Doesn't matter. The UK has no spine and will never push to enforce the terms of their 1997 treaty with China that transferred control of HK. When a trading partner is as valuable as China, all ideals go out the window.
I remember the promises well since I was in Taipei and watching Chris Patten, Britain's final governor of HK, talk about it on the news during the hand-off.
Seems extraordinarily unlikely to be related to the current chaos within the US executive branch. The new Trump administration is dealing with like six or seven crises at the moment (of its own creation, no less). China knows that a little malfesance on its part won't come anywhere near TV news.
This is what people mean when they praise things like a "steady hand on the tiller". These coming years are going to be one disaster after another.
If the minority wants a Constitutionally limited government founded on equality replaced with a racist, religiously-biased authoritarianism, and manages to elect a government with that intent over the wishes of the majority, that doesn't make that governments steps to implement it's authoritarianism any less of a crisis.
The Republicans have a majority in the House, in the Senate, and they have the President. Is the American voting system so defective that a minority can achieve all that?
The idea is that Republicans are a numeric minority, because all the densely populated cities are Democratic and thus the population majority of America is Democratic.
However the US isn't a population based democracy, so Republicans hold all majority power in all the branches of government because they have the widest geographical coverage of any political party.
Is this good or bad? Well.... hypothetical question. If we had a democratic world government, would it be good or bad that China and India combined would have majority power by virtue of population alone? Are the issues of a far away land more virtuous just for the sheer size of the population there?
It can be argued yea or nay---but balancing geography over population is the way the US was designed, without that compromise the less populous colonies would never have agreed to join the union.
(It's because "one person" gets "one vote" for an elector. But some people get more electors than others, and electors vote for the President, not individual voters.)
Yep. There are a lot of things in the US political system that give states with lower populations more representation per capita than states with greater populations, and the electoral college is one of them and perhaps the most egregious, given that we're long past the time when it made sense to fear that US presidents would prioritize their home state over the country, if that was ever a concern.
The Senate is the most extreme example- every state gets two Senators. So Rhode Island and Wyoming have just as much representation in the Senate as California and Texas, despite having ~30x the population. Of course that's the whole point of the Senate, to counterbalance the representation-by-population of the House to avoid a tyranny by the majority. We may have worked ourselves into a tyranny by the minority at this point though. :(
Even the more egalitarian House somewhat overrepresents the more sparsely populated states, although it probably doesn't make nearly as much of a difference in practice. States get a number of representatives based on population, but every state gets at least one representative, so you have the case of (for example) Wyoming having one representative for its 600,000 people, but Texas ends up having one representative per ~800,000 people. Of course, Wyoming has one rep total and Texas has 36 of them, so I don't think Wyoming will be outvoting Texas anytime soon, but still.
> Even the more egalitarian House somewhat overrepresents the more sparsely populated states
"Sparse" isn't exactly true, since it's population not density that drives it. And, because of granularity effects, it's not consistently bigger states that lose in the House; the most underrepresented state in the House is also a small state (Delaware.)
Because of the 2/state Senate electors, though, it's consistently more populated states that lose in the EC.
We should keep in mind as well that the campaigns play the game they are given -- to maximize electoral votes. There is an opportunity cost (the popular vote) to only campaigning in the swing states.
For example, a large number of Hillary's popular vote was claimed in California. Trump didn't campaign much in California. One could argue if Trump spent more time in California (which he strategically did not), Hillary's popular vote lead wouldn't be as high.
I think its culturally important that Trump didn't get the popular vote, but it's also a little like playing a game of chess, losing, and then decrying "but I took more pawns!"
Not only that, but no candidate got a majority of the popular vote in 2016. If you wanted to elect by majority vote (as is currently done with the electoral college), we'd have to do a run-off to determine the actual popular vote winner.
> I think its culturally important that Trump didn't get the popular vote, but it's also a little like playing a game of chess, losing, and then decrying "but I took more pawns!"
There are certainly such complaints coming from those who voted against him, but it's also worth noting that by far the biggest sore loser is Trump himself. He has insisted that the only reason he failed to win the popular vote is due to voter fraud, and not due to a brilliantly-executed campaign strategy by his staff. They knew how to get the electoral votes, and they went out and got them. But instead of being thrilled to have the office and focusing all effort on his agenda, he had his press secretary defend his delusional idea that he won on the merits of being the most popular, and then doubled down and claimed widespread voter fraud in the states he didn't need to win.
It's worth noting because it shows how divorced the reality of fitness for the office is from the ability to gain the office. We have known this for a long time--almost everyone acknowledges that absent an extremely fortunate turn of circumstances one cannot become president--but I don't think there has been in at least a century here (and probably longer) such a stark negative example.
Trump is NOT president because some people get more electors than others.
If you're talking about the slight disproportion in the electoral college, that didn't matter. Trump was 74 electoral votes ahead his closest opponent. Removing two electoral votes for Trump's extra 10ish states doesn't matter. Theoretically it could matter, but 2016 wasn't close enough.
Trump won because some states have chosen to elect their electors so that they all vote for one candidate.
The point made in GP is no less valid if you swap minority with majority. But, yes, the American electoral system is exactly that defective (the distortions in the thread institutions you name aren't independent of each other, as they are directly linked.)
> The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, who has been missing since Friday, is in police custody in China, where he apparently is safe, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of arrest.
It's interesting to see how a country with no freedom of speech or press operates. Sure they have a great and growing economy, but at what price to the citizens?
We've asked you twice before not to do exactly this, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post only civilly and substantively in the future.
Given the cold shoulder he's given Taiwan's president, who is also the first female leader democratically elected in Asia, and how he barely responded to Wang Yi's belligerent behavior in Canada, I'd say Trudeau will do nothing.
When it comes to might vs right, Canada generally sides with might. To be honest, other than the US, the only country I can even imagine standing up to China for the well-being of a 3rd party is Japan.
That's totally right. It should have been first female leader in any Chinese-speaking countries. The greater point still stands. Trudeau would not snub the democratically elected leader of any other advanced economy of 23 million.
Yes, but no. Hong Kong is officially the "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China". It's an autonomous region, but it's part of the PRC, not a separate state.
Exactly. It's a special administrative region with contractually guaranteed freedom to run its own affairs in all aspects (law, immigration, currency, economic policy, etc. etc) except for defence and foreign affairs.
This arrest is seen as necessary for 'national security', thus it would be arguable that Hong Kong has no standing here to complain.
Even without that excuse, if you break a law in one country and flee to 'another state', you can still be arrested and remanded into custody of the country that you fled.
The US for example has sent the FBI to foreign nations to arrest foreign nationals and return them to the US for trial----all with the backing of the allied government.
Is it fair to expect Hong Kong, which is a territory of China, to not permit China the same sort of action?
I know very little about this kind of thing; how does one -avoid- representing one's self in foreign affairs? isn't being the government basically that in entirety?
'given' to whom? The only way I can construe this is that the Chinese government 'gave' hong-kong on a 100 year lease and the UK held up this deal. Unless you expect the UK to avoid the deal, which while I wish they could, they aren't in a position to say no to china
They gave the people to another government because of a treaty signed before anyone currently alive was born.
Yes, I do expect the UK to "renege" in the sense that I expect everyone else to support self-government for Hong Kong. Maybe not to fight for it with them, but at least not to support the abusers with petty arguments of legality, etc.
> which while I wish they could, they aren't in a position to say no to china
Right. The same way Taiwan is a separate country, and a great one, but we pretend it's Chinese and essentially property of China because we don't want to get in a fight.
But might doesn't make right. We shouldn't give it the veneer of decency and legality. It's slavery through and through.
If North Korea or Iran acted that way we'd call it like it is.
From your link: "She then said Xiao had contacted her and did not want to exaggerate the incident, according to the report."
I'm not sure the incident could be exaggerated, given China's propensity to execute those convicted of corruption/embezzlement. They kidnapped a billionaire in another country with the likely intent to kill him sooner or later.
Hong Kong is not a country. It is an autonomous territory. It has only a little higher legal status than someplace like Guam or Puerto Rico, and that tiny bit is only there because of the sufferance of the higher government.
Hong Kong does not have an army (even US states have their own militias). It does not defend its own borders. It does not negotiate its own diplomatic affairs.
However, HK is still subservient to its parent government in terms of legal matters. Taking a foreign national would be a political affair that Hong Kong has no actual right to adjudicate.
The only thing Hong Kong has is a separate legal system, immigration control, and its own delegates in international bodies like the WTO.
I thought the Canadian citizen part was more in line with money laundering and being a safe haven.
I'm sure he's part of the contributing force on real estate increases in major cities across Canada (Vancouver/Toronto) mainly due (to my understanding) to being able to move money out of China and into something more stable, like Canadian real estate.
It really pains me that people use Canada as a crutch to do their dirty deeds or even to have "as a backup".
The billionaires increase the housing supply(see Cityplace) or are buying such high end properties that the worst they do is make life a bit more expensive in the Bridle Path.
Where do the people who can no longer afford the high end go? And what about the people they displace when those people move into the "medium end"?
There is only one market for housing - over-paying at the top end causes a ripple effect which impacts everyone.
Aside from that, a lot of foreign money is buying existing property and not adding to the supply. In many cases properties are left empty, i.e. they are reducing supply.
Typically they buy land up in like Aurora/Stouffville and build their mansion there.
>There is only one market for housing - over-paying at the top end causes a ripple effect which impacts everyone.
This is wrong. There are lots of housing markets at all levels of cost and very few of them overlap. On the higher end if you can't buy your mansion in the area you want you're not going to be content with a slightly oversized house elsewhere.
>Aside from that, a lot of foreign money is buying existing property and not adding to the supply.
Maybe(reports indicate this is way below the level most Canadians think it is) but this isn't the billionaire class. They have too much money to get away with buying a bunch of houses. They have better ways to invest in property in Canada.
I don't think this is correct and the other person who responded to you seems to have the right idea.
Look at San Francisco, my friends and coworkers are renting/buying crappy 1943-built, non-renovated 1br units that cost $3k to rent or $700k to buy. They could afford to throw out some more money for something slightly better but it's already a lot of money and pricing everyone out.
Right and in San Francisco there is a ton of people making around the same amount as your friends likely which means there is a lot of competition in their demographic.
Now look at the houses priced $10-20m. If you can afford one of those are you going to start buying up the $1m stock because you can't find the one you want or are you going to build the one you want elsewhere?
"San Francisco doesn't allow new construction." as the other poster said, so you're going to buy up the $1m stock of houses.
I also think this "competition" is artificial as a lot of people are signing 30 year mortgages but I highly doubt their salaries will continue growing or even staying at the level they're at now.
Toronto, on the other hand, is filled with glass 40+ story condos constructed in the last 10 years and there are many more being constructed all the time. We can keep building and exporting new condo units to rich foreigners indefinitely, no different than Boeing constructing and exporting new 787s.
Except by "exporting" those units to foreigners you're not allowing communities to build and that's why you're seeing a huge divide in Toronto between folks.
When I lived there, I felt there was a lot of hidden hatred that won't be painfully obvious to outsiders until something goes really wrong with the economy/foreign policy.
Can you can buy a Chinese citizenship with a Mastercard or Visa and not even appear in the country? Buying passports in these countries are almost exclusively used for hiding money.
The creepiest part of that incident is that after weeks of no communication, the bookseller "wrote" an email to his daughter saying that he is alright and not to worry about him.
"After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he obtained Swedish residency, and later became a naturalised citizen of Sweden, upon which he renounced his Chinese citizenship."
He has a teenage daughter in Sweden today.
He was holidaying in Thailand when he was kidnapped by Chinese agents. (Thailand obeys China...)
The "offical" Sweden is scared about negative trade consequences (China punished Norway quite thoroughly just because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese citizen) so they pretend like nothing has happened.
Gui Minhai eventually showed up in an obviously staged segment in Chinese state TV where he confessed to some crime he hadn't committed, and then begged Sweden to leave him alone, since he was now back in China "ready to answer to his crimes".
This is one of the most shameful aspects of Sweden that I know today, as a Swede. There is no way we would accept this unless there was quite a lot of trade at risk... and even considering this, it feels so wrong to give into them this easily.
This is a man who when he escaped to Sweden in the 80s trusted that Sweden would stand up for him.. Little did he know that the social democratic government (this is the same party that the assasinated Olof Palme used to run) would let him down so badly. :/
I don't have a lot of sympathy for this man's problems. When you're making your billions from the corruption in the Chinese state, you run the risk of ending up on the wrong side of it. It's no different than any other organized crime.
I will be very surprised if Canada does or says anything of significance, given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia. China has all the power here. The best I imagine he will get is a diplomat to issue a strongly worded protest that has no teeth.
> Mr. Xiao’s fortunes rose after his graduation from the university in 1990, where he had been head of the official student organization and stayed loyal to the government during the pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.
This guy is Canadian and Antiguan in name only, he's Chinese-born and trying to use his resources to escape the government that created his wealth. Of all the human rights/border violations that China commits, this isn't a good poster child.
What are an individuals demonstrated motivations for emigrating?
If not residency, then what does the individual want from the country and what will they provide back to the country in return? A resident, theoretically, contributes to the community through more means than just their taxes.
If an individual jumps citizenship as financial protection, or protection from their origin countries investigations into the money they acquired in that country, than their motives for being a citizen isn't loyalty but wealth preservation.
Individuals that use Canada as an asset parking lot wont get much, if any, aid from the Canadian government in events like these. They don't deserve it. I'm happier in a world where the ultra-rich don't benefit hugely from paying Canada to launder their money.
That's probably why they forcibly moved him across the border, taking a step to normalize the behavior, before moving on to more sympathetic targets in the future.
Question: given that, would it make sense for HK's government to claim that it cooperated for the removal, or was even the instigator who requested the PRC take action?
Allows them to save their gunpowder of calling out the violation of HK autonomy for someone much more sympathetic.
I honestly don't know enough to answer that question. The complexities of international politics plus the One China & Separate but Equal HK status makes it something one could spend a lifetime studying to begin to speak intelligently on.
I am a Canadian citizen who lives in British Columbia and is not Chinese or of Chinese descent. The fact that a Canadian citizen was "seized" is very concerning to me and I hope that our government gets on top of this swiftly.
I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
>I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
"Some of his most successful deals involved buying stakes in midsize financial institutions in smaller Chinese cities, often through a complex web of shell or dummy corporations. When Citigroup and other investors agreed to buy a big stake in the Guangdong Development Bank, for instance, one of Mr. Xiao’s investment vehicles — Puhua Investment — took an 8 percent interest, and then just weeks later transferred it to another state financial institution. Few analysts or journalists knew he was involved.
While shell companies are widely used in China as investment vehicles, securities experts say they can also be employed to hide the ownership stakes of public officials, providing cover for favors distributed by businessmen. Their frequent use by Mr. Xiao has fanned speculation that he gets privileged access to deals involving state assets and that he shares the benefits with the families of the ruling elite."
[...]
"But a review of corporate registration records has found that on at least three occasions during the last five years, companies affiliated with Mr. Xiao have struck deals that appear to have benefited the relatives of China’s highest-ranking leaders."
I think parent is making a good point. See, in corrupt/poor countries when someone becomes a billionare he does not get the benefit of doubt. The entire legal and executive systems are so rotten and shady that there is no legal way for someone to become that rich unless they play dirty regardless of their capabilities, luck, education or great ideas.
I'm not sure that any billionaire should get the benefit of the doubt. Sure, somebody like Bill Gates seems unobjectionable, but he's pretty far from the typical billionaire.
The parent comment implied no such thing, you invented that. Rather, they said it's concerning (which makes perfect sense), and that they hope the Canadian Govt gets on top of it swiftly (also makes perfect sense, the Canadian Govt should get involved asap, given it's one of their citizens).
To the Chinese government he is Chinese, period. This is their public stated policy. To be considered a foreigner you have to be born outside of China to non-Chinese parents and only hold foreign citizenship. This is the only case in which the Chinese government allows foreign consulates to become involved.
As a person who emigrated, I can say that aint a good thing.
Edit:
OK, I'm fine with the very wealthy being charged an exit tax but the draconian tax laws seem to effect everyone EXCEPT the very wealthy. Like, if you cannot afford a lawyer to sort your shit out then you'll get fined BIG TIME but if you're a rich person, you don't pay any large percentage.
There's a difference between pursuing someone in court to make them pay taxes and kidnapping them to take them to a hostile regime and hold them indefinitely.
China acts as if it owns people of Chinese descent. Such as the Taiwanese. And they're more concerned with collecting them all rather than treating them well.
Hong Kong and Taiwan would flee China if they could. Many countries would run to be a US Protectorate. Totally different scenario. And it's essentially all because of personal freedoms, which start with not being property.
> I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
The Canadian government hides most everything from it's citizens, especially when it comes to China. Statistics on real estate transactions using money from overseas are considered none of our business. People operating illegal hotels out of houses while not paying taxes on revenue? Just fine. Egregious tax evasion? No problem. Buying citizenship, driver's licenses, etc? A-ok.
All of these things are happening, but none of them are considered "facts", and you certainly won't ever see any facts if the government refuses to enforce the law on certain subsets of the population.
The fact of the matter is that in political situations, there is a calculated risk taken by both states in a diplomatic conflict. At the end of the day it is about power and what resources are required to fight this. China has the upper hand here.
On the Chinese side, they have renditioned a Chinese-born, Chinese-made, PRC-living billionaire from a Chinese SAR that's more "one country, one and a half systems" and slipping further as China can get away with it. This man's rendition is likely part of an anticorruption initiative that started a few years back, given that it was done by Chinese security services. He pissed off the wrong people in the Party and now he is having to deal with it.
As the man is a Canadian citizen, the Canadian government now has to decide how much to protest this action. Protesting actions against their citizens requires political will and/or capability of enforcement. China has already stepped over the usual line and stolen him away anyway; will the Canadian state act? This is where I am skeptical. I don't believe that the Canadian state will find that this man is worth burning more than a little diplomacy on, maybe a protest or two.
Fighting this action requires burning political capital. There is a province in which these people have become woefully unpopular; unless a lot of Canadians get really angry, there is little reason for the Canadian state to do more than informally protest through an ambassador and at best a back room dealing or two to free him (e.g. we will share financial data on Chinese-Canadian citizens if you give us our citizen back.) Either way, by making the first move China has extracted something from Canada.
To add: I also believe that the UK will not do anything regarding this rendition. They have enough international issues to deal with re: EU/Brexit and I doubt they will feel that Hong Kong is important enough to their shrinking empire to push back on China with this.
Canada would likely do more if they weren't trying to get a free trade deal with China as fast as possible to avoid Trump being able to dictate their economy. The unfortunate geopolitics of our contemporary world.
US/CIA does "extraordinary rendition" all the time and sends missiles into sovereign states via drone daily. Whether or not one objects doesn't matter if there is no way to deter the behavior. If China sees no consequences China will do as China pleases. Law is irrelevant.
I agree that I don't like seeing China wandering into Hong Kong, but the way China acts, the "one country, two systems" thing really is in name only. China will eventually subsume all of Hong Kong as they see fit. The question is whether it is done subversively or not. As of right now, the subversive actions are costing them less on the world's stage so they'll keep chipping away at the SAR until it is at least controlled by puppets of the PRC government.
Agreed on your cynical description of realpolitik on the ground. But it's not a good thing, and the cases ought to be investigated, and if it turns out that it was unlawful, HK and Britain (as contracting party in the treaty giving rise to the SAR) and the world ought to object.
China will subsume HK by 2047 at the latest - let's hope it will not be earlier. As you highlight, the signs so far do not augur well.
> given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia.
so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"? Are Chinese Born Canadians and other East Asian Canadians included in your labels?
I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
What the hell does British Columbia have to do with this man? He made his money in China and he got kidnapped. What possible blame do you place on this person or the government of BC? As far as I am aware, Canada has never successfully extracted hostages or expats in physical trouble by foreign government or militias.
There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
> There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
I'm not sure how you extrapolated my post to this extreme. I replied to a poster below as to how I am viewing the politics of the situation in more detail, if you'd prefer to get a more reasoned view than the "gut summary".
I'm not anti-Chinese. I don't live in Vancouver. It would be rather strange for me to be anti-Chinese; see my bio. I personally get a lot of benefit from East Asia. If anything, you could say that I am in many ways pro-Chinese, but I support the Chinese people.
What I do have is a strong dislike for people like this man, who have made billions for themselves through graft, rent-seeking, and cronyism by ingratiating themselves with the party elite. Much of this man's economic wealth is extracted from ordinary Chinese people. When I wrote "these people" I was not talking about Chinese: I was talking about Chinese nationals that made their wealth through corruption and exploitation instead of providing true value to their greater countrymen, then run off to a Western sovereign state in hopes that their actions don't catch up with them.
I interpreted "these people" to mean wealthy Chinese-born Chinese nationals who are taking their wealth out of China and parking it in British Columbia real estate. This would exclude Canadian-born Canadian citizens of East Asian descent.
This man obtained Canadian citizenship. He must have ties to one province or another. British Columbia is the most likely candidate since it is on the West Coast.
> so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"?
I'm not the GP, but I think it very clearly means corrupt people.
Still, I have almost as much problem taking China's government accusation of corruption on face value as I have believing somebody can honestly become a billionaire in China.
> I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
It's not really an 'anti-Chinese' sentiment I'm seeing. It's more that British Columbians aren't happy with the effects of the influx of global capital and high net worth individuals on Vancouver. An additional factor into the negative attitudes around the influx of high net worth foreigners there is a sense (coupled with a fair bit of evidence) that many of these real estate speculators and high net worth individuals aren't playing by the rules and are avoiding taxes and other rules.
I understand that this is a sensitive issue, but your point would be stronger if you dropped the tone by several degrees. In this case, you seriously misrepresented the parent and turned what should be a very civil conversation into the polarized bullshit that absolutely ruins the internet.
Yes, my fault for being emotional and on the edge. I guess my jimmies have been rustled for lack of a better word in the context of populism and my lone campaign of troll eradication on reddit have made me far too sensitive. I'm going to take some time off from reddit and focus on HN.
I've read more of your comments and it's clear that you are very smart.
Please don't try to eradicate trolls. Instead, focus on doing. With your mind, you will accomplish amazing things while all the trolls sit in their moms' basements, shitting on people who actually accomplish things.
My email address is in my profile. Feel free to use it!
1. Casablanca the movie was timed to open in 1942 to benefit from the publicity surrounding the just-completed Allied takeover of Casablanca the city. Until November of 1942, this port city in Morocco, which was formerly a part of the French colonial empire, had been under the dual control of Nazi Germany and the Nazi-puppet government in Vichy, France, that the Germans had installed after occupying France in 1940.
2. Nowaday, the situation of Hong Kong looks like Casablanca during World War II.
This appears to be an aspect of the anti-corruption drive that has been holding billionaires and politically connected people high up in the Chinese government to account of the law, with Xiao Jianhua caught in financial fraud.
The controversy here isn't that China took Xiao Jianhua in to face the law, but that he was taken from Hong Kong, where an agreement with Britain gives its former colony de facto autonomy within its small borders until 2047 - which disallows Chinese police from entering there on their own until that time.
I haven't seen any reports yet about whether there has been cooperation with the Hong Kong provisional government (which would make his capture legal). Then, it's hard to determine exactly what happened as the source linked here hasn't done that investigation yet - and is reporting on rumors that there was a small (but notable if true) sovereignty violation.
It's not clear to me whether the anti-corruption drive arises out of a genuine antipathy towards corruption or as a means for Xi Jinping to consolidate personal power. This is especially hard because it seems likely that every Chinese bigwig is at least somewhat corrupt, and high-level Chinese power politics is opaque enough that it's not clear if only Xi's rivals are being targeted.
I really don't know how to unpick that knot, but I don't think it's an angle that should be ignored.
It seems to me that it's an actual genuine effort, given that the publicity of the drive has damaged Chinese public confidence in their institutions of government (high profile corruption is often featured in the news) and because many of the people taken to court have been in Xi Jinpeng's own circle and have represented for him a loss of personal power in the party. I haven't read much about Xi's personal power growing all particularly much during the anti-corruption drive, and there is a legitimate question whether he will be revoted to lead the party during the congress next year (though it is expected to continue).
Definitely this angle on understanding the drive should not be ignored. An attempt to corroborate it - to unpick the knot - would require a great amount of study of the Chinese People's Party, of Xi Jinping's constituency, and both the consistency of and the timing of charges brought to bring in the high level fraud. Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
I read an expose from Foreign Policy where they tried to build a case that Xi Jinping has been using it to consolidate power, but it was very clumsy and as its predictions and information came into question the investigative direction taken by the expose has been abandoned (as far as I can tell).
The way the anti-corruption drive has proceeded, as I understand, has been in tracking how government finances are being used and that the Chinese Government tends to find - using traditional accounting audits - rings of people who are enriching themselves using various schemes (though many times really obvious transfers into personal accounts). So far it has appeared that the anti-corruption effort has both been making an actual positive effect on government efficiency and that it has been primarily non-political and untargetted, focusing more on finding abuse of public funds than in chasing after any officials in particular.
I'm not trying to claim that I'm more well versed on the subject than you. Almost certainly the opposite! But I would like to push back a little on a couple of the points you made.
> the publicity of the drive has damaged Chinese public confidence in their institutions of government
If Mr. Xi's goal were to stay on past the customary 10-year term, wouldn't he need to discredit the current institutions of government and portray himself as the antidote?
> many of the people taken to court have been in Xi Jinpeng's own circle
My overly-simplistic model of China's government is that it is basically a one-party system with a veneer of formality over back-room intra-party struggles (along with a regular calendar of leadership replacement to prevent too much consolidation of power around an individual, as happened to an extent with Deng Xiaoping in the aftermath of Mao's death). Under this model, official political power tends to correspond directly to internal party clout. So wouldn't anybody with enough clout to be a threat to Xi be likely to be found within his own circle (AKA, higher ups in the current government)? I admit I could be way off base in my analysis here, as I haven't studied China's government in depth.
> Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
Just out of curiosity, have we seen any such documents or communications (on any subject) that weren't intended for public consumption? That seems like important context as to whether absence of evidence can realistically be considered evidence of absence.
Again, since you seem to have studied this in more detail than I have, I'm interested in your thoughts on these questions.
The quick response to these concerns is that they very highly speculative. They are the sort of thing that - like medieval models of the solar system - seem to predict the the movement of the planets, except that you keep needing to explain away all the inconsistencies and that there are much simpler explanations available, which don't suffer from the exhaustion of the requirement to constantly tweak and reinterpret.
If Xi Jinping were to try to purge the Chinese Government (a highly paranoid organization, with military, intelligence and national security communities that far outlast his particular inter-party alignment) that would be incredible, shocking and enormous news.
> If Mr. Xi's goal were to stay on past the customary 10-year term, wouldn't he need to discredit the current institutions of government and portray himself as the antidote?
Maybe? Generally, the party is the face (you used the word veneer) of the government and its institutions. Weakening public opinion of the party only makes sense if Xi Jinping were pushing to replace the party system with a cult of personality. In the mind of the Chinese, Xi merely runs the party, and any damaged public opinion about the party reflects directly on public opinion about how Jinping is running it.
The kind of steps to become a cult of personality necessary to replace the party system just aren't being seen. You aren't seeing the government under Jinping trying to mass mobilize a change of public opinion to value his leadership over and above the party system.
Rather than discredit the current institutions of government he'd need to purge the institutions and norms which facilitate the cap on leadership and the interior modes for leadership to be replaced, as well as top brass in the People's Army that would enforce that - while pushing for the citizens of China to support such a transition. I have yet to read anything that makes a case that that's happening (much less a compelling one).
> Just out of curiosity, have we seen any such documents or communications (on any subject) that weren't intended for public consumption? That seems like important context as to whether absence of evidence can realistically be considered evidence of absence.
Yup. Take "Document Number 9" or the leaks regarding Ling Jihua or the leaks from the public diplomacy and strategic communication (propaganda) centers in China or the so called "50 Cent Party" - their version of the US's "Global Engagement Center".
Documents are leaked in China the same as they are leaked anywhere else. In any case, I'm just suggesting the type of really strong evidence you'd want to be able to reference to support a really strong claim. Unfortunately not enough leaks from any government are available to always have a "smoking gun" (though incredibly in the case of Brazil we got them, not that it mattered). I agree with you that absence of a leaked smoking gun is not evidence that it doesn't exist. My point was that there's nothing even close - so either the conspiracy is incredibly underground, has thought 15 moves ahead, and is going to manage to capture a government with a billion people even without taking the steps you'd expect to see - or it's a rumor similar to those about President Trump's, President Obama's, and President Putin's ambitions to overthrow their governments that were/are popular during their respective eras.
Color me really skeptical. I'm willing to believe it though - I would just need to see the right set of circumstances or the right set of leaked documents for it to make enough sense. Overall I'm much more interested in current affairs, geopolitics, and the potential ouster of Najib Razak in Malaysia and the workings of the next China party congress than these kinds of highly speculative and underevidenced theories.
Thanks. I'm aware of this! I just used Xi a bunch and didn't want to keep typing Xi Jinping either so I used Jinping. Changed up the pronoun for readability and variety.
Is it culturally unacceptable to refer to Xi Jinping as Jinping?
It's culturally about the same suddenly referring to Obama as Barack. As in, unless you are actually on a first-name basis with the person, you wouldn't do it.
And this is the exact same argument that is made by oligarchs everywhere... Oligarchs pillage their own countries and people, then when it goes south they escape to the west, claiming they're political refugees, and perpetuate the cycle of corruption.
You know China very well. There is no genuine antipathy towards corruption in Chinese ruling group. However, there is genuine antipathy towards corruption benefiting opponents in Chinese ruling group.
I would be inclined towards genuine antipathy towards corruption.
I have a brother that at one point regularly dealt with top levels of Chinese government. His summary was, "China is a country of crooks ruled by honest men; the USA is a country of honest men ruled by crooks." He's not sure which is worse in the end.
Based on that, I would bet on the top levels of the Chinese government being basically ethical (albeit within an ethical system that values life and liberty a lot less than we would).
The Chinese government values stability above all else. This is why they will also not hesitate to detain lawyers asking tough questions or steamroller physically protesting activists with tanks, because their calculus is that it's the lesser evil compared to the tens of millions of dead in the various revolutions and upheavals of the past 100 years.
Of course, stability is also quite useful for preserving power and enjoying the fruits of dubious wealth, so here the moral imperative dovetails neatly with the personal interests of party cadres.
You will just have to decide whether to take my word that the prospect of him being a propaganda person is laughable. For one thing this comment of his was something that he came to after moving back to the US and establishing a business here. For another, a Chinese propaganda person would be unlikely to criticize the Chinese people in a way that his comment did.
For the record, the extent to which Americans can be trusted to be honest and trustworthy on a daily basis came as a shock to him after living in China for many years.
Please don't imply another member is a shill or plant or whatnot without solid evidence. It's uncivil and not conducive to constructive discussion. If you're actually concerned that this might be the case, please contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer.
It may be uncivil, but we are really truely living in an age where a significant percentage of communications are forged by paid PR people. We should focus on actually thinking about this problem and dealing with it. I know that whitch hunts are bad, but this member didn't get out a pitch-fork and noose, they only said how they felt.
Indeed, communication is fraught with all manner of difficulties today. We have a lot of things that we may feel, and some, while we may believe are justified, are not constructive to express in certain contexts. Implications like this on HN are one such case.
That doesn't mean there's no recourse. The mods actively respond to concerns like this. As I suggested above, you can contact them and they'll look into it.
The anti-corruption campaign is the official reasoning to clean up high positions of competing groups to the current leadership. Common practice when a new leader starts.
Thus, if people think the reason is not yet known, then they are probably correct.
This is a fairly generous interpretation. The more realistic view is that this is part of an on-going purge of Xi Jinping's foes. I don't think history is going to see this as anything other and this kind of thing is fairly common in China. The strict "anti-corruption" legislation gives the PRC leadership quite the leeway to punish those who they deem their enemies. This is a typical ploy in autocratic regimes.
As with the bookstore employees, there won't be a thorough investigation and the "truth" will always be in doubt because that is how China likes it. Instead, we have to rely on rumors and such, again, because China.
It is pretty obvious what happened, and again, HK has been going in this direction now for a couple of years.
Isn't that the difference between sovereignty and self-governance? HK is self-governing in a lot of ways, but it's not a sovereign state, so it exists at the mercy of China. I don't know to what degree HK's independence is guaranteed by international treaties vs. agreements that are purely internal to China. If there's no international agreement with entities outside of China to honor HK's independence, surely the Chinese government could overrule the local government when it sees fit (like the US Federal government taking precedence over state governments when there are conflicting laws and interests).
IANAL, and it's complicated - there was the UK-China "handover" treaty that guarantees the 50 yrs of autonomy, starting from the 1997 handover.
But note that I'm not disagreeing with the original poster or you: it might well not be sovereign. My point was that having mainland police acting on HK soil is problematic, as it stands, no matter what the status with respect to sovereignty is.
Mossad abducted Adolph Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel. US Navy Seals raided and killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Indian army stormed across the LoC and destroyed terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Chinese police captured Xiao Jianhua in Hongkong and took him across the border.
When are these actions justified? Only when someone is a killer or a torturer or a terrorist? Or are they okay in case of (allegedly) corrupt billionaires as well? Tough question, imho.
I don't have a good answer for where the line is, but at least in the cases of bin Laden and Kashmir, normal channels for arrest and extradition wouldn't have worked. I'm less sure about Eichmann, but according to Wikipedia, Argentina had a history of refusing to extradite Nazis.
In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
> In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
Given the current political situation in Hong Kong, this may not be a valid assumption.
All diplomatic power boils down to the lowest common denominator which is military capability.
A weaker country can claim foul all they want but the military capable country will simply ignore it when it is in their interest and act with force which will see no resistance from a weaker country.
Power justifies as well as corrupt those who wield it.
As I grow older, I seem to be coming to the same conclusion again and again - there is nothing right or wrong, moral or amoral. Power is what matters. Heck, entire notion of "Government" can be boiled down to "entity with monopoly on force" for a given area.
Well, I think a lot of people are overlooking these "rendition" cases taking place in HK.
When they control the political will of HK, they will inevitably control the economy of HK.
HK is no longer the safe haven it once was. Looks like Singapore is about to get another huge boost in business after banking secrecy is coming under attack in Europe.
I wonder, what would the world be like today if the UK had refused to give back Hong Kong? Or, they could have refused to switch recognition from ROC to PRC, and then handed Hong Kong to ROC instead?
The US and the UK basically gave the PRC everything they wanted in switching the UN's China seat from ROC to PRC. They could have driven a much harder bargain – e.g. have two Chinas in the UN, just like it has two Koreas and used to have two Vietnams, two Germanys, two Yemens, etc; then HK and Macau could have been given back to ROC instead of PRC. But the US and UK were so obsessed with using PRC to spite the Soviets, they weren't thinking about what it would mean 20, 30, 40 years later when the Soviet Union was defunct.
China needed strong assurances from the US and UK that formally splitting from the Soviet Union wouldn't see the American alliance then turn against China in a divide-and-conquer strategy.
Could we have gotten a better deal? I'm not sure. Given the earlier incursion into Vietnam and Korea, the military support of the ROC and the militarization of the First Island Chain, I can't imagine that anything short of the very strong reassurance the alliance pursued with the "One China Policy" would have been acceptable.
The move is one of the only things heralded of the scandal-plagued Nixon Administration as a wild success for the United States, and is even often credited for being the key diplomatic victory that ultimately won America the Cold War.
Did the US-China alliance win the Cold War? To what extent did it contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union? I think most of the reasons why the Soviet Empire fell were internal factors rather than external pressures, and the US-China alliance made at best a marginal difference to the outcome.
Indeed, what did the US and its allies actually get out of their anti-Soviet alliance with PRC? Nixon hoped that it would help the US in Vietnam; but obviously it didn't – South Vietnam lost the war and they probably would have lost it just the same even if Nixon's China trip never happened. More broadly, I honestly can't see any military benefits for the US and its allies from the deal. The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened. Obviously some sort of understanding with PRC had to be reached eventually, since pretending ROC was the government of the whole of China wasn't tenable in the long run, but the US could have extracted some major concessions from PRC in exchange for recognition instead of basically conceding to PRC all its major objectives – an alliance against the Soviets was not a huge concession from PRC given that PRC and USSR were already mutually hostile since the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s.
Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
And of course, China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC, such as a "two Chinas policy" of recognising both PRC and ROC and maintaining diplomatic relations with both. Under this model, it would not be essential that PRC itself abandon the "one China" position, merely that it be willing to accept trade and diplomatic relations with countries that adopted the "two Chinas" position instead. If the US had made that the price for US-PRC trade from the outset, I think Beijing probably would have come around to paying it. In the 1970s, the US was a vastly richer country than PRC (the gap is still there but it has closed a lot in the last 30-40 years), and PRC had far more to gain from US trade than vice versa, so the US arguably had more power to set the ground terms for the relationship – but the US despite having the far stronger hand chose not to play it.
This is an interesting position, though I think it suffers from the same shortcuts that much US thinking does when it tries to grapple with prior arrangements that seem inconvenient today because of changing strategic context.
To what extent did it contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union? An incredible amount. China blocked the Soviet Union in all of South Asia, it abstained from diplomatic support - it wielded both its position on the UNSC and it's nuclear capability to check USSR. Then, it challenged the central tenets of Communism specifying that it had a different interpretation closer to the original theory - thus challenging the centrality of Russia ideologically. China's withdrawl represented approximately a third of the world population removing itself from the union: the concept of "domino theory" at the time described - in a certain pop science way - how states arriving into and dropping out of the union had a chain reaction effect. Since the alliance with China, the Cold War no longer was fought in the Asian theatre - closing down an entire continent of front to the war. The rest of the Cold War would be fought in Central Asia (and eventually in the Middle East), and in Europe.
Of course, the United States knew from very early that it was going to lose in Vietnam: the Pentagon Papers discussed this in great detail. The United States was there on a cost imposition exercise. The result it found in the alliance with China was a mutually satisfactory way to close the conflict. In this regard China didn't win the Vietnam war either.
> The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened.
I have no idea. That's 60 years of alternative history to imagine. Fascinating, but not clear.
> Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
This seems to be a rising opinion in the National Security Core of the United States, and also seems to be the take of the new Trump Administration.
Personally I see this as historical revisionism, contextualized by modern concerns over historical accuracy.
I fully agree that China and it's potential rise are considered by the National Security State of the American Government to be a dark horse scenario, and a greater potential spoiler to American hegemony than Russia (a waning power) today.
I understand how someone could mistake the situation we are in today with a security outlook at China's rise and want to throw out some of the alliance concessions because in this day and age they are inconvenient. We've seen that before in history (indeed, in American history) and so it's congruent with the kind of behavior we would expect.
> China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC
I think all of this is very accurate, provided there was _some_ deal to get an alliance. Had it been possible for the United States to do that without recognizing PRC, I serious doubt. But yeah, if that had been possible, I think much of the geoeconomic situation would have looked the same.
The Brits' hands were tied. Modern Hong Kong is comprised of three parts, Hong Kong island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded to UK, while the New Territories had only been _leased_ for 99-year (1898 - 1997), which in 1980s accounted for around 90% of the land and 40% of the population of Hong Kong.
If the Brits had obtained permanent rights in the New Territories, the situation would have been different. But they hadn't and by contract had to return Hong Kong to China.
It has been argued, though, that they should have returned Hong Kong to Republic of China.
Hong Kong has fallen, democracy there officially died after they refused to let those two legislators swear in.
Not sure whose idea it was to let HK get handed over to the commies back in the 1990's, why Taiwan didn't make a louder claim to it, or why HK didn't assert its right to independence from extraterritorial governments altogether.
At that point, Hong Kong was entirely dependent from the fresh water provided by the mainland, to the point that if the taps were ever closed, hundreds of thousands would have died before alternative sources would have been available. You cannot just ship enough water for 6.5M people, and HK authorities were scared that if they started constructing desalinization systems, PRC would pressure them to stop doing that with the threat of immediately cutting off the water. PRC had effective power over HK before they were granted legal power over it.
Before the time of the transition they stressed that all the current treaties for water were written to end at the time of transition, and that they would not be willing to renegotiate them.
Any attempt to keep HK or to turn them over to Taiwan would have resulted in mass death and evacuations.
"Chinese billionaire whereabouts a mystery but denies abduction"
"A missing China-born billionaire was quoted by state media on Tuesday as saying he had not been abducted from Hong Kong by mainland Chinese agents as some news outlets had reported but was receiving medical treatment."
184 comments
[ 12.4 ms ] story [ 3508 ms ] threadI remember the promises well since I was in Taipei and watching Chris Patten, Britain's final governor of HK, talk about it on the news during the hand-off.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/05/hong-k...
This is what people mean when they praise things like a "steady hand on the tiller". These coming years are going to be one disaster after another.
The second is the devolution of order into entropy, with the attendant waste and loss of information.
I wonder which better describes the policies of the current US administration.
The Republicans have a majority in the House, in the Senate, and they have the President. Is the American voting system so defective that a minority can achieve all that?
However the US isn't a population based democracy, so Republicans hold all majority power in all the branches of government because they have the widest geographical coverage of any political party.
Is this good or bad? Well.... hypothetical question. If we had a democratic world government, would it be good or bad that China and India combined would have majority power by virtue of population alone? Are the issues of a far away land more virtuous just for the sheer size of the population there?
It can be argued yea or nay---but balancing geography over population is the way the US was designed, without that compromise the less populous colonies would never have agreed to join the union.
Incorrect. Population corresponds to representation at national and state levels. This is enforced with a Constitutional base.
"One person, one vote" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims
So how come Trump's President?
(It's because "one person" gets "one vote" for an elector. But some people get more electors than others, and electors vote for the President, not individual voters.)
The Senate is the most extreme example- every state gets two Senators. So Rhode Island and Wyoming have just as much representation in the Senate as California and Texas, despite having ~30x the population. Of course that's the whole point of the Senate, to counterbalance the representation-by-population of the House to avoid a tyranny by the majority. We may have worked ourselves into a tyranny by the minority at this point though. :(
Even the more egalitarian House somewhat overrepresents the more sparsely populated states, although it probably doesn't make nearly as much of a difference in practice. States get a number of representatives based on population, but every state gets at least one representative, so you have the case of (for example) Wyoming having one representative for its 600,000 people, but Texas ends up having one representative per ~800,000 people. Of course, Wyoming has one rep total and Texas has 36 of them, so I don't think Wyoming will be outvoting Texas anytime soon, but still.
And then add gerrymandering to that!
"Sparse" isn't exactly true, since it's population not density that drives it. And, because of granularity effects, it's not consistently bigger states that lose in the House; the most underrepresented state in the House is also a small state (Delaware.)
Because of the 2/state Senate electors, though, it's consistently more populated states that lose in the EC.
For example, a large number of Hillary's popular vote was claimed in California. Trump didn't campaign much in California. One could argue if Trump spent more time in California (which he strategically did not), Hillary's popular vote lead wouldn't be as high.
I think its culturally important that Trump didn't get the popular vote, but it's also a little like playing a game of chess, losing, and then decrying "but I took more pawns!"
That wasn't the agreed upon rules of the game.
There are certainly such complaints coming from those who voted against him, but it's also worth noting that by far the biggest sore loser is Trump himself. He has insisted that the only reason he failed to win the popular vote is due to voter fraud, and not due to a brilliantly-executed campaign strategy by his staff. They knew how to get the electoral votes, and they went out and got them. But instead of being thrilled to have the office and focusing all effort on his agenda, he had his press secretary defend his delusional idea that he won on the merits of being the most popular, and then doubled down and claimed widespread voter fraud in the states he didn't need to win.
It's worth noting because it shows how divorced the reality of fitness for the office is from the ability to gain the office. We have known this for a long time--almost everyone acknowledges that absent an extremely fortunate turn of circumstances one cannot become president--but I don't think there has been in at least a century here (and probably longer) such a stark negative example.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/author-trumps-favorite-voter-f...
If you're talking about the slight disproportion in the electoral college, that didn't matter. Trump was 74 electoral votes ahead his closest opponent. Removing two electoral votes for Trump's extra 10ish states doesn't matter. Theoretically it could matter, but 2016 wasn't close enough.
Trump won because some states have chosen to elect their electors so that they all vote for one candidate.
It's interesting to see how a country with no freedom of speech or press operates. Sure they have a great and growing economy, but at what price to the citizens?
There are no secret police in Ba Sing Se
My understanding is that this is a contradiction in terms.
When it comes to might vs right, Canada generally sides with might. To be honest, other than the US, the only country I can even imagine standing up to China for the well-being of a 3rd party is Japan.
There have been plenty of other female leaders elected in Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_or_appointed_f...
No-one knows why he's there. The issue is more with Chinese agents operating on Hong Kong soil. They shouldn't be.
>who saw his abduction as a violation of the city state’s ability to run its own affairs, guaranteed by international treaty until 2047.
Even without that excuse, if you break a law in one country and flee to 'another state', you can still be arrested and remanded into custody of the country that you fled.
The US for example has sent the FBI to foreign nations to arrest foreign nationals and return them to the US for trial----all with the backing of the allied government.
Is it fair to expect Hong Kong, which is a territory of China, to not permit China the same sort of action?
Just going in (like the Mossad in Argentina for Eichmann) is not legal (even if it might be morally justified).
National security is a bit tricky, because the HK Basic Law allows for exceptions there, I think - but has that seriously been invoked?
Yes, I do expect the UK to "renege" in the sense that I expect everyone else to support self-government for Hong Kong. Maybe not to fight for it with them, but at least not to support the abusers with petty arguments of legality, etc.
> which while I wish they could, they aren't in a position to say no to china
Right. The same way Taiwan is a separate country, and a great one, but we pretend it's Chinese and essentially property of China because we don't want to get in a fight.
But might doesn't make right. We shouldn't give it the veneer of decency and legality. It's slavery through and through.
If North Korea or Iran acted that way we'd call it like it is.
I'm not sure the incident could be exaggerated, given China's propensity to execute those convicted of corruption/embezzlement. They kidnapped a billionaire in another country with the likely intent to kill him sooner or later.
If the story gets too big, the Chinese government might be forced to make an example of him.
Hong Kong does not have an army (even US states have their own militias). It does not defend its own borders. It does not negotiate its own diplomatic affairs.
However, HK is still subservient to its parent government in terms of legal matters. Taking a foreign national would be a political affair that Hong Kong has no actual right to adjudicate.
The only thing Hong Kong has is a separate legal system, immigration control, and its own delegates in international bodies like the WTO.
Yep, it's a problem, but what's Hong Kong gonna do? Hong Kong has no army. So what can it do?
China will just do as China pleases, because China have the military forces to back up it back.
Ah, the Antiguan diplomatic passport. This has tax evasion written all over it.
I'm sure he's part of the contributing force on real estate increases in major cities across Canada (Vancouver/Toronto) mainly due (to my understanding) to being able to move money out of China and into something more stable, like Canadian real estate.
It really pains me that people use Canada as a crutch to do their dirty deeds or even to have "as a backup".
There is only one market for housing - over-paying at the top end causes a ripple effect which impacts everyone.
Aside from that, a lot of foreign money is buying existing property and not adding to the supply. In many cases properties are left empty, i.e. they are reducing supply.
>There is only one market for housing - over-paying at the top end causes a ripple effect which impacts everyone.
This is wrong. There are lots of housing markets at all levels of cost and very few of them overlap. On the higher end if you can't buy your mansion in the area you want you're not going to be content with a slightly oversized house elsewhere.
>Aside from that, a lot of foreign money is buying existing property and not adding to the supply.
Maybe(reports indicate this is way below the level most Canadians think it is) but this isn't the billionaire class. They have too much money to get away with buying a bunch of houses. They have better ways to invest in property in Canada.
Look at San Francisco, my friends and coworkers are renting/buying crappy 1943-built, non-renovated 1br units that cost $3k to rent or $700k to buy. They could afford to throw out some more money for something slightly better but it's already a lot of money and pricing everyone out.
Now look at the houses priced $10-20m. If you can afford one of those are you going to start buying up the $1m stock because you can't find the one you want or are you going to build the one you want elsewhere?
I also think this "competition" is artificial as a lot of people are signing 30 year mortgages but I highly doubt their salaries will continue growing or even staying at the level they're at now.
Most folks aren't spending within their means.
Toronto, on the other hand, is filled with glass 40+ story condos constructed in the last 10 years and there are many more being constructed all the time. We can keep building and exporting new condo units to rich foreigners indefinitely, no different than Boeing constructing and exporting new 787s.
When I lived there, I felt there was a lot of hidden hatred that won't be painfully obvious to outsiders until something goes really wrong with the economy/foreign policy.
http://projects.thestar.com/panama-papers/canada-is-the-worl...
I guess we could go an lock up all Chinese diplomatic representatives then?
"After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he obtained Swedish residency, and later became a naturalised citizen of Sweden, upon which he renounced his Chinese citizenship."
He has a teenage daughter in Sweden today.
He was holidaying in Thailand when he was kidnapped by Chinese agents. (Thailand obeys China...)
The "offical" Sweden is scared about negative trade consequences (China punished Norway quite thoroughly just because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese citizen) so they pretend like nothing has happened.
Gui Minhai eventually showed up in an obviously staged segment in Chinese state TV where he confessed to some crime he hadn't committed, and then begged Sweden to leave him alone, since he was now back in China "ready to answer to his crimes".
This is one of the most shameful aspects of Sweden that I know today, as a Swede. There is no way we would accept this unless there was quite a lot of trade at risk... and even considering this, it feels so wrong to give into them this easily.
This is a man who when he escaped to Sweden in the 80s trusted that Sweden would stand up for him.. Little did he know that the social democratic government (this is the same party that the assasinated Olof Palme used to run) would let him down so badly. :/
I will be very surprised if Canada does or says anything of significance, given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia. China has all the power here. The best I imagine he will get is a diplomat to issue a strongly worded protest that has no teeth.
This guy is Canadian and Antiguan in name only, he's Chinese-born and trying to use his resources to escape the government that created his wealth. Of all the human rights/border violations that China commits, this isn't a good poster child.
He holds properties in Canada, and has diplomatic status from Antigua, but they were purchased and he hasn't shown loyalties to those countries.
He didn't take up actual residency in either of the countries, he used their names to suit his international agenda.
What does residency have to do with anything?
If not residency, then what does the individual want from the country and what will they provide back to the country in return? A resident, theoretically, contributes to the community through more means than just their taxes.
If an individual jumps citizenship as financial protection, or protection from their origin countries investigations into the money they acquired in that country, than their motives for being a citizen isn't loyalty but wealth preservation.
Individuals that use Canada as an asset parking lot wont get much, if any, aid from the Canadian government in events like these. They don't deserve it. I'm happier in a world where the ultra-rich don't benefit hugely from paying Canada to launder their money.
Allows them to save their gunpowder of calling out the violation of HK autonomy for someone much more sympathetic.
I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
"Some of his most successful deals involved buying stakes in midsize financial institutions in smaller Chinese cities, often through a complex web of shell or dummy corporations. When Citigroup and other investors agreed to buy a big stake in the Guangdong Development Bank, for instance, one of Mr. Xiao’s investment vehicles — Puhua Investment — took an 8 percent interest, and then just weeks later transferred it to another state financial institution. Few analysts or journalists knew he was involved.
While shell companies are widely used in China as investment vehicles, securities experts say they can also be employed to hide the ownership stakes of public officials, providing cover for favors distributed by businessmen. Their frequent use by Mr. Xiao has fanned speculation that he gets privileged access to deals involving state assets and that he shares the benefits with the families of the ruling elite."
[...]
"But a review of corporate registration records has found that on at least three occasions during the last five years, companies affiliated with Mr. Xiao have struck deals that appear to have benefited the relatives of China’s highest-ranking leaders."
from: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/asia/tiananmen-era-...
not conclusive, but he certainly walks like a duck
Edit: OK, I'm fine with the very wealthy being charged an exit tax but the draconian tax laws seem to effect everyone EXCEPT the very wealthy. Like, if you cannot afford a lawyer to sort your shit out then you'll get fined BIG TIME but if you're a rich person, you don't pay any large percentage.
China acts as if it owns people of Chinese descent. Such as the Taiwanese. And they're more concerned with collecting them all rather than treating them well.
Hong Kong and Taiwan would flee China if they could. Many countries would run to be a US Protectorate. Totally different scenario. And it's essentially all because of personal freedoms, which start with not being property.
The Canadian government hides most everything from it's citizens, especially when it comes to China. Statistics on real estate transactions using money from overseas are considered none of our business. People operating illegal hotels out of houses while not paying taxes on revenue? Just fine. Egregious tax evasion? No problem. Buying citizenship, driver's licenses, etc? A-ok.
All of these things are happening, but none of them are considered "facts", and you certainly won't ever see any facts if the government refuses to enforce the law on certain subsets of the population.
(This has really bothered me for years.)
The fact of the matter is that in political situations, there is a calculated risk taken by both states in a diplomatic conflict. At the end of the day it is about power and what resources are required to fight this. China has the upper hand here.
On the Chinese side, they have renditioned a Chinese-born, Chinese-made, PRC-living billionaire from a Chinese SAR that's more "one country, one and a half systems" and slipping further as China can get away with it. This man's rendition is likely part of an anticorruption initiative that started a few years back, given that it was done by Chinese security services. He pissed off the wrong people in the Party and now he is having to deal with it.
As the man is a Canadian citizen, the Canadian government now has to decide how much to protest this action. Protesting actions against their citizens requires political will and/or capability of enforcement. China has already stepped over the usual line and stolen him away anyway; will the Canadian state act? This is where I am skeptical. I don't believe that the Canadian state will find that this man is worth burning more than a little diplomacy on, maybe a protest or two.
Fighting this action requires burning political capital. There is a province in which these people have become woefully unpopular; unless a lot of Canadians get really angry, there is little reason for the Canadian state to do more than informally protest through an ambassador and at best a back room dealing or two to free him (e.g. we will share financial data on Chinese-Canadian citizens if you give us our citizen back.) Either way, by making the first move China has extracted something from Canada.
To add: I also believe that the UK will not do anything regarding this rendition. They have enough international issues to deal with re: EU/Brexit and I doubt they will feel that Hong Kong is important enough to their shrinking empire to push back on China with this.
If Colombian police came to Miami to snatch some drug lord, you'd object presumably, no matter your sympathy for the criminal.
I agree that I don't like seeing China wandering into Hong Kong, but the way China acts, the "one country, two systems" thing really is in name only. China will eventually subsume all of Hong Kong as they see fit. The question is whether it is done subversively or not. As of right now, the subversive actions are costing them less on the world's stage so they'll keep chipping away at the SAR until it is at least controlled by puppets of the PRC government.
Then it's okay then!
> Law is irrelevant.
Commerce is extremely sensitive to rule-of-law. Instability vastly reduces investment.
> China will eventually subsume all of Hong Kong as they see fit.
That's pretty fatalistic; why get out of bed in the morning if you're just going to die someday?
China will subsume HK by 2047 at the latest - let's hope it will not be earlier. As you highlight, the signs so far do not augur well.
so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"? Are Chinese Born Canadians and other East Asian Canadians included in your labels?
I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
What the hell does British Columbia have to do with this man? He made his money in China and he got kidnapped. What possible blame do you place on this person or the government of BC? As far as I am aware, Canada has never successfully extracted hostages or expats in physical trouble by foreign government or militias.
There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
I'm not sure how you extrapolated my post to this extreme. I replied to a poster below as to how I am viewing the politics of the situation in more detail, if you'd prefer to get a more reasoned view than the "gut summary".
I'm not anti-Chinese. I don't live in Vancouver. It would be rather strange for me to be anti-Chinese; see my bio. I personally get a lot of benefit from East Asia. If anything, you could say that I am in many ways pro-Chinese, but I support the Chinese people.
What I do have is a strong dislike for people like this man, who have made billions for themselves through graft, rent-seeking, and cronyism by ingratiating themselves with the party elite. Much of this man's economic wealth is extracted from ordinary Chinese people. When I wrote "these people" I was not talking about Chinese: I was talking about Chinese nationals that made their wealth through corruption and exploitation instead of providing true value to their greater countrymen, then run off to a Western sovereign state in hopes that their actions don't catch up with them.
This man obtained Canadian citizenship. He must have ties to one province or another. British Columbia is the most likely candidate since it is on the West Coast.
I'm not the GP, but I think it very clearly means corrupt people.
Still, I have almost as much problem taking China's government accusation of corruption on face value as I have believing somebody can honestly become a billionaire in China.
It's not really an 'anti-Chinese' sentiment I'm seeing. It's more that British Columbians aren't happy with the effects of the influx of global capital and high net worth individuals on Vancouver. An additional factor into the negative attitudes around the influx of high net worth foreigners there is a sense (coupled with a fair bit of evidence) that many of these real estate speculators and high net worth individuals aren't playing by the rules and are avoiding taxes and other rules.
Please don't try to eradicate trolls. Instead, focus on doing. With your mind, you will accomplish amazing things while all the trolls sit in their moms' basements, shitting on people who actually accomplish things.
My email address is in my profile. Feel free to use it!
2. Nowaday, the situation of Hong Kong looks like Casablanca during World War II.
The controversy here isn't that China took Xiao Jianhua in to face the law, but that he was taken from Hong Kong, where an agreement with Britain gives its former colony de facto autonomy within its small borders until 2047 - which disallows Chinese police from entering there on their own until that time.
I haven't seen any reports yet about whether there has been cooperation with the Hong Kong provisional government (which would make his capture legal). Then, it's hard to determine exactly what happened as the source linked here hasn't done that investigation yet - and is reporting on rumors that there was a small (but notable if true) sovereignty violation.
I really don't know how to unpick that knot, but I don't think it's an angle that should be ignored.
Definitely this angle on understanding the drive should not be ignored. An attempt to corroborate it - to unpick the knot - would require a great amount of study of the Chinese People's Party, of Xi Jinping's constituency, and both the consistency of and the timing of charges brought to bring in the high level fraud. Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
I read an expose from Foreign Policy where they tried to build a case that Xi Jinping has been using it to consolidate power, but it was very clumsy and as its predictions and information came into question the investigative direction taken by the expose has been abandoned (as far as I can tell).
The way the anti-corruption drive has proceeded, as I understand, has been in tracking how government finances are being used and that the Chinese Government tends to find - using traditional accounting audits - rings of people who are enriching themselves using various schemes (though many times really obvious transfers into personal accounts). So far it has appeared that the anti-corruption effort has both been making an actual positive effect on government efficiency and that it has been primarily non-political and untargetted, focusing more on finding abuse of public funds than in chasing after any officials in particular.
> the publicity of the drive has damaged Chinese public confidence in their institutions of government
If Mr. Xi's goal were to stay on past the customary 10-year term, wouldn't he need to discredit the current institutions of government and portray himself as the antidote?
> many of the people taken to court have been in Xi Jinpeng's own circle
My overly-simplistic model of China's government is that it is basically a one-party system with a veneer of formality over back-room intra-party struggles (along with a regular calendar of leadership replacement to prevent too much consolidation of power around an individual, as happened to an extent with Deng Xiaoping in the aftermath of Mao's death). Under this model, official political power tends to correspond directly to internal party clout. So wouldn't anybody with enough clout to be a threat to Xi be likely to be found within his own circle (AKA, higher ups in the current government)? I admit I could be way off base in my analysis here, as I haven't studied China's government in depth.
> Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
Just out of curiosity, have we seen any such documents or communications (on any subject) that weren't intended for public consumption? That seems like important context as to whether absence of evidence can realistically be considered evidence of absence.
Again, since you seem to have studied this in more detail than I have, I'm interested in your thoughts on these questions.
If Xi Jinping were to try to purge the Chinese Government (a highly paranoid organization, with military, intelligence and national security communities that far outlast his particular inter-party alignment) that would be incredible, shocking and enormous news.
> If Mr. Xi's goal were to stay on past the customary 10-year term, wouldn't he need to discredit the current institutions of government and portray himself as the antidote?
Maybe? Generally, the party is the face (you used the word veneer) of the government and its institutions. Weakening public opinion of the party only makes sense if Xi Jinping were pushing to replace the party system with a cult of personality. In the mind of the Chinese, Xi merely runs the party, and any damaged public opinion about the party reflects directly on public opinion about how Jinping is running it.
The kind of steps to become a cult of personality necessary to replace the party system just aren't being seen. You aren't seeing the government under Jinping trying to mass mobilize a change of public opinion to value his leadership over and above the party system.
Rather than discredit the current institutions of government he'd need to purge the institutions and norms which facilitate the cap on leadership and the interior modes for leadership to be replaced, as well as top brass in the People's Army that would enforce that - while pushing for the citizens of China to support such a transition. I have yet to read anything that makes a case that that's happening (much less a compelling one).
> Just out of curiosity, have we seen any such documents or communications (on any subject) that weren't intended for public consumption? That seems like important context as to whether absence of evidence can realistically be considered evidence of absence.
Yup. Take "Document Number 9" or the leaks regarding Ling Jihua or the leaks from the public diplomacy and strategic communication (propaganda) centers in China or the so called "50 Cent Party" - their version of the US's "Global Engagement Center".
Documents are leaked in China the same as they are leaked anywhere else. In any case, I'm just suggesting the type of really strong evidence you'd want to be able to reference to support a really strong claim. Unfortunately not enough leaks from any government are available to always have a "smoking gun" (though incredibly in the case of Brazil we got them, not that it mattered). I agree with you that absence of a leaked smoking gun is not evidence that it doesn't exist. My point was that there's nothing even close - so either the conspiracy is incredibly underground, has thought 15 moves ahead, and is going to manage to capture a government with a billion people even without taking the steps you'd expect to see - or it's a rumor similar to those about President Trump's, President Obama's, and President Putin's ambitions to overthrow their governments that were/are popular during their respective eras.
Color me really skeptical. I'm willing to believe it though - I would just need to see the right set of circumstances or the right set of leaked documents for it to make enough sense. Overall I'm much more interested in current affairs, geopolitics, and the potential ouster of Najib Razak in Malaysia and the workings of the next China party congress than these kinds of highly speculative and underevidenced theories.
The family name is Xi, just FYI.
Is it culturally unacceptable to refer to Xi Jinping as Jinping?
I have a brother that at one point regularly dealt with top levels of Chinese government. His summary was, "China is a country of crooks ruled by honest men; the USA is a country of honest men ruled by crooks." He's not sure which is worse in the end.
Based on that, I would bet on the top levels of the Chinese government being basically ethical (albeit within an ethical system that values life and liberty a lot less than we would).
Of course, stability is also quite useful for preserving power and enjoying the fruits of dubious wealth, so here the moral imperative dovetails neatly with the personal interests of party cadres.
For the record, the extent to which Americans can be trusted to be honest and trustworthy on a daily basis came as a shock to him after living in China for many years.
That doesn't mean there's no recourse. The mods actively respond to concerns like this. As I suggested above, you can contact them and they'll look into it.
Makes me wonder if the real purpose the objective here was to keep him from naming names in public/open court?
Thus, if people think the reason is not yet known, then they are probably correct.
This is a fairly generous interpretation. The more realistic view is that this is part of an on-going purge of Xi Jinping's foes. I don't think history is going to see this as anything other and this kind of thing is fairly common in China. The strict "anti-corruption" legislation gives the PRC leadership quite the leeway to punish those who they deem their enemies. This is a typical ploy in autocratic regimes.
It is pretty obvious what happened, and again, HK has been going in this direction now for a couple of years.
But note that I'm not disagreeing with the original poster or you: it might well not be sovereign. My point was that having mainland police acting on HK soil is problematic, as it stands, no matter what the status with respect to sovereignty is.
When are these actions justified? Only when someone is a killer or a torturer or a terrorist? Or are they okay in case of (allegedly) corrupt billionaires as well? Tough question, imho.
In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
Given the current political situation in Hong Kong, this may not be a valid assumption.
It is not clear if any border violations occurred in this attack.
A weaker country can claim foul all they want but the military capable country will simply ignore it when it is in their interest and act with force which will see no resistance from a weaker country.
Power justifies as well as corrupt those who wield it.
When they control the political will of HK, they will inevitably control the economy of HK.
HK is no longer the safe haven it once was. Looks like Singapore is about to get another huge boost in business after banking secrecy is coming under attack in Europe.
The US and the UK basically gave the PRC everything they wanted in switching the UN's China seat from ROC to PRC. They could have driven a much harder bargain – e.g. have two Chinas in the UN, just like it has two Koreas and used to have two Vietnams, two Germanys, two Yemens, etc; then HK and Macau could have been given back to ROC instead of PRC. But the US and UK were so obsessed with using PRC to spite the Soviets, they weren't thinking about what it would mean 20, 30, 40 years later when the Soviet Union was defunct.
Could we have gotten a better deal? I'm not sure. Given the earlier incursion into Vietnam and Korea, the military support of the ROC and the militarization of the First Island Chain, I can't imagine that anything short of the very strong reassurance the alliance pursued with the "One China Policy" would have been acceptable.
The move is one of the only things heralded of the scandal-plagued Nixon Administration as a wild success for the United States, and is even often credited for being the key diplomatic victory that ultimately won America the Cold War.
Indeed, what did the US and its allies actually get out of their anti-Soviet alliance with PRC? Nixon hoped that it would help the US in Vietnam; but obviously it didn't – South Vietnam lost the war and they probably would have lost it just the same even if Nixon's China trip never happened. More broadly, I honestly can't see any military benefits for the US and its allies from the deal. The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened. Obviously some sort of understanding with PRC had to be reached eventually, since pretending ROC was the government of the whole of China wasn't tenable in the long run, but the US could have extracted some major concessions from PRC in exchange for recognition instead of basically conceding to PRC all its major objectives – an alliance against the Soviets was not a huge concession from PRC given that PRC and USSR were already mutually hostile since the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s.
Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
And of course, China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC, such as a "two Chinas policy" of recognising both PRC and ROC and maintaining diplomatic relations with both. Under this model, it would not be essential that PRC itself abandon the "one China" position, merely that it be willing to accept trade and diplomatic relations with countries that adopted the "two Chinas" position instead. If the US had made that the price for US-PRC trade from the outset, I think Beijing probably would have come around to paying it. In the 1970s, the US was a vastly richer country than PRC (the gap is still there but it has closed a lot in the last 30-40 years), and PRC had far more to gain from US trade than vice versa, so the US arguably had more power to set the ground terms for the relationship – but the US despite having the far stronger hand chose not to play it.
This is an interesting position, though I think it suffers from the same shortcuts that much US thinking does when it tries to grapple with prior arrangements that seem inconvenient today because of changing strategic context.
To what extent did it contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union? An incredible amount. China blocked the Soviet Union in all of South Asia, it abstained from diplomatic support - it wielded both its position on the UNSC and it's nuclear capability to check USSR. Then, it challenged the central tenets of Communism specifying that it had a different interpretation closer to the original theory - thus challenging the centrality of Russia ideologically. China's withdrawl represented approximately a third of the world population removing itself from the union: the concept of "domino theory" at the time described - in a certain pop science way - how states arriving into and dropping out of the union had a chain reaction effect. Since the alliance with China, the Cold War no longer was fought in the Asian theatre - closing down an entire continent of front to the war. The rest of the Cold War would be fought in Central Asia (and eventually in the Middle East), and in Europe.
Of course, the United States knew from very early that it was going to lose in Vietnam: the Pentagon Papers discussed this in great detail. The United States was there on a cost imposition exercise. The result it found in the alliance with China was a mutually satisfactory way to close the conflict. In this regard China didn't win the Vietnam war either.
> The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened.
I have no idea. That's 60 years of alternative history to imagine. Fascinating, but not clear.
> Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
This seems to be a rising opinion in the National Security Core of the United States, and also seems to be the take of the new Trump Administration.
Personally I see this as historical revisionism, contextualized by modern concerns over historical accuracy.
I fully agree that China and it's potential rise are considered by the National Security State of the American Government to be a dark horse scenario, and a greater potential spoiler to American hegemony than Russia (a waning power) today.
I understand how someone could mistake the situation we are in today with a security outlook at China's rise and want to throw out some of the alliance concessions because in this day and age they are inconvenient. We've seen that before in history (indeed, in American history) and so it's congruent with the kind of behavior we would expect.
> China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC
I think all of this is very accurate, provided there was _some_ deal to get an alliance. Had it been possible for the United States to do that without recognizing PRC, I serious doubt. But yeah, if that had been possible, I think much of the geoeconomic situation would have looked the same.
If the Brits had obtained permanent rights in the New Territories, the situation would have been different. But they hadn't and by contract had to return Hong Kong to China.
It has been argued, though, that they should have returned Hong Kong to Republic of China.
Not sure whose idea it was to let HK get handed over to the commies back in the 1990's, why Taiwan didn't make a louder claim to it, or why HK didn't assert its right to independence from extraterritorial governments altogether.
Before the time of the transition they stressed that all the current treaties for water were written to end at the time of transition, and that they would not be willing to renegotiate them.
Any attempt to keep HK or to turn them over to Taiwan would have resulted in mass death and evacuations.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-china-billionaire...
"Chinese billionaire whereabouts a mystery but denies abduction"
"A missing China-born billionaire was quoted by state media on Tuesday as saying he had not been abducted from Hong Kong by mainland Chinese agents as some news outlets had reported but was receiving medical treatment."