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At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK. Taiwan should take note and always remem
by jmclnx 23d ago
At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.
Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.
- ramesh31 23d agoAs I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.
- camillomiller 23d agoSo, America good, China bad?
- ramesh31 23d ago>"So, America good, China bad?" No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
- jackb4040 23d agoA lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
- rayiner 23d ago> In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire. This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
- jackb4040 20d agoLol I don't think I've ever been thanked for a post before. Don't thank me, join me and the handful of others here who don't just retroactively justify every decision our tech billionaire overlords make.
- ramesh31 23d ago>but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. Yeah. Words matter. I do indeed wish we were back to a time where that was the case. America has always been flawed and contradictory, but our greatness came from a shared sense of some higher ideals that we strived for, regardless of the messy reality. That's been lost, and it's sad.
- boxed 23d agoAmerica? It was the UK.
- throwaway2037 23d agoWhat do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? In the last thirty years, lots of countries have gotten more democratic.
- ramesh31 21d ago>What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? As bad as the Soviet Union was, what came next for Russia was far far worse. The Soviets at least had party rule; Russia is now an absolute autocracy ruled with an iron grip of one man who is now liquidating 30,000 people a month in a pointless war. Orders of magnitude more people have died in the last four years of Ukraine than in every direct Soviet military action combined post-WW2. Remember that Afghanistan was their most infamous blunder, leading directly to the dissolution, and only killed half of what they are losing monthly now.
- KaiserPro 23d ago> Taiwan should take note It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence. the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people. However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- mytailorisrich 23d agoThis is a Western view of things. Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China. Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country). There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices. In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.
- maxglute 23d agoWhat happened in HK? Stupid nativist kids got disciplined for being pieces of shit, the treasonous ones jailed, and now post spanking they're partying it up on the mainland. TW should take note they're so so lucky to have that option, the alternative is Gaza.
- aurareturn 23d agoAt this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK. For much of Hong Kong's history under British rule, there was no freedom. It was whatever a single British man said. Let's take off the rose tinted glasses. A lot of Hong Kong people have fond memories of the "old HK" because their living standards and socioeconomics were well above Mainland Chinese. Today, this gap is much closer which doesn't sit right in many HKers minds. They were suppose to be the higher class, westernized Chinese. How dare any Mainlanders become wealthier, more capable, more cultured than we are. It wasn't because they had "freedom" under British rule.
- Sabinus 21d agoWhat makes you characterise Hong Kong independence movements as naive economic nostalgia and not a desire for political freedom or independent legal systems? Do you think individuals experienced more freedom under the British monarch and Parliament or under communist rule?
- aurareturn 21d agoBecause I’ve lived there for a long time and understand the locals more than whatever the western media tells.