20 ms·

How Hong Kong became a police state

278 points by shalmanese 4y ago

mikece 4y ago
In retrospect, it was pretty naive to think China would allow Hong Kong's autonomous status to persist. If nothing else it would give people in other areas of China the possible hope that they could attain a similar status. It's also a clear message to the Taiwanese what will happen if the PRC gets control of their island.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  It is still autonomous. Nothing has really changed. I lived in HK during the protests. There is a big gap between what was being reported in the western media (which I assume you consumed) and what was actually true.
  - markles 4y ago
    Autonomous in name, but the politics have changed dramatically as laws have changed. It's not the same Hong Kong.
  - GFischer 4y ago
    I've seen how local media manipulates things here in Latin America, so I'm not surprised from the inside it looked good, looking from the outside it seems like the democracy was eroded / destroyed, with Cuban-style elections where the candidates are appointed by the Chinese government.
  - obscurette 4y ago
    I have relatives in Russia. There is a big gap between how they see the current world and how it's reported in the western media. For them Russia is the last really independent and free country in the world.
    - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
      I also have friends in Russia, and second this.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Western Russia? Am curious if they have shared any thoughts on their economic situation?
      - obscurette 4y ago
        Yes, western Russia. For them (and I'm afraid that for majority) there isn't much difference - they are getting their income from state and the only problem they really see is that some things are becoming suddenly much more expensive. But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times. Disappearing McDonalds, Ikea etc are just signs that USA controls the world and are lame attempts to damage Russia.
        markdestouches 4y ago
        If one ever wanted to know what's happening in the mind of a frog that is being boiled slowly, this is probably the closest approximation. These people don't understand where the country is going, and when it gets there, they will not be able to recognize what events led to that place, allowing politicians to perpetuate the same nonsensical lies all over again. It sounds dramatic, but I believe the country is doomed and on its way down it will take its neighbors with it.
        vanattab 4y ago
        Can someone explain this frog in boiling water reference. I had never heard it before and now I have seen it on HN 4 times in 24 hours. What gives?
        oneoff786 4y ago
        It’s a fairly common idiom in eastern US at least. Slowly increase temperatures so so frogs in the water don’t realize they’re in danger. It’s not a real thing though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
  - rnk 4y ago
    You can't run for the local legislature unless you are approved. They stop some people from leaving at the airport if they protested. They arrest you for minor acts of resistance like the color of your shirt. They removed statues that were commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. If you are a westerner then maybe you can keep living your life though.
    - djbebs 4y ago
      - AyyWS 4y ago
        The fact that you can talk this nonsense here proves the difference between HK and the west.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      - xdennis 4y ago
        > Your country does all these things. You're simply not being serious. In the US you can commemorate any massacre that happened in the US. In Hong Kong you're no longer allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.
        pphysch 4y ago
        Who isn't being serious here? In parts of USA you are forbidden from glorifying the biggest separatist crisis, the Civil War. The US government actively destroys monuments to the separatist side of the civil war. Please, get a broader perspective.
        krastanov 4y ago
        In the US elected representatives in a few places have decided to remove statues of proponents of slavery, after significant public pressure. This is not happening to statues commemorating deaths of soldiers or protestors. And nothing stops you from waving a confederate flag and "celebrating your heritage" if that is your belief system. Actually, the state-funded police department would at least pretend to send officers to separate you from counter-protesters and attempt to make sure both sides are protected. This seems quite different from removing statues commemorating student protests (that went bloody due to state violence)
  - xxpor 4y ago
    So you can pop on down to your local news stand and still find the Apple Daily?
  - picsao 4y ago
  - verall 4y ago
    I too lived in HK during the protests. The protests were both about lofty things like political self-determination and about mundane things like access to housing. Since the protests, their politics is completely controlled by the mainland; their last bits of wiggle room removed. I remember clearly the lead up to and results of the 2019 district election, with its unprecedented turnout and results. I'm curious what you feel the gap was since I rarely read western media about the protests while I lived there.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    We need more of these comments, but with video and please elaborate!
  - pca006132 4y ago
    I live in HK since I was born and is still in HK now, I agree that there are gaps between the western media and the reality, but I think they are not far from the truth. I was not involved in political activities at all, but still went out to protest for the first (and last, currently) time in 2019. The situation escalated quickly, and for reasons that I cannot understand, some protesters started to act violently, which we know from history that the CCP will not compromise and protestors have no chance of winning the fight... And then there is the national security law, using the pandemic as an excuse to ban every protests, etc. People either leave or become silent. Actually I am not sure why I would want to write this, perhaps I just wanted to say something like this for a long time but was too afraid to. Some of the protesters were illogical at the time, so saying that their action is naive and will only worsen the situation may cause me trouble. Writing these now may trigger the police, although I don't think they will arrest me due to this alone.
    - robk 4y ago
      Were they plants by the ccp to justify violently putting down the protests?
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        That's the wrong thinking. During the BLM protests, there were almost certainly people who went too far, or took advantage of the chaos to create mayhem. They were not plants by the conservative right, it's just a natural thing that happens, people are unreliable like that. During the HK protests, I can imagine the same thing happening. Actually, in only a few cases where a strong leader and organization is involved (MLK, Gandhi, etc...) can protests be largely peaceful and more effective (not giving the other side an excuse to crackdown without losing face, and even these movements weren't perfect).
        throwaway2037 4y ago
        I like your post, and I feel the same. If 100K protesters show up to protest about a police killing (BLM, et al), but 5 misbehave, does that mean all 100K are bad people? Of course, no. I would say exactly the same about the police. I write this as someone who respects the work that police do to secure our communities, but I also strongly support the BLM protests against grotestque police brutality against black and brown people in the United States.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    Some important things have happened since the protests.
  - xadhominemx 4y ago
    Hard to me more incorrect. Unbelievable.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Yeah, I mean it could have held out longer but Hong Kong was doomed to just become just another CCP victim.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  The agreement with China was signed by Thatcher. That's long ago, mid-1980s. At the time, they were naively certain that increased economic liberalization and increased market economic activity in China would lead to political freedom as well. (Same about 1990s Russia: the west hoped a new economic system would lead to political freedom. Wishful thinking?)
  - aluminum96 4y ago
    Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it also worked in several cases! South Korea was a high-profile success of this strategy, for instance, with a successful transition to democracy in the 90s.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      This is kind of memory-holed, possibly because South Korea was a US ally long before it was a democracy, and "west aligned" tended to trump "democratic" a lot.
      - jpgvm 4y ago
        West-aligned still trumps democratic. The West generally doesn't have a problem with authoritarianism but rather with competition or obstruction of their economic goals. When the opposite is true they will gladly turn a blind eye to any number of atrocities. See here: Saudi-Arabia, Oman, UAE, Philippines, Egypt (military junta), Turkey, etc. If being friendly with an authoritarian state yields economic or military geographical advantage then that overrides any ideological hang-ups involved.
    - kragen 4y ago
      Also Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and much of Latin America had capitalist dictatorships before democracy. But I don't think it was free markets that led to democracy in those cases so much as it was US political influence.
      - throwaway2037 4y ago
- HWR_14 4y ago
  There were two main reasons they may have let Hong Kong be somewhat independent. One is a message to Taiwan that quasi reunification is in the cards, and they can totally trust China enough to become a semiautonomous district. The second is that it was handy to have a place with Western friendly rules to coordinate international trade.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Yes, it is a nice place to launder your money from Mainland China.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      The mainland originally let Hong Kong be because it was almost their only outlet for trade while China was closed in the 50s-early 80s. It lost that purpose as China opened up. Macau has always been the place to launder money away from Mainland China, the casinos were convenient for that until Xi cracked down.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    > reunification Unification. You can’t reunify something that wasn’t once unified. But in any case China screwed that up because the world and Taiwan have seen what China has done and is doing and Taiwan doesn’t want any part of it.
    - vanattab 4y ago
      I mean I am not saying china has a right to Taiwan, but Taiwan and parts of the mainland have been under unified rule for much of history.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        Taiwans history with China is like 7 years.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
- opportune 4y ago
  Regarding Taiwan, that doesn’t make sense to me. It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly. Showing that annexation means loss of freedoms incentivizes Taiwan to hold out and gives them something to fight for. I think the CCP’s strategy is much simpler. They don’t expect Taiwan to be annexed any time soon, they just want to quell dissent in China. I believe popular opinion among Mainlanders is that HK citizens are spoiled drama queens (negative sentiment) so a display of force is a way of showing internally that HK - once a far more prosperous part of China, that saw itself as superior/gave mainlanders an inferiority complex - is now subservient to China. Basically a demonstration that China is a rising power (internally)
  - hh3k0 4y ago
    >It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly. It's a display of strength, in my opinion. "Struggle all you want, but in the end we will have our way with you." I'm not a geopolitical expert or anything but I fully expect China to take Taiwan by force while the West is busy with Russia. I'm fairly certain that we couldn't effectively sanction both China _and_ Russia
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      If it did happen, it'd probably be the worst war we've seen, full stop. The US is still giving out Purple Hearts medals meant for the land invasion of Japan, which was expected to be horrific in terms of casualties due to the terrain. In this context, the US actually investigated and totally gave up on the idea of a land invasion of Taiwan, because the geography is so much worse; there are very few flat beaches from which to do an amphibious D-day style landing, and all of them are a few km away from mountains from which to rain down artillery.
    - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
      I can't imagine it going any better than Russia's invasion. Taiwan is all mountains, there's a sea in between with 13 beaches where they can land and China's military has no experience whatsoever. It would literally be shooting fish in a barrel for the Taiwanese army.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Almost like the West ceded it’s global power by allowing China to rise. Like how we shipped factories to China.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    Did the West control the world and could it do anything to stop China? It's something organic that can't really be controlled once the technologies are there for a global technology (edit: I mean a global economy), I think.
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      Rich countries in very much control their international trade agreements and are 100% responsible for where they invest.
    - newsclues 4y ago
      Yes, the West did control the world after WW2 Do something about China? Like shipping factory machines wholesale? The idiots in charge built up the Chinese into a manufacturing superpower!
    - SllX 4y ago
      If the technology was the only thing that mattered you would expect India to be on par with the PRC in terms of GDP and growth. We invested specifically and heavily into the PRC, and there’s a case to be made that that was a mistake as long as the CCP was the exclusive dominant political party within the PRC because right now, it’s still that. Not that a democratic China is necessarily a friendly China, but it’s at least one we wouldn’t have to trade against our liberal values to trade with.
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        India and China don't follow the same strategy
        SllX 4y ago
baxtr 4y ago
It appears that the world is becoming increasingly divided into two groups: those with "free" democratic systems and those without. And it feels very different compared to the old West/East divide. Because, ideologically speaking, the "other side" has nothing to offer in comparison to the Communists. At least they offered something (in theory) to strive for.
- throwaway331312 4y ago
  Authoritarian regimes offer strong leadership in the age of peak brain fuck. To achive a sustainable way of life, which tackles alot of our problems, China is in a pretty good position to reign into its citizens lifes and change vast economic processes top to bottom.
  - picsao 4y ago
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  I think the main line will be "stability and prosperity", at least when it comes to China and its aligned regimes. The Third World is full of countries and people who yearn for a vision of Chinese-like economic growth. I deliberately use the word vision, because I doubt that Sri Lanka or Pakistan can replicate Chinese growth in the real world, even if they adapted all the institutions of CCP. But their wannabe authoritarians can at least sell that vision to their own subjects, together with some material improvements financed from the Road and Belt warchest.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    It’ll be curious to see how that goes as their real estate sector continues collapsing
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      Even the "political stability" angle does not look so good after their chaotic Zero Covid policies that continue until today. These policies today look less rational and more like "we have a mad emperor on the throne" episode, especially when the rest of the world basically considers the epidemic history by now. Edit: Interesting that someone downvoted this. If I were a foreign investor, a chaotic policy of locking down big cities and subjecting foreign visitors to humiliating anal swabs etc. in order to keep down a respiratory virus with extreme R0 rate, much less deadly than original Covid, and with a ton of existing vaccines available, would be quite off-putting to me.
yjakecombinate 4y ago
- baxtr 4y ago
  #whataboutism
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Whataboutism is when you accuse your neighbor of making too much noise and he counters by accusing you of beating your kids. It's not when you accuse your neighbor of beating his kids, and he points out that you also beat your kids. The US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, it's not even close.
    - xdennis 4y ago
      The Economist is British. But in any case, it's whataboutism because police brutality has nothing to do with what is happening in Hong Kong, where the central government is removing local autonomy to impose totalitarianism.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      It actually is exactly whataboutism in that case. It’s also known as tu quoque.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Russia is pretty close to the US. China is estimated, it’s obviously impossible to get any real numbers. If you included Uyghurs it would prob exceed the US in total imprisonment but the rate would still be Low Because you’re comparing 1.4b to 350m.
      - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
        > Russia is pretty close to the US It's not pretty close to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... Rate per 100k 1 - United States - 639 25 - Russia - 325 129 - China - 121
AlbertCory 4y ago
I'm glad I got to visit in 1989. The only hotel room I've ever stayed in that had no windows. It was oddly not that different from San Francisco. Both places have many, many Chinese people on the streets; just a few more in HK. In both places you might wander into a store or restaurant where not everyone speaks English; slightly more often in HK, but there was always someone who did. Memory: Lantau Island and the clack of mahjong tiles as ladies played in the alleys.
- Galanwe 4y ago
  I'm living in Lantau, it's a really great place :-) I doubt you would recognize it though. Discovery Bay which would have been very new in 1989 is now a huge and wealthy place gathering mainly westerners. Tung Chung is now a busy hub with the new airport and Macau bridge. Mui Wo is booming. There are even talks of expanding the island artificially for more housing.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    They have a bridge to Macau? Wow. I see that on the map.
- baby 4y ago
  “A few more in HK”. Woot? SF is like a suburb, and HK is one of the densest place on earth crawling with life and shops and skyscrapers.
narrator 4y ago
George Soros recently complained that China's skill I'm AI is being used to supercharge their authoritarianism. "AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies. Interestingly, the Coronavirus reinforced the advantage repressive regimes enjoy by legitimizing the use of personal data for public control purposes. With these advantages, one might think that Xi Jinping, who collects personal data for the surveillance of his citizens more aggressively than any other ruler in history, is bound to be successful. He certainly thinks so, and many people believe him."[1] https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china-remarks-delivered-at-the-hoover-institution/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china...
- howaboutnope 4y ago
  > The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they possess a really effective system of mind-manipulation. In the past, free-thinkers and revolutionaries were often the products of the most piously orthodox education. This is not surprising. The methods employed by orthodox educators were and still are extremely inefficient. Under a scientific dictator education will really work -- with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown. -- Aldous Huxley https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  NYT just did a whole series on China's Totalitarianism enabled by tech: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveillance-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveill...
- offsign_p 4y ago
  Not saying he's wrong here but... I'm curious why the world puts so much weight in the opinions of investment billionaires on topics they seemingly have no formal experience in. There seems to be this implicit believe in society that wealth implies superpowers across a spectrum of topics, especially politics. Personally getting tired of all the opinions from guys like Soros, Dalio, and Ackman -- the cynic in me can't help but wonder whether these types of articles are an earnest attempt at public policy, or just a veiled bull case for their next investment thesis.
senttoschool 4y ago
Here we go with Hacker News and China. Don't people here think it's kind if suspicious that nothing ever positive gets written about China in the western media? Something positive happened in China? CCP propaganda! Like nothing ever good happens in a huge land with 1.4 billion people and thousands of years of rich history? Only thing that ever gets posted here are how China steals IP, how Chinese people aren't smart enough to invent their own stuff (check long history), etc. etc. It's really annoying.
- ximeng 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624579 The above article recently posted to HN doesn’t fall clearly into “steals IP” or “can’t invent their own stuff”.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    The top comment is slandering it as propaganda, because it doesn't follow the narrative close enough. The top comment. SV/USA can't have mature and fact-oriented discourse about China because it is in deep denial about SZ/China surpassing it. Started happening big time with TikTok.
    - senttoschool 4y ago
      Nerds have huge egos.
    - ximeng 4y ago
      I’m not talking about the quality of the discussion. I was responding specifically to the point that the only things that get posted are around IP theft.
      - senttoschool 4y ago
        It was a hyperbole. But not too far off from reality though.
pessimizer 4y ago
The title has been editorialized and its weakest claim taken out.
unity1001 4y ago
- autoconfig 4y ago
  I'm not sure you understand what's going on in Hong Kong. Politicians getting arrested simply for holding primary elections: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55555299 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55555299 Newspapers getting shut down and journalists getting arrested because they criticize the government: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009582208/hong-kongs-apple-daily-shut-down-leadership-arrested https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009582208/hong-kongs-apple-d... While I agree that the UK policing bill warrants concern, I think your comparison is insulting to the people in Hong Kong that now face jail time for simply printing or saying anything that is perceived as anti-government.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Solely Julian Assange's case would demonstrate the disparity. In the Angloamerican countries - including the US - there's all that talk of freedom as long as you don't actually make use of it. If you use it in a way that threatens the incumbent interests, the results are much worse than some minor jail time. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/no... Occupy protesters were kicked on the ground, hauled to courts and hooked up with tens of thousands of dollars of fines for 'trespassing' on !public! property. Effectively bankrupting many, and discouraging protest for good. Since the state did not persecute them for their speech, but for 'trespassing', all is still 'democratic' in the legalese. Even if its not in practice.
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      I glanced at the latest amendments to the UK bill and it includes such ridiculousnesses as the possibility of 1 year imprisonment for stealing a traffic sign, and the right for police to search your person for carrying a lock. Your original comment is still textbook whataboutism, however, and deserves its downvotes for that reason alone.
bigcat12345678 4y ago
Oh, shitty economist forgot its publication is about economy. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202109/14/P2021091400837.htm#:~:text=Hong%20Kong%20once%20again%20ranked%20as%20the%20world's%20freest%20economy&text=The%20Hong%20Kong%20Special%20Administrative,the%20World%202021%20Annual%20Report https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202109/14/P2021091400837.... HK is still the most freedom area in economy freedom ranking. How is that squared with "police state"? These type of sentiment among the people is like the typical reaction of the cultural adaptation of HK, in the background the reinforced tie with the mainland China. To link this to "police state" is a stereotype of Chinese society. This stereotyping is a well understood political propaganda campaign started since 1840. I.e., when the west realized the mighty Qing dynasty is so weak and wait for them to plunder, they start to manufacture an inferior sense on Chinese and China. For a simple fact: China's incarcerated population 121 per 100,000 of the national population, US 419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000. Great Britain is 131.5 per 100 thousand people in 2021 If you want to define a police state, then incarceration rate is a better index than a few political activists, especially those political activists are not patriotic towards their home country. It's like asking people naturalized in US to take an oath: ``` The Oath will ask you to swear that, as a new citizen of the United States, you will: Support and defend the values of the laws and Constitution of the United States against its enemies. ``` But these political activists will refuse to do so, and still demand to be naturalized.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  https://www.heritage.org/index/ https://www.heritage.org/index/ > In 2021 the Heritage Foundation removed Hong Kong as a separate entity from China from its list of freest economics of the world citing increasing interference from the Chinese government in Hong Kong's governmental system and democratic process. With this Hong Kong along with Macao lost a position they had held in the index after several decades. The head of the Heritage Foundation indicated that Hong Kong is guaranteed with more economic freedoms but however, those economic policies are still ultimately controlled by Beijing.
  - bigcat12345678 4y ago
    Sure, Chinese government release its own human right report, you can guess how good a performance is US, and other nations. Good luck to find truth from political propaganda outlets.
SunlightEdge 4y ago
Growing up and the 80s and 90s in the UK (i.e. without internet) the two most exciting countries for foreign films was Japan and Hong Kong (apart from USA of course). I used to love them. I'm not a movie expert, but it does feel like Hong Kong movies have nosedived in the years since it joined China. And is now a bit of a dead end. Police states aren't exactly conducive for creative expression. There's a lot of factors that could explain it but I do wonder how much regime change played a part.
haunter 4y ago
Wish I can visit Hong Kong one day though
goolulusaurs 4y ago
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The thing that could have saved HK was legalization and widespread private gun ownership. Yes, there would have been more gun crime, but the victims of all of the random gun crime in the world is a tiny fraction compared to the victims of communism.
- logicchains 4y ago
  This is what Ukraine found out too late. When Russia invaded they legalised gun ownership but there weren't enough guns to go around. If Ukrainian civilians had been as well armed as Americans, the Russian army would have been vastly outnumbered in urban warfare and washed away in a river of blood.
  - vanattab 4y ago
    I mean I fully support the second amendment, but no amount of AK-47's are going to stop a Russian armored column they needed the javelins and drones for that.
    - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      The point in an invasion that's reached that point isn't to turn back the enemy with your backyard AKs; it's to rack up the casualty toll to prevent the supposed victor from achieving peace. See also: Iraqi IEDs.
- throwaway2048 4y ago
  Not sure we agree on a shared reality if you think even literally every single person in Hong Kong owning a gun is going to much of anything stop the CCP.
  - goolulusaurs 4y ago
    Yes, I think if literally every single person in Hong Kong had a gun that would be enough to stop the CCP. The entire active military of China is about 2 million people, less than a third of the approx. 7.5 million people in HK. Maybe the CCP could bomb the city into dust, but taking it over intact would be a practical impossiblity.
kepler1 4y ago
Now here is a more intellectually interesting question to me, and somewhat a reaction to our western media reporting interviewing mostly the young and the liberal who want to leave HK: What do you do, or how should you feel/react/believe if a people actually want the tradeoffs of more authoritarianism in exchange for more security/economic stability/etc? Whether they make that choice informed or not so well-informed, is that an illegitimate choice, always bad? I have the feeling that media bias is to side with the most visible and sympathetic example stories, which are people who oppose China in this case. What about the many, many segments of the population which don't care about the change, or actively support it? There is quite a bias, you must admit, in the media, that "China's encroachment/takeover/etc is objectively bad" -- which to me sometimes comes off as not having done much homework why that's true, or why it's so obvious.
- monetus 4y ago
  In regards to your question - I think of it this way. In what order do you prioritize your identities; yourself, your family, social circles, those who seem to share your identity, the state or its populus, and then the world? Plenty of people prioritize one above all else, and for many that is the state. In regards to media bias, at least in the US, the nielson ratings among others are monitored vigorously, often given to anchors during commercial breaks. Content is filtered through a, or multiple people's worldview(s), but ratings rule for all but the most ideological. The juggling of entertainment and news will never go away, I think - people don't listen to the newswires like AP or reuters for fun do they?
- imtringued 4y ago
  >What do you do, or how should you feel/react/believe if a people actually want the tradeoffs of more authoritarianism in exchange for more security/economic stability/etc? There is no tradeoff, they are the same thing. Freedom from rent seeking results in both security and economic stability and is anti authoritarian.
samhyde69 4y ago
Very eurocentric commentary in this thread. China, a civilization-state that predates the West by thousands of years, was not going to turn into the West, no matter how much we wished for it. Very normative patriarchal colonialist judgments on a country that raised more people out of poverty than any other time in human history.
- markdestouches 4y ago
  This sounds like it's straight from the CCP propaganda machine. Having the same ancient culture didn't stop Taiwan from becoming a western-like state.
  - vanattab 4y ago
    I would describe Taiwan was western-aligned but not western-like.
    - markdestouches 4y ago
      Western-like in the sense of its institutions, elections, rule of law, economy etc. Not that these things are western by nature, just that people tend to associate them with western countries.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  The legitimate government of China that's lasted for thousands of years is currently effectively exiled to Taiwan. The CCP is a new usurper/colonizer/occupier.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    This is what my Chinese-American friends say, only with much more colorful language.
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > The CCP is a new usurper/colonizer/occupier. Those three words mean three different things and are not interchangeable. The CCP cannot accurately be called a "colonizer", because, regardless of its faults, it's not exogenous to China. It's a category error.
thedudeabides5 4y ago
Step 1 - Violate the Treaty / Status Quo w violence https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002800d4d6e https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000... Step 2 - Start a meaningless war over definitions (of colony) to muddy history Step 3 - Turning to what's next (Taiwan) nomnomnomnomnom
spongechameleon 4y ago
I think the lesson for Taiwan is clear here. There will be no sudden military invasion. The CCP will first take a similar approach of embedding party loyalists into Taiwanese civil society, assuming positions of power. Only once enough puzzle pieces are in place will a military takeover occur and by then it'll be far too late- the party loyalists embedded in Taiwan will sit on their hands and watch it happen.
throwrqX 4y ago
Always hilarious watching the anti-west crowd come here with their "look at your imprisonment statistics!" as if their countries would do any different if they had the same demographic groups as America did. If anything they would treat them worse, you certainly won't find as many people in Russia or China willing to excuse criminals as you do here in more progressive parts of America.

278 points by shalmanese 4y ago

In retrospect, it was pretty naive to think China would allow Hong Kong's autonomous status to persist. If nothing else it would give people in other areas of China the possible hope that they could attain a similar status. It's also a clear message to the Taiwanese what will happen if the PRC gets control of their island.

senttoschool 4y ago
It is still autonomous. Nothing has really changed. I lived in HK during the protests. There is a big gap between what was being reported in the western media (which I assume you consumed) and what was actually true.
- markles 4y ago
  Autonomous in name, but the politics have changed dramatically as laws have changed. It's not the same Hong Kong.
- GFischer 4y ago
  I've seen how local media manipulates things here in Latin America, so I'm not surprised from the inside it looked good, looking from the outside it seems like the democracy was eroded / destroyed, with Cuban-style elections where the candidates are appointed by the Chinese government.
- obscurette 4y ago
  I have relatives in Russia. There is a big gap between how they see the current world and how it's reported in the western media. For them Russia is the last really independent and free country in the world.
  - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
    I also have friends in Russia, and second this.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Western Russia? Am curious if they have shared any thoughts on their economic situation?
    - obscurette 4y ago
      Yes, western Russia. For them (and I'm afraid that for majority) there isn't much difference - they are getting their income from state and the only problem they really see is that some things are becoming suddenly much more expensive. But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times. Disappearing McDonalds, Ikea etc are just signs that USA controls the world and are lame attempts to damage Russia.
      - markdestouches 4y ago
        If one ever wanted to know what's happening in the mind of a frog that is being boiled slowly, this is probably the closest approximation. These people don't understand where the country is going, and when it gets there, they will not be able to recognize what events led to that place, allowing politicians to perpetuate the same nonsensical lies all over again. It sounds dramatic, but I believe the country is doomed and on its way down it will take its neighbors with it.
        vanattab 4y ago
        Can someone explain this frog in boiling water reference. I had never heard it before and now I have seen it on HN 4 times in 24 hours. What gives?
        oneoff786 4y ago
        It’s a fairly common idiom in eastern US at least. Slowly increase temperatures so so frogs in the water don’t realize they’re in danger. It’s not a real thing though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
- rnk 4y ago
  You can't run for the local legislature unless you are approved. They stop some people from leaving at the airport if they protested. They arrest you for minor acts of resistance like the color of your shirt. They removed statues that were commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. If you are a westerner then maybe you can keep living your life though.
  - djbebs 4y ago
    - AyyWS 4y ago
      The fact that you can talk this nonsense here proves the difference between HK and the west.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    - xdennis 4y ago
      > Your country does all these things. You're simply not being serious. In the US you can commemorate any massacre that happened in the US. In Hong Kong you're no longer allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.
      - pphysch 4y ago
        Who isn't being serious here? In parts of USA you are forbidden from glorifying the biggest separatist crisis, the Civil War. The US government actively destroys monuments to the separatist side of the civil war. Please, get a broader perspective.
        krastanov 4y ago
        In the US elected representatives in a few places have decided to remove statues of proponents of slavery, after significant public pressure. This is not happening to statues commemorating deaths of soldiers or protestors. And nothing stops you from waving a confederate flag and "celebrating your heritage" if that is your belief system. Actually, the state-funded police department would at least pretend to send officers to separate you from counter-protesters and attempt to make sure both sides are protected. This seems quite different from removing statues commemorating student protests (that went bloody due to state violence)
- xxpor 4y ago
  So you can pop on down to your local news stand and still find the Apple Daily?
- picsao 4y ago
- verall 4y ago
  I too lived in HK during the protests. The protests were both about lofty things like political self-determination and about mundane things like access to housing. Since the protests, their politics is completely controlled by the mainland; their last bits of wiggle room removed. I remember clearly the lead up to and results of the 2019 district election, with its unprecedented turnout and results. I'm curious what you feel the gap was since I rarely read western media about the protests while I lived there.
- EGreg 4y ago
  We need more of these comments, but with video and please elaborate!
- pca006132 4y ago
  I live in HK since I was born and is still in HK now, I agree that there are gaps between the western media and the reality, but I think they are not far from the truth. I was not involved in political activities at all, but still went out to protest for the first (and last, currently) time in 2019. The situation escalated quickly, and for reasons that I cannot understand, some protesters started to act violently, which we know from history that the CCP will not compromise and protestors have no chance of winning the fight... And then there is the national security law, using the pandemic as an excuse to ban every protests, etc. People either leave or become silent. Actually I am not sure why I would want to write this, perhaps I just wanted to say something like this for a long time but was too afraid to. Some of the protesters were illogical at the time, so saying that their action is naive and will only worsen the situation may cause me trouble. Writing these now may trigger the police, although I don't think they will arrest me due to this alone.
  - robk 4y ago
    Were they plants by the ccp to justify violently putting down the protests?
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      That's the wrong thinking. During the BLM protests, there were almost certainly people who went too far, or took advantage of the chaos to create mayhem. They were not plants by the conservative right, it's just a natural thing that happens, people are unreliable like that. During the HK protests, I can imagine the same thing happening. Actually, in only a few cases where a strong leader and organization is involved (MLK, Gandhi, etc...) can protests be largely peaceful and more effective (not giving the other side an excuse to crackdown without losing face, and even these movements weren't perfect).
      - throwaway2037 4y ago
        I like your post, and I feel the same. If 100K protesters show up to protest about a police killing (BLM, et al), but 5 misbehave, does that mean all 100K are bad people? Of course, no. I would say exactly the same about the police. I write this as someone who respects the work that police do to secure our communities, but I also strongly support the BLM protests against grotestque police brutality against black and brown people in the United States.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Some important things have happened since the protests.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
  Hard to me more incorrect. Unbelievable.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Yeah, I mean it could have held out longer but Hong Kong was doomed to just become just another CCP victim.
kzrdude 4y ago
The agreement with China was signed by Thatcher. That's long ago, mid-1980s. At the time, they were naively certain that increased economic liberalization and increased market economic activity in China would lead to political freedom as well. (Same about 1990s Russia: the west hoped a new economic system would lead to political freedom. Wishful thinking?)
- aluminum96 4y ago
  Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it also worked in several cases! South Korea was a high-profile success of this strategy, for instance, with a successful transition to democracy in the 90s.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    This is kind of memory-holed, possibly because South Korea was a US ally long before it was a democracy, and "west aligned" tended to trump "democratic" a lot.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      West-aligned still trumps democratic. The West generally doesn't have a problem with authoritarianism but rather with competition or obstruction of their economic goals. When the opposite is true they will gladly turn a blind eye to any number of atrocities. See here: Saudi-Arabia, Oman, UAE, Philippines, Egypt (military junta), Turkey, etc. If being friendly with an authoritarian state yields economic or military geographical advantage then that overrides any ideological hang-ups involved.
  - kragen 4y ago
    Also Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and much of Latin America had capitalist dictatorships before democracy. But I don't think it was free markets that led to democracy in those cases so much as it was US political influence.
    - throwaway2037 4y ago
HWR_14 4y ago
There were two main reasons they may have let Hong Kong be somewhat independent. One is a message to Taiwan that quasi reunification is in the cards, and they can totally trust China enough to become a semiautonomous district. The second is that it was handy to have a place with Western friendly rules to coordinate international trade.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Yes, it is a nice place to launder your money from Mainland China.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    The mainland originally let Hong Kong be because it was almost their only outlet for trade while China was closed in the 50s-early 80s. It lost that purpose as China opened up. Macau has always been the place to launder money away from Mainland China, the casinos were convenient for that until Xi cracked down.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  > reunification Unification. You can’t reunify something that wasn’t once unified. But in any case China screwed that up because the world and Taiwan have seen what China has done and is doing and Taiwan doesn’t want any part of it.
  - vanattab 4y ago
    I mean I am not saying china has a right to Taiwan, but Taiwan and parts of the mainland have been under unified rule for much of history.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Taiwans history with China is like 7 years.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
opportune 4y ago
Regarding Taiwan, that doesn’t make sense to me. It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly. Showing that annexation means loss of freedoms incentivizes Taiwan to hold out and gives them something to fight for. I think the CCP’s strategy is much simpler. They don’t expect Taiwan to be annexed any time soon, they just want to quell dissent in China. I believe popular opinion among Mainlanders is that HK citizens are spoiled drama queens (negative sentiment) so a display of force is a way of showing internally that HK - once a far more prosperous part of China, that saw itself as superior/gave mainlanders an inferiority complex - is now subservient to China. Basically a demonstration that China is a rising power (internally)
- hh3k0 4y ago
  >It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly. It's a display of strength, in my opinion. "Struggle all you want, but in the end we will have our way with you." I'm not a geopolitical expert or anything but I fully expect China to take Taiwan by force while the West is busy with Russia. I'm fairly certain that we couldn't effectively sanction both China _and_ Russia
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    If it did happen, it'd probably be the worst war we've seen, full stop. The US is still giving out Purple Hearts medals meant for the land invasion of Japan, which was expected to be horrific in terms of casualties due to the terrain. In this context, the US actually investigated and totally gave up on the idea of a land invasion of Taiwan, because the geography is so much worse; there are very few flat beaches from which to do an amphibious D-day style landing, and all of them are a few km away from mountains from which to rain down artillery.
  - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
    I can't imagine it going any better than Russia's invasion. Taiwan is all mountains, there's a sea in between with 13 beaches where they can land and China's military has no experience whatsoever. It would literally be shooting fish in a barrel for the Taiwanese army.
newsclues 4y ago
Almost like the West ceded it’s global power by allowing China to rise. Like how we shipped factories to China.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Did the West control the world and could it do anything to stop China? It's something organic that can't really be controlled once the technologies are there for a global technology (edit: I mean a global economy), I think.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    Rich countries in very much control their international trade agreements and are 100% responsible for where they invest.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Yes, the West did control the world after WW2 Do something about China? Like shipping factory machines wholesale? The idiots in charge built up the Chinese into a manufacturing superpower!
  - SllX 4y ago
    If the technology was the only thing that mattered you would expect India to be on par with the PRC in terms of GDP and growth. We invested specifically and heavily into the PRC, and there’s a case to be made that that was a mistake as long as the CCP was the exclusive dominant political party within the PRC because right now, it’s still that. Not that a democratic China is necessarily a friendly China, but it’s at least one we wouldn’t have to trade against our liberal values to trade with.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      India and China don't follow the same strategy
      - SllX 4y ago

baxtr 4y ago

It appears that the world is becoming increasingly divided into two groups: those with "free" democratic systems and those without. And it feels very different compared to the old West/East divide. Because, ideologically speaking, the "other side" has nothing to offer in comparison to the Communists. At least they offered something (in theory) to strive for.

throwaway331312 4y ago
Authoritarian regimes offer strong leadership in the age of peak brain fuck. To achive a sustainable way of life, which tackles alot of our problems, China is in a pretty good position to reign into its citizens lifes and change vast economic processes top to bottom.
- picsao 4y ago
inglor_cz 4y ago
I think the main line will be "stability and prosperity", at least when it comes to China and its aligned regimes. The Third World is full of countries and people who yearn for a vision of Chinese-like economic growth. I deliberately use the word vision, because I doubt that Sri Lanka or Pakistan can replicate Chinese growth in the real world, even if they adapted all the institutions of CCP. But their wannabe authoritarians can at least sell that vision to their own subjects, together with some material improvements financed from the Road and Belt warchest.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  It’ll be curious to see how that goes as their real estate sector continues collapsing
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Even the "political stability" angle does not look so good after their chaotic Zero Covid policies that continue until today. These policies today look less rational and more like "we have a mad emperor on the throne" episode, especially when the rest of the world basically considers the epidemic history by now. Edit: Interesting that someone downvoted this. If I were a foreign investor, a chaotic policy of locking down big cities and subjecting foreign visitors to humiliating anal swabs etc. in order to keep down a respiratory virus with extreme R0 rate, much less deadly than original Covid, and with a ton of existing vaccines available, would be quite off-putting to me.

yjakecombinate 4y ago

baxtr 4y ago
#whataboutism
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Whataboutism is when you accuse your neighbor of making too much noise and he counters by accusing you of beating your kids. It's not when you accuse your neighbor of beating his kids, and he points out that you also beat your kids. The US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, it's not even close.
  - xdennis 4y ago
    The Economist is British. But in any case, it's whataboutism because police brutality has nothing to do with what is happening in Hong Kong, where the central government is removing local autonomy to impose totalitarianism.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    It actually is exactly whataboutism in that case. It’s also known as tu quoque.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Russia is pretty close to the US. China is estimated, it’s obviously impossible to get any real numbers. If you included Uyghurs it would prob exceed the US in total imprisonment but the rate would still be Low Because you’re comparing 1.4b to 350m.
    - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
      > Russia is pretty close to the US It's not pretty close to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... Rate per 100k 1 - United States - 639 25 - Russia - 325 129 - China - 121

AlbertCory 4y ago

I'm glad I got to visit in 1989. The only hotel room I've ever stayed in that had no windows. It was oddly not that different from San Francisco. Both places have many, many Chinese people on the streets; just a few more in HK. In both places you might wander into a store or restaurant where not everyone speaks English; slightly more often in HK, but there was always someone who did. Memory: Lantau Island and the clack of mahjong tiles as ladies played in the alleys.

Galanwe 4y ago
I'm living in Lantau, it's a really great place :-) I doubt you would recognize it though. Discovery Bay which would have been very new in 1989 is now a huge and wealthy place gathering mainly westerners. Tung Chung is now a busy hub with the new airport and Macau bridge. Mui Wo is booming. There are even talks of expanding the island artificially for more housing.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  They have a bridge to Macau? Wow. I see that on the map.
baby 4y ago
“A few more in HK”. Woot? SF is like a suburb, and HK is one of the densest place on earth crawling with life and shops and skyscrapers.

narrator 4y ago

George Soros recently complained that China's skill I'm AI is being used to supercharge their authoritarianism. "AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies. Interestingly, the Coronavirus reinforced the advantage repressive regimes enjoy by legitimizing the use of personal data for public control purposes. With these advantages, one might think that Xi Jinping, who collects personal data for the surveillance of his citizens more aggressively than any other ruler in history, is bound to be successful. He certainly thinks so, and many people believe him."[1] https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china-remarks-delivered-at-the-hoover-institution/ https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china...

howaboutnope 4y ago
> The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they possess a really effective system of mind-manipulation. In the past, free-thinkers and revolutionaries were often the products of the most piously orthodox education. This is not surprising. The methods employed by orthodox educators were and still are extremely inefficient. Under a scientific dictator education will really work -- with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown. -- Aldous Huxley https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
systemvoltage 4y ago
NYT just did a whole series on China's Totalitarianism enabled by tech: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveillance-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveill...
offsign_p 4y ago
Not saying he's wrong here but... I'm curious why the world puts so much weight in the opinions of investment billionaires on topics they seemingly have no formal experience in. There seems to be this implicit believe in society that wealth implies superpowers across a spectrum of topics, especially politics. Personally getting tired of all the opinions from guys like Soros, Dalio, and Ackman -- the cynic in me can't help but wonder whether these types of articles are an earnest attempt at public policy, or just a veiled bull case for their next investment thesis.

senttoschool 4y ago

Here we go with Hacker News and China. Don't people here think it's kind if suspicious that nothing ever positive gets written about China in the western media? Something positive happened in China? CCP propaganda! Like nothing ever good happens in a huge land with 1.4 billion people and thousands of years of rich history? Only thing that ever gets posted here are how China steals IP, how Chinese people aren't smart enough to invent their own stuff (check long history), etc. etc. It's really annoying.

ximeng 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624579 The above article recently posted to HN doesn’t fall clearly into “steals IP” or “can’t invent their own stuff”.
- pphysch 4y ago
  The top comment is slandering it as propaganda, because it doesn't follow the narrative close enough. The top comment. SV/USA can't have mature and fact-oriented discourse about China because it is in deep denial about SZ/China surpassing it. Started happening big time with TikTok.
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    Nerds have huge egos.
  - ximeng 4y ago
    I’m not talking about the quality of the discussion. I was responding specifically to the point that the only things that get posted are around IP theft.
    - senttoschool 4y ago
      It was a hyperbole. But not too far off from reality though.

pessimizer 4y ago

The title has been editorialized and its weakest claim taken out.

unity1001 4y ago

autoconfig 4y ago
I'm not sure you understand what's going on in Hong Kong. Politicians getting arrested simply for holding primary elections: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55555299 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55555299 Newspapers getting shut down and journalists getting arrested because they criticize the government: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009582208/hong-kongs-apple-daily-shut-down-leadership-arrested https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009582208/hong-kongs-apple-d... While I agree that the UK policing bill warrants concern, I think your comparison is insulting to the people in Hong Kong that now face jail time for simply printing or saying anything that is perceived as anti-government.
- unity1001 4y ago
  Solely Julian Assange's case would demonstrate the disparity. In the Angloamerican countries - including the US - there's all that talk of freedom as long as you don't actually make use of it. If you use it in a way that threatens the incumbent interests, the results are much worse than some minor jail time. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/no... Occupy protesters were kicked on the ground, hauled to courts and hooked up with tens of thousands of dollars of fines for 'trespassing' on !public! property. Effectively bankrupting many, and discouraging protest for good. Since the state did not persecute them for their speech, but for 'trespassing', all is still 'democratic' in the legalese. Even if its not in practice.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    I glanced at the latest amendments to the UK bill and it includes such ridiculousnesses as the possibility of 1 year imprisonment for stealing a traffic sign, and the right for police to search your person for carrying a lock. Your original comment is still textbook whataboutism, however, and deserves its downvotes for that reason alone.

bigcat12345678 4y ago

Oh, shitty economist forgot its publication is about economy. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202109/14/P2021091400837.htm#:~:text=Hong%20Kong%20once%20again%20ranked%20as%20the%20world's%20freest%20economy&text=The%20Hong%20Kong%20Special%20Administrative,the%20World%202021%20Annual%20Report https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202109/14/P2021091400837.... HK is still the most freedom area in economy freedom ranking. How is that squared with "police state"? These type of sentiment among the people is like the typical reaction of the cultural adaptation of HK, in the background the reinforced tie with the mainland China. To link this to "police state" is a stereotype of Chinese society. This stereotyping is a well understood political propaganda campaign started since 1840. I.e., when the west realized the mighty Qing dynasty is so weak and wait for them to plunder, they start to manufacture an inferior sense on Chinese and China. For a simple fact: China's incarcerated population 121 per 100,000 of the national population, US 419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000. Great Britain is 131.5 per 100 thousand people in 2021 If you want to define a police state, then incarceration rate is a better index than a few political activists, especially those political activists are not patriotic towards their home country. It's like asking people naturalized in US to take an oath: ``` The Oath will ask you to swear that, as a new citizen of the United States, you will: Support and defend the values of the laws and Constitution of the United States against its enemies. ``` But these political activists will refuse to do so, and still demand to be naturalized.

philliphaydon 4y ago
https://www.heritage.org/index/ https://www.heritage.org/index/ > In 2021 the Heritage Foundation removed Hong Kong as a separate entity from China from its list of freest economics of the world citing increasing interference from the Chinese government in Hong Kong's governmental system and democratic process. With this Hong Kong along with Macao lost a position they had held in the index after several decades. The head of the Heritage Foundation indicated that Hong Kong is guaranteed with more economic freedoms but however, those economic policies are still ultimately controlled by Beijing.
- bigcat12345678 4y ago
  Sure, Chinese government release its own human right report, you can guess how good a performance is US, and other nations. Good luck to find truth from political propaganda outlets.

SunlightEdge 4y ago

Growing up and the 80s and 90s in the UK (i.e. without internet) the two most exciting countries for foreign films was Japan and Hong Kong (apart from USA of course). I used to love them. I'm not a movie expert, but it does feel like Hong Kong movies have nosedived in the years since it joined China. And is now a bit of a dead end. Police states aren't exactly conducive for creative expression. There's a lot of factors that could explain it but I do wonder how much regime change played a part.

haunter 4y ago

Wish I can visit Hong Kong one day though

goolulusaurs 4y ago

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The thing that could have saved HK was legalization and widespread private gun ownership. Yes, there would have been more gun crime, but the victims of all of the random gun crime in the world is a tiny fraction compared to the victims of communism.

logicchains 4y ago
This is what Ukraine found out too late. When Russia invaded they legalised gun ownership but there weren't enough guns to go around. If Ukrainian civilians had been as well armed as Americans, the Russian army would have been vastly outnumbered in urban warfare and washed away in a river of blood.
- vanattab 4y ago
  I mean I fully support the second amendment, but no amount of AK-47's are going to stop a Russian armored column they needed the javelins and drones for that.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    The point in an invasion that's reached that point isn't to turn back the enemy with your backyard AKs; it's to rack up the casualty toll to prevent the supposed victor from achieving peace. See also: Iraqi IEDs.
throwaway2048 4y ago
Not sure we agree on a shared reality if you think even literally every single person in Hong Kong owning a gun is going to much of anything stop the CCP.
- goolulusaurs 4y ago
  Yes, I think if literally every single person in Hong Kong had a gun that would be enough to stop the CCP. The entire active military of China is about 2 million people, less than a third of the approx. 7.5 million people in HK. Maybe the CCP could bomb the city into dust, but taking it over intact would be a practical impossiblity.

kepler1 4y ago

Now here is a more intellectually interesting question to me, and somewhat a reaction to our western media reporting interviewing mostly the young and the liberal who want to leave HK: What do you do, or how should you feel/react/believe if a people actually want the tradeoffs of more authoritarianism in exchange for more security/economic stability/etc? Whether they make that choice informed or not so well-informed, is that an illegitimate choice, always bad? I have the feeling that media bias is to side with the most visible and sympathetic example stories, which are people who oppose China in this case. What about the many, many segments of the population which don't care about the change, or actively support it? There is quite a bias, you must admit, in the media, that "China's encroachment/takeover/etc is objectively bad" -- which to me sometimes comes off as not having done much homework why that's true, or why it's so obvious.

monetus 4y ago
In regards to your question - I think of it this way. In what order do you prioritize your identities; yourself, your family, social circles, those who seem to share your identity, the state or its populus, and then the world? Plenty of people prioritize one above all else, and for many that is the state. In regards to media bias, at least in the US, the nielson ratings among others are monitored vigorously, often given to anchors during commercial breaks. Content is filtered through a, or multiple people's worldview(s), but ratings rule for all but the most ideological. The juggling of entertainment and news will never go away, I think - people don't listen to the newswires like AP or reuters for fun do they?
imtringued 4y ago
>What do you do, or how should you feel/react/believe if a people actually want the tradeoffs of more authoritarianism in exchange for more security/economic stability/etc? There is no tradeoff, they are the same thing. Freedom from rent seeking results in both security and economic stability and is anti authoritarian.

samhyde69 4y ago

Very eurocentric commentary in this thread. China, a civilization-state that predates the West by thousands of years, was not going to turn into the West, no matter how much we wished for it. Very normative patriarchal colonialist judgments on a country that raised more people out of poverty than any other time in human history.

markdestouches 4y ago
This sounds like it's straight from the CCP propaganda machine. Having the same ancient culture didn't stop Taiwan from becoming a western-like state.
- vanattab 4y ago
  I would describe Taiwan was western-aligned but not western-like.
  - markdestouches 4y ago
    Western-like in the sense of its institutions, elections, rule of law, economy etc. Not that these things are western by nature, just that people tend to associate them with western countries.
josephcsible 4y ago
The legitimate government of China that's lasted for thousands of years is currently effectively exiled to Taiwan. The CCP is a new usurper/colonizer/occupier.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  This is what my Chinese-American friends say, only with much more colorful language.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > The CCP is a new usurper/colonizer/occupier. Those three words mean three different things and are not interchangeable. The CCP cannot accurately be called a "colonizer", because, regardless of its faults, it's not exogenous to China. It's a category error.

thedudeabides5 4y ago

Step 1 - Violate the Treaty / Status Quo w violence https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002800d4d6e https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000... Step 2 - Start a meaningless war over definitions (of colony) to muddy history Step 3 - Turning to what's next (Taiwan) nomnomnomnomnom

spongechameleon 4y ago

I think the lesson for Taiwan is clear here. There will be no sudden military invasion. The CCP will first take a similar approach of embedding party loyalists into Taiwanese civil society, assuming positions of power. Only once enough puzzle pieces are in place will a military takeover occur and by then it'll be far too late- the party loyalists embedded in Taiwan will sit on their hands and watch it happen.

throwrqX 4y ago

Always hilarious watching the anti-west crowd come here with their "look at your imprisonment statistics!" as if their countries would do any different if they had the same demographic groups as America did. If anything they would treat them worse, you certainly won't find as many people in Russia or China willing to excuse criminals as you do here in more progressive parts of America.