remained in the TPP.
taneq 7y ago
> If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed, and a lot more susceptible to pressure from the rest of the world, there is no hope for now. I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to the Hong Kong situation back then but the impression I got was that it was more about Britain repatriating Hong Kong voluntarily to China as a gesture of contrition for annexing it in the first place, rather than them being forced to return it under duress.
- em500 7y ago
  > (1982) During talks with Thatcher, China planned to invade and seize Hong Kong if the negotiations set off unrest in the colony. Thatcher later said that Deng told her bluntly that China could easily take Hong Kong by force, stating that "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon", to which she replied that "there is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong#Before_the_negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong#Before_t...
dragonsh 7y ago
Well even though my minority position on this issue will downvote my comment I will still write it. As most on this thread are not willing to talk the real culprit behind this protest which is economic inequality and no hope for future development. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, these protests are manifestation of inherent economic inequality in Hong Kong society. The youth in Hong Kong cannot afford a house. The whole economy is standing on a giant real estate bubble under the control of 14 rich billionaires. This protests can already be foreseen when property was becoming unaffordable without an increase in salary, it was just a matter of time. Britain is as much to blame for this situation, they never had intention to grant autonomy to Hong Kong and didn't do it for 150 years, they were very clever, as they did in every colony, to let the subsequent administration take the blame in this case Chinese which indeed granted more autonomy than British to Hong Kong. Britain can cry crocodile tears now as much as they like trying to align with protestors. But they are the one to blame. Hopefully they can correct the mistake by granting full citizenship to Hong Kong permanent residents who wants it, otherwise whatever they say is a farce. Same goes for USA, if they want solidarity with Hong Kong protestors grant them unconditional asylum or permanent residence, rest all talks are worthless.
- notzuck 7y ago
  So why haven't the protesters said this is one of their main issues?
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    Universal suffrage is a great way to get a lot of this changed. If your only choices for CEO are billionaires or their friends, there isn’t much you can do (if you can vote at all).
    - notzuck 7y ago
      True but does not come close to addressing why this isn't even talked about - yeah it's not great in HK but let's not pretend that the Chinese are some sort of saviours.
    - 7y ago
corey_moncure 7y ago
>What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. One thing you can definitely do is stop buying a lot of cheap made-in-China shovelware you don't need. It is more expensive and more difficult to purchase items with origins in countries with environmental and labor protection, but not impossible.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  You don't need to go all the way to "origins in countries with environmental and labor protection" in order to not buy from china. There's plenty of countries with equally lax environmental and labor protections that are far less oppressive and authoritarian while offering goods at close to the same cost.
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    You could also recognize those protections were put in for a reason and thus support the economies of countries willing to put up with the economical handicap of enacting them in order to better the overall lives of its people.
    - godelski 7y ago
      I'm just skimming and here's some interesting parts (no summary is currently available) > “(2) instructing the United States Consulate in Hong Kong to maintain an active list of individuals whom are known to have been detained, arrested, or otherwise targeted by the Government of Hong Kong or of China, or intermediaries of such governments, as a result of their participation in the 2014 protests, to facilitate the cross-checking of visa applications for Hong Kong residents; > “(4) instructing personnel at the United States Consulate in Hong Kong to engage with relevant individuals in the Hong Kong community to proactively inform them that they will not face discrimination when applying for a visa to the United States due to any adverse action taken against them by the authorities as a result of their participation in the 2014 protests or other peaceful pro-democracy or human rights demonstrations. There's also a lot of talk about the social credit system, China becoming a tech hub (they even mention that HK is being used to export stuff into China that shouldn't be), forced confessions, sanctions, and lots about human rights. It's also bipartisan.
dear 7y ago
>What can you do about this? The congress is doing something potentially quite powerful: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
goatinaboat 7y ago
If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed Take a look at a map and you will see the impossibility of defending Hong Kong from China. Even given the technological disparity in the 1980s, the equivalent of the Falklands Task Force couldn’t have done it and the gap was narrowing by the 1990s.
m0llusk 7y ago
That seems overly abstract. Protesters formed into large mobs and repeatedly, even continually, challenged police. That police would eventually increase the pressure in response was pretty much inevitable and doesn't really have anything to do with these larger abstractions. Seeing this as being about managing situations and violence also opens up potential alternatives. Being completely peaceful and not challenging police authority with mobs could potentially have a different result.
- m0llusk 7y ago
  It is curious that this response is getting negative feedback but there is no line of reasoning associated. This whole situation is more about complex social dynamics than the straightforward moral and power based framing admits. The Chinese Communist Party sought to control the situation by identifying and eliminating leaders and ended up contending with a leaderless opposition. Hong Kong Police did not initially use violence which indicates that the situation changed over time. The Chinese Communist Party and their influence were present from the start so it is not rational to assert that violence from the Hong Kong police could be caused primarily by such external factors. If any of this is mistaken then please advance a rational argument as these are important issues and not simply a popularity contest to see who can most empathize with the situation in Hong Kong.
derefr 7y ago
> China can inflict a lot more pain, and is likely willing to endure more pain that the rest of the world is likely willing to inflict on China because of their behavior in Hong Kong. That assumes that the rest of the world would be using Chinese aggression on Hong Kong (and Tibet, and the Uighur peoples, and...) as the sum total of their motive for any reaction. If, instead, these actions are just seen as a moral justification behind a very different motive (e.g. destroying the CCP and giving control of the Chinese mainland back to the Taiwanese CNP, where foreign powers would have already made deals with the CNP from a position of strength that would give great economic advantages; or even an imperialist land-grab that sees China parted up as colonies of these foreign powers) then the “trigger event” doesn’t have to weigh very heavily on the scales at all. WWI was started under similar pretences. > If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed, and a lot more susceptible to pressure from the rest of the world, there is no hope for now. Another way to think about this, though, is that multilateral cooperation gets easier as external pressure increases. It’s hard to get a coalition of countries together to fight a China that isn’t a threat; and without that coalition, you’ll be considered an invader (like Russia in the Ukraine, or the US in Vietnam) rather than a rescuer (like the US in some other countries.) This means that, even in a situation where every country individually would like to put a stop to what China is doing, the Nash equilibrium on a global-political level is for each country to do nothing until China (or whoever) gets really bad, and only then, suddenly, will everyone cooperate to fight them. (Though, also, on a more cynical note, a more developed—but not yet fully urbanized—country, is a more valuable country to annex. One could view this period where China was allowed to develop as a farmer allowing a crop to “ripen.”)
godelski 7y ago
> What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. A lot. And what you can do depends who you are. Hongkongers can keep doing what they are doing. I'm sorry, but killing everyone in HK is not an option for China. Not only would it start a global war, as genocides tend to do, it would create unrest in the mainland, and frankly people are a resource. You can't govern the dead. I frequently hear the arguments from Americans "well you can't fight the military". Except that's been done for centuries, caused many countries to come into existence (including, ironically, America), and caused many countries to have large economic pains (cough Britain fighting America cough, Vietnam, Iraq, etc). That idea just doesn't match history, because of one simple thing "you can't govern the dead". People are a resource that governments need. You have to ask yourself "why hasn't China brought the military in already?" They are flexing, but there's good reasons they haven't brought in their military. In fact, they want you to believe nothing can be done. They want you to give up. (I'm not just talking to hongkongers here) From the Western side there's also a lot we can do. There's a huge amount of economic pressure we can put on China (for now, the still need us more that we need them). We can grant asylum to refugees. There's a lot of political pressure that can happen. There's also a lot of military pressure that can happen behind the scenes (I wouldn't be surprised if this already exists in some way, because China certainly does it to us), be that propoganda, cyber, or training. There's even more that can be done. But I find this notion of nothing can be done as ridiculous and backwards. It is giving up hope and ignoring both history and reality.
- greedo 7y ago
  If China decides to solve HK with force, there's nothing any other country will do militarily. As much as liberal Western democracies want to protect civil rights across the world, nothing militarily will be done. China is too strong, HK is too far away, and the West has let its military strength atrophy too far. Do you think Germany will ignore Bismarck's dictum? "...not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier."
  - godelski 7y ago
    Can is a weird word here. Especially since stuff is being done.

H8crilA 7y ago

This situation we're in is making me really uneasy. WW2 was preceded by tariffs and a freezing of global trade, which messed up the German economy too much, pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism. Nazism was a response to a perceived foreign threat that "did a lot of damage to our people, and it's time for us to be the best". Say the trade war ends up badly and the Chinese debt bubble pops. How easily can the mainlanders be convinced that it's "the West", in particular America, fucking with them, as they already believe is the case in Hong Kong protests. Then collectively mobilize into a military response, starting a process that will take tens of millions of lives. We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world.

cynicalkane 7y ago
> pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism The hyperinflation of the early 20s has a lot of sticking power in the mind, but it was the severe deflationary crisis of 1929-32 that immediately preceded the rise of Nazism.
- sverige 7y ago
  The hyperinflation helped create the chaos and sense of social disorder that made the Nazis' appeals to tradition so powerful for a certain segment of society. I don't think they would have been able to gain such broad tacit support without that chaos and the fear it created. That support was already in place when the financial pendulum swung the other way.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Let's not forget that the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic was, in large part, intentional. They printed money to pay the Versailles reparations, and to inflate them away. Obviously it escalated out of control, but they weren't mere innocent victims of external events.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Serious debt crises are always eventually handled by printing money. Or, more precisely, the crises keep on going till the authorities decide to print money. It is only a question of "when". This can happen in a variety of ways, for example in the Great Depression it was handled by devaluing the dollar against the gold (Executive Order 6102 and the follow ups), in 2008 it was handled by QE. There is such a thing as excessive money printing, though. See Ray Dalio's book "Principles for navigating big debt crises" which analyzes 48 debt crises across the world, a few of them in great detail and establishes a general framework of the way those play out.
- roenxi 7y ago
  In a sense all hyperinflations are voluntary because a key part of the dynamic is governments creating truly vast amount of new money. That being said, the Treaty of Versailles was said to be a pretty obviously punitive treaty. Famously quoted as a "Carthaginian peace" [0]. The Germans needed a party that would stand up and say they weren't going to try and honour the treaty. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Certainly. It was the French, particularly Foch who insisted on punitive, and later claimed it was too lenient. Keynes wrote a famous book "On the Consequences of Peace" roundly criticising the settlement. Essentially Versailles set in train the events that led to WW2, Nazi party notwithstanding. Ironically toward the end of WW2, the Americans promoted the Morgenthau Plan that would have barred Germany from nearly all industry, putting them back to an agrarian age and made Versailles look relatively trivial. It almost certainly extended the war. Thankfully once it became widely known it was replaced with the Marshall Plan.
deleted 7y ago
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Aeolun 7y ago
> We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. That’s cool, but I think the people in HK want to live too. If the fear of upsetting someone always prevented us from acting when warranted we wouldn’t get anywhere.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. There's a hell of a lot of people out there that would risk their lives for other people's freedom. You might not personally know any (they don't tend to come from the kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds that most of HN comes from) but they're there.
verttii 7y ago
Nobody is waging war against China over HK. There may be blood shed but that'll be the HK locals', not any foreign nation. I don't see how this could anyhow escalate beyond HK. China can hate the USA as much as they want but from all I can see they have no intentions on waging war with the US over something as minor as HK is for them.

dillondoyle 7y ago

I've been reading a lot of these comments lately and I will be upfront that I'm highly skeptical of any china arguments on the internet. But I can't help comment on what seems like a large increase in what reads from my perspective as threats e.g. you can't do anything don't fuck with it/us. 'what can you do about this'? I think a lot can be done (and personally more should be done) especially by my government and rebuilding the traditional coalitions Trump has discarded, up to including taking a much harder stand and possibly armed confrontation as a last resort, which seems to be the not so veiled thread of online HK/China discussions over the last few weeks e.g. 'China inflict a lot more pain'

H8crilA 7y ago
> possibly armed confrontation as a last resort Please don't even think about starting a global armed war. We're all people here. I want to live.
- dillondoyle 7y ago
  I dont want one either, my point is that seems to be the threat; it reads like a bully to me. Im going to keep picking on this kid you better mind your own business or face a beating
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Everybody wants to live, but some people don’t currently get to. Do you think they will ignore this option just so you can keep living your comfortable life?
  - verttii 7y ago
    But what can we do? Invade China for what they're doing in their own city?
    - dillondoyle 7y ago
      Exert much harder economic pressure and rebuild coalitions Trump ignored, even at expense of our own economy in the short term. I've read on HN that CCP themselves has a report showing they need strong growth % to continue or face uprising from within, though I can't find a source so I don't know the truth to that #, though to me it feels like the correct step to take given what I feel are complete fundamental threats to Democracy and human rights world wide - yes in spit of problems we have in our own backyard.

consumer451 7y ago

> What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. China is the second largest economy in the world, and has the second most powerful military. While there were certainly issues with TPP[0], it would have given us some options in regards to China which we no longer have. AFAIK, that was a large part of the point of TPP. We could have had Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States in one trading block. This would have given all of these countries immense leverage when dealing with China. IMO, cancelling TPP has to be the greatest strategic blunder the USA has made in this century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

dear 7y ago
If China doesn't follow WTO and any international laws that go against their benefits, why do you expect this TPP would have any effect on them?
- pbourke 7y ago
  The TPP provides an incentive for all of the countries mentioned - especially the developing ones - not to fall under China’s influence. It’s a soft power bulwark against China, and also a modern trade agreement that respected environment, workers rights and intellectual property to a greater degree than many prior agreements.
- nerfhammer 7y ago
  China was not included in the TPP as the entire point of the TPP was to strengthen Asian economies other than China.
magduf 7y ago
Well it would have helped if the TPP didn't give the Copyright Cartel everything it wanted.
kevin_b_er 7y ago
That's because the TPP contains clauses gifting an override of sovereignty and the political will of the people agaisnt Corporations. Any country attempting to regulate a modern asbestos would find themselves under massive financial penalties. You need look no further than Philip Morris v. Uruguay to understand the fundamental absolute danger of investor-state dispute settlement to the people of a country. As such, it was rightly opposed as it had been poisoned by greed against the people. The TPP was profit over people as a result. They could've opposed china with it, but some western oligarchs would've eventually weaponized it against the people. Disclaimer: I'm aware tobacco interests were explicitly carved out of the TPP. That doesn't save us from anything else in the future, it just shows the root problem of profit over people remained in the TPP.

taneq 7y ago

> If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed, and a lot more susceptible to pressure from the rest of the world, there is no hope for now. I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to the Hong Kong situation back then but the impression I got was that it was more about Britain repatriating Hong Kong voluntarily to China as a gesture of contrition for annexing it in the first place, rather than them being forced to return it under duress.

em500 7y ago
> (1982) During talks with Thatcher, China planned to invade and seize Hong Kong if the negotiations set off unrest in the colony. Thatcher later said that Deng told her bluntly that China could easily take Hong Kong by force, stating that "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon", to which she replied that "there is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong#Before_the_negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong#Before_t...

dragonsh 7y ago

Well even though my minority position on this issue will downvote my comment I will still write it. As most on this thread are not willing to talk the real culprit behind this protest which is economic inequality and no hope for future development. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, these protests are manifestation of inherent economic inequality in Hong Kong society. The youth in Hong Kong cannot afford a house. The whole economy is standing on a giant real estate bubble under the control of 14 rich billionaires. This protests can already be foreseen when property was becoming unaffordable without an increase in salary, it was just a matter of time. Britain is as much to blame for this situation, they never had intention to grant autonomy to Hong Kong and didn't do it for 150 years, they were very clever, as they did in every colony, to let the subsequent administration take the blame in this case Chinese which indeed granted more autonomy than British to Hong Kong. Britain can cry crocodile tears now as much as they like trying to align with protestors. But they are the one to blame. Hopefully they can correct the mistake by granting full citizenship to Hong Kong permanent residents who wants it, otherwise whatever they say is a farce. Same goes for USA, if they want solidarity with Hong Kong protestors grant them unconditional asylum or permanent residence, rest all talks are worthless.

notzuck 7y ago
So why haven't the protesters said this is one of their main issues?
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Universal suffrage is a great way to get a lot of this changed. If your only choices for CEO are billionaires or their friends, there isn’t much you can do (if you can vote at all).
  - notzuck 7y ago
    True but does not come close to addressing why this isn't even talked about - yeah it's not great in HK but let's not pretend that the Chinese are some sort of saviours.
  - 7y ago

corey_moncure 7y ago

>What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. One thing you can definitely do is stop buying a lot of cheap made-in-China shovelware you don't need. It is more expensive and more difficult to purchase items with origins in countries with environmental and labor protection, but not impossible.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
You don't need to go all the way to "origins in countries with environmental and labor protection" in order to not buy from china. There's plenty of countries with equally lax environmental and labor protections that are far less oppressive and authoritarian while offering goods at close to the same cost.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  You could also recognize those protections were put in for a reason and thus support the economies of countries willing to put up with the economical handicap of enacting them in order to better the overall lives of its people.
  - godelski 7y ago
    I'm just skimming and here's some interesting parts (no summary is currently available) > “(2) instructing the United States Consulate in Hong Kong to maintain an active list of individuals whom are known to have been detained, arrested, or otherwise targeted by the Government of Hong Kong or of China, or intermediaries of such governments, as a result of their participation in the 2014 protests, to facilitate the cross-checking of visa applications for Hong Kong residents; > “(4) instructing personnel at the United States Consulate in Hong Kong to engage with relevant individuals in the Hong Kong community to proactively inform them that they will not face discrimination when applying for a visa to the United States due to any adverse action taken against them by the authorities as a result of their participation in the 2014 protests or other peaceful pro-democracy or human rights demonstrations. There's also a lot of talk about the social credit system, China becoming a tech hub (they even mention that HK is being used to export stuff into China that shouldn't be), forced confessions, sanctions, and lots about human rights. It's also bipartisan.

dear 7y ago

>What can you do about this? The congress is doing something potentially quite powerful: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

goatinaboat 7y ago

If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed Take a look at a map and you will see the impossibility of defending Hong Kong from China. Even given the technological disparity in the 1980s, the equivalent of the Falklands Task Force couldn’t have done it and the gap was narrowing by the 1990s.

m0llusk 7y ago

That seems overly abstract. Protesters formed into large mobs and repeatedly, even continually, challenged police. That police would eventually increase the pressure in response was pretty much inevitable and doesn't really have anything to do with these larger abstractions. Seeing this as being about managing situations and violence also opens up potential alternatives. Being completely peaceful and not challenging police authority with mobs could potentially have a different result.

m0llusk 7y ago
It is curious that this response is getting negative feedback but there is no line of reasoning associated. This whole situation is more about complex social dynamics than the straightforward moral and power based framing admits. The Chinese Communist Party sought to control the situation by identifying and eliminating leaders and ended up contending with a leaderless opposition. Hong Kong Police did not initially use violence which indicates that the situation changed over time. The Chinese Communist Party and their influence were present from the start so it is not rational to assert that violence from the Hong Kong police could be caused primarily by such external factors. If any of this is mistaken then please advance a rational argument as these are important issues and not simply a popularity contest to see who can most empathize with the situation in Hong Kong.

derefr 7y ago

> China can inflict a lot more pain, and is likely willing to endure more pain that the rest of the world is likely willing to inflict on China because of their behavior in Hong Kong. That assumes that the rest of the world would be using Chinese aggression on Hong Kong (and Tibet, and the Uighur peoples, and...) as the sum total of their motive for any reaction. If, instead, these actions are just seen as a moral justification behind a very different motive (e.g. destroying the CCP and giving control of the Chinese mainland back to the Taiwanese CNP, where foreign powers would have already made deals with the CNP from a position of strength that would give great economic advantages; or even an imperialist land-grab that sees China parted up as colonies of these foreign powers) then the “trigger event” doesn’t have to weigh very heavily on the scales at all. WWI was started under similar pretences. > If Great Britain, and the rest of the world did not have the will to resist China taking control of Hong Kong in 1985 and 1997 when China was a lot less powerful, a lot less developed, and a lot more susceptible to pressure from the rest of the world, there is no hope for now. Another way to think about this, though, is that multilateral cooperation gets easier as external pressure increases. It’s hard to get a coalition of countries together to fight a China that isn’t a threat; and without that coalition, you’ll be considered an invader (like Russia in the Ukraine, or the US in Vietnam) rather than a rescuer (like the US in some other countries.) This means that, even in a situation where every country individually would like to put a stop to what China is doing, the Nash equilibrium on a global-political level is for each country to do nothing until China (or whoever) gets really bad, and only then, suddenly, will everyone cooperate to fight them. (Though, also, on a more cynical note, a more developed—but not yet fully urbanized—country, is a more valuable country to annex. One could view this period where China was allowed to develop as a farmer allowing a crop to “ripen.”)

godelski 7y ago

> What can you do about this? Pretty much nothing. A lot. And what you can do depends who you are. Hongkongers can keep doing what they are doing. I'm sorry, but killing everyone in HK is not an option for China. Not only would it start a global war, as genocides tend to do, it would create unrest in the mainland, and frankly people are a resource. You can't govern the dead. I frequently hear the arguments from Americans "well you can't fight the military". Except that's been done for centuries, caused many countries to come into existence (including, ironically, America), and caused many countries to have large economic pains (cough Britain fighting America cough, Vietnam, Iraq, etc). That idea just doesn't match history, because of one simple thing "you can't govern the dead". People are a resource that governments need. You have to ask yourself "why hasn't China brought the military in already?" They are flexing, but there's good reasons they haven't brought in their military. In fact, they want you to believe nothing can be done. They want you to give up. (I'm not just talking to hongkongers here) From the Western side there's also a lot we can do. There's a huge amount of economic pressure we can put on China (for now, the still need us more that we need them). We can grant asylum to refugees. There's a lot of political pressure that can happen. There's also a lot of military pressure that can happen behind the scenes (I wouldn't be surprised if this already exists in some way, because China certainly does it to us), be that propoganda, cyber, or training. There's even more that can be done. But I find this notion of nothing can be done as ridiculous and backwards. It is giving up hope and ignoring both history and reality.

greedo 7y ago
If China decides to solve HK with force, there's nothing any other country will do militarily. As much as liberal Western democracies want to protect civil rights across the world, nothing militarily will be done. China is too strong, HK is too far away, and the West has let its military strength atrophy too far. Do you think Germany will ignore Bismarck's dictum? "...not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier."
- godelski 7y ago
  Can is a weird word here. Especially since stuff is being done.