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Your intentional aversion to the full context doesn't help anyone understand the situation. When people do not understand any context, they are lead to believe

Your intentional aversion to the full context doesn't help anyone understand the situation. When people do not understand any context, they are lead to believe the situation is absurd and is occurring for no reason at all. Full context allows the public to have a sense of things. Here is an honest attempt building a storey via several separate but related facts: (1) In the 1800s, Europe had essentially lost a tradewar with China. The Chinese economy was somewhat of a marvel of the 1700s-1800s, studied by US presidents and founding fathers like Ben Franklin even. (2) The UK couldn't produce anything the Chinese wanted to buy (a goal to help the UK economy), but ultimately hatched a plan to smuggle a well-known deadly and addictive drug into Chinese ports: Opium, which has been known to grow well in the India colony / Afghanistan and is also related to heroine / morphine / opioids. (3) The UK's drug smuggling cartel via the British East India Company and backed by their navy eventually causes huge problems for Chinese citizens and their every day life. People are dieing. The Chinese government then organizes special anti-drug smuggling operations to end the illegal drug cartel's drug smuggling. (4) War starts. The Opium Wars. Plural. The UK navy steps in, the Chinese military was defeated, and this was all to force the Chinese to permit the UK drug cartels to continue operating. Part of the treaty ending one of these Opium wars allows Hong Kong to be leased to the UK for them to set up an offensive post on Chinese territory from which to continue poisoning the Chinese public. (5) HKs economic miracle was propped up by drug smuggling and money laundering and tax haven status. It wasn't much of a miracle. Drug smuggling and tax dodging are universally condemned both in the West and China. (6) The public in HK is losing features of Western civilization (like a free press and anti-beijing school programs) as they transition back to governance by the broader Chinese civilization. (7) There IS a small degree of turmoil as HK society is re-organized, but it should be understood in context. Transition from Civ A to Civ B, who both have completely different systems of law.

alimw 5y ago
I am not qualified to judge the veracity of points 1 through 5. But I can see they have precisely nothing to do with points 6 and 7.
- champagnois 5y ago
  Except this is about nation state behavior, context, and geopolitics spanning decades rather than some series of small unrelated events. See my other reply. I am not excusing the behavior of treaty breaking so much as I am saying their leadership has pressure to behave in this way due to the mandate to "right historical wrongs" versus their enemies who killed and attacked them. I am not the world's leading expert on China, history, or political science -- but I would guess that the fentanyl smuggling operations they are doing are directly related to points (1) through (5) and are some form of revenge in the eyes of their leadership. It probably isn't a coincidence that fentanyl is an opioid, is killing countless Americans, is being laced onto random pills and foods sold, and is all being done by China's intelligence agencies. You know, maybe these events are related!
  - alimw 5y ago
    You are suggesting that leadership decisions in China follow public opinion? Surely it is the other way around. The whole point of this story is that the CCP retains an iron grip on what the public does or doesn't learn.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Precisely. First feed the public a bunch of baloney for the last 50 years, then turn around and say that you need to satisfy public opinion and that just so happens to align with your plans. Who would have expected that?
- champagnois 5y ago
  https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/china-1 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/china-1 Regardless of one's feelings towards China, this statement from the US state department, themselves a part of the conflict, more or less describes the events in almost exactly the same way.
Paradigma11 5y ago
So you are saying that historical facts and context make china unable to enter binding agreements with western nations?
- champagnois 5y ago
  I wouldn't say that. I would argue this is a lot more like the WW1 relationship to WW2. The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries. In short, China's leadership today has pressure to right historical wrongs. We, as Westerners, should work to understand them so that we can make sense of their behavior as a nation state. China has two major historical enemies with wrongs that the leadership can stand up to: (1) The UK for the opium wars (and the 100 year fallout). (2) Japan for WW2 (and, you know, the whole genocide / killing babies for sport thing). When the CCP does anything involving these two nations, you can always assume the history and the pressure on the leadership is a factor.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries. The Hong Kong public disagrees with this, and does not see themselves as 'adversaries'.
    - champagnois 5y ago
      I know that taking things in context in this way is unpopular among folks who are looking to just sling mud at China. I aim only to provide further context to the intellectually curious who may be wondering how or why. My posts do not justify or take a side, they merely aim to provide a more expert understanding of the motives and reality.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        > My posts do not justify or take a side They actually do, and consistently so. You are from where I'm sitting consistently arguing China's case without a word of consideration for the people of Hong Kong.

alimw 5y ago

I am not qualified to judge the veracity of points 1 through 5. But I can see they have precisely nothing to do with points 6 and 7.

champagnois 5y ago
Except this is about nation state behavior, context, and geopolitics spanning decades rather than some series of small unrelated events. See my other reply. I am not excusing the behavior of treaty breaking so much as I am saying their leadership has pressure to behave in this way due to the mandate to "right historical wrongs" versus their enemies who killed and attacked them. I am not the world's leading expert on China, history, or political science -- but I would guess that the fentanyl smuggling operations they are doing are directly related to points (1) through (5) and are some form of revenge in the eyes of their leadership. It probably isn't a coincidence that fentanyl is an opioid, is killing countless Americans, is being laced onto random pills and foods sold, and is all being done by China's intelligence agencies. You know, maybe these events are related!
- alimw 5y ago
  You are suggesting that leadership decisions in China follow public opinion? Surely it is the other way around. The whole point of this story is that the CCP retains an iron grip on what the public does or doesn't learn.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Precisely. First feed the public a bunch of baloney for the last 50 years, then turn around and say that you need to satisfy public opinion and that just so happens to align with your plans. Who would have expected that?
champagnois 5y ago
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/china-1 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/china-1 Regardless of one's feelings towards China, this statement from the US state department, themselves a part of the conflict, more or less describes the events in almost exactly the same way.

Paradigma11 5y ago

So you are saying that historical facts and context make china unable to enter binding agreements with western nations?

champagnois 5y ago
I wouldn't say that. I would argue this is a lot more like the WW1 relationship to WW2. The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries. In short, China's leadership today has pressure to right historical wrongs. We, as Westerners, should work to understand them so that we can make sense of their behavior as a nation state. China has two major historical enemies with wrongs that the leadership can stand up to: (1) The UK for the opium wars (and the 100 year fallout). (2) Japan for WW2 (and, you know, the whole genocide / killing babies for sport thing). When the CCP does anything involving these two nations, you can always assume the history and the pressure on the leadership is a factor.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries. The Hong Kong public disagrees with this, and does not see themselves as 'adversaries'.
  - champagnois 5y ago
    I know that taking things in context in this way is unpopular among folks who are looking to just sling mud at China. I aim only to provide further context to the intellectually curious who may be wondering how or why. My posts do not justify or take a side, they merely aim to provide a more expert understanding of the motives and reality.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      > My posts do not justify or take a side They actually do, and consistently so. You are from where I'm sitting consistently arguing China's case without a word of consideration for the people of Hong Kong.