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Student group leader arrested on suspicion of inciting secession in HK
- RockmanZero 6y agoTo be clear, they are rather riot leaders who funded by US than "student group leaders".
- AtHeartEngineer 6y agoThis comment should be removed, doesn't add anything to the conversation and is speculative at best.
- loyukfai 6y agoSource?
- FooBarWidget 6y agoThere was an article by Time magazine showing that the US froze funding for Hong Kong protesters: https://time.com/5860163/trump-hong-kong-funding-freeze/ https://time.com/5860163/trump-hong-kong-funding-freeze/
- spacehunt 6y agoDid you even read the article? It's about Trump defunding OTF, which funds Signal.
- yorwba 6y agoI don't think the OTFs "Information Controls Fellowship" https://www.opentech.fund/funds/icfp/ https://www.opentech.fund/funds/icfp/ or "Rapid Response Fund" https://www.opentech.fund/funds/rapid-response-fund/ https://www.opentech.fund/funds/rapid-response-fund/ with their focus on technology and the internet are what people usually think of when they talk about "riots funded by the US".
- vvpan 6y agoThe "these people are funded from abroad" rhetoric is employed too often by countries trying to control their population. Without hard evidence I wouldn't trust such things. I Russia, for example it's the number one way to try to discredit anybody who disagrees with the government. Yet the government, which has essentially total control over all spheres of life, has not been able to procure any evidence.
- adventured 6y agoAnd occasionally you get the amusing conflicting scenario of the local government using the foreign interference rhetoric, while the national government rejects that for its own purposes (not wanting to look weak), as in Russia in Khabarovsk at the moment.
- fakeslimshady 6y agoYou mean like taliban funded by US against Russia. That's what I used to think be after looking at it, the US is constantly funding destabilization efforts like this. Yes including the recent China riots. What if it was true and we were the ones fed propaganda. The truth is out there
- vvpan 6y agoUS did fund the Taliban that's true. US has done plenty of meddling in external politics. I wouldn't compare Hong Kong citizens to the Taliban though. They are not an insurgency group. Hong Kong, as I understand, and I'm no expert, by any standard culturally and historically separate from China. Anybody aiding Hong Kong is effectively not aiding an insurgency group inside China but an independent state being overtaken by a neighboring and a culturally loosely-related country.
- yorwba 6y agoThe US funded the Taliban because they opposed the Afghan government, not because they wanted to help Afghanistan. Similarly, they're never going to help Hong Kong, but only specific groups who oppose the government. (The "culturally loosely-related country" supporting the Afghan government at the time was the Soviet Union.)
- mensetmanusman 6y agoHa, new account with magical information!
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoWhen the Hong Kong stock exchange listed a Chinese tech index the other day I realised Hong Kong had completely fallen. The CCP rules Hong Kong in totality now as far as I'm concerned.
- rootsudo 6y agoGreat observation, I didn't even notice. Hang Seng Index, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/asia-markets-hong-kongs-new-tech-index.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/asia-markets-hong-kongs-new-... Wow.
- yorwba 6y agoThe Hang Seng Index isn't new. The Hang Seng Tech Index is, but I don't think it contains any companies not part of the broader Hang Seng Index. I have no idea how that is supposed to demonstrate the power of the CCP.
- contingencies 6y agoThe Hong Kong Stock Exchange has been promoting tech listings for years. Recently they have a range of policies such as easier routes to listing for tech companies than for traditional firms. I would not consider a tech index an artifact of Beijing influence, which has its own domestic tech stocks in Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc.
- rkapsoro 6y agoHang Seng itself is an HK company, has been ever since its inception. HSBC has owned a large part of it for a long time, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_Seng_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_Seng_Bank
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- robjan 6y agoMainland Chinese stocks have been listed on HKEX and even been components of the Hang Seng Index (kind of like our SP500) for a long time. The main reason that there aren't more HK stocks in the tech index is that there aren't really any HK based tech companies listed on our exchange.
- FooBarWidget 6y agoIt is interesting that there was recently a petition asking for people to support the national security law, and that it managed to gather 3 million signatures. For comparison, high estimations on the number of people who went on the streets to protest, was about 2 million. Both numbers are likely to be overestimations, but it seems to show that the Hong Kong people are divided about whether China is good for them, and whether they should support the protests or not. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media only reports Hong Kong events on the surface level, and does not analyze the issue more deeply. To those that wish to learn more deeply about the Hong Kong events, I recommend browsing Quora. There are quite some people there who say they live in Hong Kong.
- jakear 6y ago...or the signatures are fake? Petition fraud. Happens in US too, see net neutrality.
- FooBarWidget 6y agoWell I did say that 3M is likely to be an overestimation. How many do you believe are fake? Let's say 40% are fake. That puts the number of legit signatures at 1.6M: still in the same ballpark as the number of protesters, which shows that society is divided. If you disagree with this analysis, I would love to hear why.
- vehementi 6y ago40% is the conservative estimate number the the US government faked for the net neutrality thing and that's with transparency in the comments. Let's go with 99% for China?
- FooBarWidget 6y agoThere was a local district election in November, in which the pro-Democracy party won. Do you believe that those election results are real or not?
- Ijumfs 6y agoOne China Policy is about to fail in the West, the line was drawn. HK's special economic status has now been revoked, which was a wise move, but it's left China with no reason NOT to storm in. Brace yourselves, Trump is likely to re-recognize Taiwan soon, reversing a terrible decision which was made as a concession.
- keiferski 6y agoI recently purchased Unfree Speech by Joshua Wong, a prominent Hong Kong activist who was imprisoned for 6 months (at the age of 20) for his political activity. I recommend it, as it is a pretty informal, quick read. It felt...odd...reading a contemporary story about political imprisonment. Somehow the term itself feels antiquated, but alas here we are.
- supernova87a 6y agoCareful... under the new HK security laws, you might be at risk for financially supporting or abetting someone involved in secessionist activities! (kidding, but not completely -- read Article 21: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China_on_Safeguarding_National_Security_in_the_Hong_Kong_Special_Administrative_Region https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Law_of_the_People%27s_Republi...)
- keiferski 6y agoWong actually explicitly says he is against secession in the book, but I doubt that detail is relevant for a motivated prosecutor.
- BelleOfTheBall 6y agoWhat is his plan for Hong Kong moving forward? I'd be interested to see what a local activist thinks could be a solution to their "China problem", especially considering that a country as big and powerful isn't going to simply back off. His fight is a tough one and I have great respect for a person so young to commit to it so fully.
- keiferski 6y agoThe book came out in February but at the moment he seems to be running for the legislature. His overall strategy seems to be to drum up international support for HK democracy, which will then (in theory) pressure the CCP. He intends to run in a primary for the pro-democracy camp that will choose candidates for the Legislative Council vote on Sept. 6. "If more people vote for us ... it could generate more pressure and more hesitation for Beijing," Wong said, in front of campaign posters with the slogan "Ballot, or bullet." Wong has said he supports the idea of a non-binding referendum for people to have a say over Hong Kong’s future but that he is against independence. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-joshua-wong/activist-joshua-wong-says-he-plans-to-run-for-hong-kong-legislature-idUSKBN23Q1RK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-joshua-...
- mywittyname 6y agoDoes anyone have insight into how secessionists think that a successful campaign will play out? The state is small and a shares border with China, so it's not some situation where it will be easy to repeal invaders. And the people are at a severe military disadvantage. Even if every Hong Konger was armed, trained, and well lead, China could wage a war of attrition and win without a single shot fired. I feel like their only hope would be if America deployed troops to HK and kept the city fed via air supply like with Berlin. And I can't imagine this having much, if any support within the US government or military. Maybe these people just assume that protests and pressure from foreign governments will be enough to secure their freedom? I can't imagine China giving up on reintegrating HK and will do so by force, if required.
- yashap 6y agoThere have been plenty of successful, peaceful-ish secessions in history. Off the top of my head, the British Empire mostly dissolved semi-peacefully, which was basically a tonne of secessions. Norway essentially seceded from Sweden. Russia didn’t fight TOO hard against the fall of the USSR. You could argue Brexit is a secession of sorts. I’m sure there are more. Not that there wasn’t plenty of protest, struggle and loss of life in things like the dissolving of the British Empire and USSR, but the more powerful actor did eventually give up, vs. simply saying “we have the bigger army, we’re gonna crush you.” In most cases, there was extended protest, to the point where popular opinion shifted over time to heavily support secessionists, and the colony/whatever became an expensive inconvenience, that wasn’t worth the tax revenue. Hong Kong are probably hoping that eventually the same thing will happen with them.
- heavenlyblue 6y agoBritish empire was over-extended over the whole of the world. This is a small area bordering close a billion people area.
- dirtyid 6y agoHK doesn't pay tax to central government, and is too close and too small to secede as long as mainland has some semblance of cohesive power, UK admitted China could roll over HK in the mid 80s if they wanted to + the lesson politburo learned from USSR's collapse is to not fragment at any cost. To the mainland, HK is not a unwieldy, far flung holding that takes commiserate projection to tame. It's a small city of 7million located less than 100km of Southern Theater Command.
- wendyshu 6y agoIdeally Britain would have kept HK island and/or transferred HK to Taiwan rather than China. But I guess that wasn't workable. So the only option for HKers is emigration.
- FabHK 6y agoPlus, back when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was negotiated (1984) there was already this heady optimism in the air that democracy was inevitable (as expressed in Francis Fukuyama's 1992 The End of History and the Last Man), and the thinking was that by the time HK would lose its autonomy and become just another Chinese city (2047), China would be a wonderful democracy. Oh well.
- throw443563 6y agoBritain should have just accepted them back in 1997. Instead they tried to stop Portugal from giving the people of Macau citizenship because they were afraid the people of Hong Kong would ask for citizenship too.
- johnyzee 6y agoPure political news. Get this off HN.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoThe secession is forced to hkers. And then start the hammering. Just like u and t people that they are x whatever x is as an excluse to thumb is down. The best scenario if that is the path is Switzerland model as a neutral ground. In fact that is what 1c2s model is. but that is unlikely now. You have that option if some acceptance of similarity (languages - French, Germany etc as English is the business and government internal language). Hk play a different game due to its proximity and multiple strong countries around (in influence, history and trade). Unfortunately, China traditional cultural view That the world is one and no coexistence in heart. Its stands is really Hans or barbarian does not help. It got an economic of scale that is hard to beat. And once back on world stage it is a force that fit dominance more. Unless that change Hk fight, our fight here, is hard. The china does not understand and take this. At least not for long. Dang ... No way out yet. But fight on. Cathedral vs bazaar. One vs many.
- LatteLazy 6y agoThe bigger question here is what about China? We all (those of us over 35) assumed that as they industrialised, they would gradually become democratic (in the sense of elections but also of human rights and rule of law). That's clearly not the case. The CCP seem to be more firmly in place than ever...
- CogitoCogito 6y ago> We all (those of us over 35) assumed that as they industrialised, they would gradually become democratic (in the sense of elections but also of human rights and rule of law). I think this was more like a willful delusion on the part of the supporters of such a theory. Either knowingly--so they exploit China's labor force and resources--or unknowingly--because they'd drank the cool aid offered by those trying to profit off of China. I think we should flip the whole thing. Why would China democratize? If the rest of the world is okay with China's authoritarianism and continues to engage with China economically, why exactly shouldn't they just continue acting as they do. How much longer would apartheid have continued in South Africa, if international pressure didn't mount against it? I honestly don't know the answer to that question, but it's not some guarantee that it would have gone away, just as it's no guarantee that China will democratize. If we truly want China to democratize, we should engage with them economically with that as a _stipulation_ in some form or another. If we don't make such a stipulation, we should stop acting surprised that China does not change its system and instead accept that we are just there to economically exploit the country and that these dreams only exist to convince the rest of the world that it's acting morally even if it clearly is not.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI actually disagree about South Africa. I think the regime itself there would have been toppled eventually but they made an active choice to go peacefully rather than for it to turn into a bloodbath 20 years later. I think this is a very interesting example because most regimes fail at that sort of pragmatism. But that's an aside, we will never know and it's just my opinion! :) Initially we got into bed with China (I am a brit, so by we I mean Europe as well as the US) to get them out of bed with the Russians because communism. That's why there were no stipulations around democracy etc, the stipulation was basically "fuck the USSR" and they stuck to that. They should have been added when the USSR feel, but most countries were too busy dealing with their internal politics (and cheap Chinese imports supported them there). The excuse there is that by making them richer (and getting richer ourselves, whoops) we were assisting them towards a bloodless transition. That's clearly not working. Instead, china over the last 5 years at least has regressed politically. I would 100% support action on China (and I am an internationalist and until recently quite pro china). But this is hard, we would need most of the west to work together at exactly the time it's "every man for himself" (brexit, trump). To be honest, I am actually quite worried right now. The total refusal of countries to work together on this and climate change mean the rest of this century is very uncertain. I am 36, quite old really but I won't be dead before most of the shit has hit the fan. Yet everyone both individually and nationally are basically ignoring the oncoming train to pickup pennies from the tracks...
- gentleman11 6y agoThis is far less tyrannical than what people live under in the rest of China. Imagine it