Typical shoddy journalism. Bandies numbers about: '150.000', 'up to 3 million' , when talking about the numbers likely to qualify to come to UK but never actually tells us what the population of Hong Kong is in the first place. So is this everyone?... 50% of the population?... 25%?.. 10%?...
The point is that from a journalistic point of view the number of people eligible for citizenship is meaningless without the context of either the population of Hong Kong or of the UK or perhaps the number of immigrants the UK typically sees from Hong Kong and other countries. It's very common in articles to see numbers that have no meaning without context. Either the context should be provided or the numbers should not be mentioned.
But even the Home Office doesn't know the exact number.
They know how many current BN(O) holders there are. But they don't know how many are eligible exactly -- they have the entire list of people who have received one, but that's over 20 years ago, and a lot could have happened to them since.
Helpful hint: I find it very telling to mentally replace “up to” with “at most”. It’s the exact same inequality but sometimes (though not always) totally changes the emotional tone of a piece. The other thing is it never ceases to highlight the need for a lower bound. I think journalists (whether deliberately or unconsciously I cannot say, besides it isn’t relevant) use the term “up to X” to simultaneously proclaim the worst-case scenario AND use it to anchor your expectations (basically you become convinced that the worst case scenario is the most likely outcome because that’s the only information you have, whereas if you tell yourself “up to X” you immediately ask yourself “yeah okay but starting from what?” and the lack of knowledge is at least made explicit).
* Beijing will establish a new security office in Hong Kong, with its own law enforcement personnel - neither of which would come under the local authority's jurisdiction
* This office can send some cases to be tried in mainland China - but Beijing has said it will only have that power over a "tiny number" of cases
* Beijing will have power over how the law should be interpreted, not any Hong Kong judicial or policy body. If the law conflicts with any Hong Kong law, the Beijing law takes priority
Aren't there also similar laws like that in USA? People are being recommended life sentences for throwing a molotov at an empty police vehicle during these George Floyd protests and are being labeled as terrorists by Trump.
Good. I don't care if it's a police car or someone's personal car or an empty cardboard box. If you're throwing around molotov cocktails you should go to jail.
I agree that they should have jail time, but life in prison after not actually harming anyone physically? That's authoritarian and exactly what I was replying to in OP's comment.
What if the car exploded, hurting people nearby? What if there was a police canine in the vehicle that wasn't see, or someone crouching on the other side of the car out of sight? Throwing a molotov cocktail into a vehicle, in my opinion, should be charged as attempted manslaughter.
To be fair though, even if you think people should go to jail for that (and I don't think that's an unreasonable view), surely you'd agree that a life sentence is excessive?
No, as for the US there is still a difference what Leadership tweets or gaffes into a microphone and what becomes law or passes judicial review.
This stands in contrast to these "kickers" since they are already Chinese law – and let's not even start comparing Beijings supreme court with that of the US…
People give way too much weight to a handover promise with a completely different country, and not the wording of the Hong Kong constitution and the Chinese Constitution.
Both allow for everything that has happened, which suggests restraint by both Hong Kong and Chinese authories.
Hong Kong Basic Law (its constitution) allows for National Security to be controlled by Beijing.
I can see the symbolism of 50 year autonomy being undermined, but can someone explain why this topic never has a legal discussion attached, whereas other topics do?
This is not true. The basic law explicitly excludes this, because there is a provision for national security in article 23. Annex iii can contain national laws that are not covered by the basic law (e.g. foreign policy).
Which outside of a few details like bilingual signs or legislation, is more aspirational than reality.
On the legislation point, while it is translated into Irish and legally speaking the Irish version takes precedence, it's usually drafted in English and translated. This has caused issues such as embarrassment for the government where they had to update the proposed constitutional amendment required to legalise same sex marriage as the Irish translation accidentally legalised _only_ same sex marriage: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-language-vers...
> Which outside of a few details like bilingual signs or legislation, is more aspirational than reality.
You could say the same for Wales. Not sure if they are included or excluded traditionally.
On a slight tangent, it makes me giggle to see the Gaelic versions of towns on the outskirts of Glasgow. If Ireland is aspirational, Scotland is comically optimistic. The average Glaswegian knows more Spanish or French than they do Gaelic.
"The locality with the largest absolute number is Glasgow with 5,878 such persons, who make up over 10% of all of Scotland's Gaelic speakers." Of course, they all speak English and many if not most nearby town names are of non-Gaelic origin.
Arrivals from overseas face mandatory quarantine, so I don’t see how COVID is an obstacle.
I think the Australian government is worried about further deterioration in the Australia-China relationship. I think they’ll do something if UK/US/Canada/NZ make the first move.
Is this an attempt to fill immigration gaps after EU immigration collapses? I don't believe the government actually cares about anything that going on in HK.
I wouldn't be surprised if the government thought exactly that, but I don't think it would work - HKers are mostly urban and well-educated, especially the politicized groups that are worried by Chinese rule. It's unlikely they will happily accept to become an underclass.
Still, it is the decent thing to do. It also underlines once again this country has no real power or influence left in the superpower age. Before, we could at least try to get the EU to go to bat for our interests, and have a real impact. We have none of that now, which is probably part of the reason the Chinese accelerated the process.
We are as keen as anyone - see the nuclear power plant projects and 5G.
Still, is it just a coincidence that Xi accelerated his plans shortly after Brexit? Between that and Trump, we are effectively isolated and fundamentally vulnerable to this sort of power play.
They said “try”. Rest of the EU might have said “no”, but now the EU hasn’t got any more reason to listen to the UK than to listen to, say, Australia’s opinion about Hong Kong.
Then there is also the reduced power of the EU post-Brexit. Just because Brexit costs the UK influence doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost the EU too — without the UK, the EU is only about 85% of the GDP of the other two big trade giants (the USA and China are each about equal to what the EU was with the UK).
But there's no reason that an independent UK and the EU cannot work together where their interests align, is there? The idea that it's all or nothing is nothing more than yet another canard put about by anti-Brexit protagonists.
> But there is also no reason why they should even try, whereas before there was.
This makes no sense. There's countless examples of independent nations/supra-national bodies etc. with wildly diverging goals across many areas also managing to work together on shared goals.
You seem to be pushing the same false dichotomy again, that is, that it's either the UK within the EU, else a cold war type situation, and there is no possibility whatsoever of a third situation. I'd suggest that's very obviously bogus.
What I find revealing is that years on from the referendum it's the same crude, tired and spurious anti-Brexit arguments being trotted out. If after all this time the only tactic is Project Fear mk. infinity, what can one conclude about the supposed benefits of EU membership?
You’re saying this on a thread whose ancestor comment (not yours, I know) was:
> the same EU that rewrote its coronavirus report several times in fear of CCP repercussions?
And you’re saying it to people who are coming up with reasons why the post-Brexit EU doesn’t share your concerns.
This does not require a “cold war type situation”. It just requires every other EU member state to have more important things from their own perspective.
It’s not hatred you’re seeing from the EU, it is apathy.
just FYI: you're arguing with someone that spent a year attempting to move to the EU because the UK voted to leave (from his own comments on this site)
Someone who succeeded in remaining in the EU after a one year delay to look after a parent with Alzheimer’s, not explicitly because of the vote itself but because several prominent Brexit campaigners wanted to take away the one stick I could use to fight off the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
And no, not everything, and definitely not automatically — that’s one mind-trap I am keen to avoid. It’s just that competent “no-EEA Brexit” planning would take the UK about 10 of the last 4 years even if it hadn’t done anything else. Heck, if Cameron has said “Oh well, EEA it will be then like the Leave campaigners asked for :(” I would probably still be in the UK, because EEA membership requires the government to allow me to use the metaphorical stick I want to keep the IP Act at bay.
If their interests aligned. Without the UK having a seat at the table, they ‘ain’t going to align. That is literally the point of Brexit in the first place, for the UK to diverge from the EU, because without that the members of the current U.K. government would not have campaigned for it in the first place.
And that big flashing neon “if” is still true with a competent government, let alone the current lot which (as per recent news) is pouring money into a failed multinational project that cannot fit their requirements just to avoid the embarrassment of continuing to spend money on entirely successful multinational projects that happen to be EU-branded.
1a : a false or unfounded report or story especially : a fabricated report The report about a conspiracy proved to be a canard.
b : a groundless rumor or belief the widespread canard that every lawyer is dishonest
It's hard to say what this government cares about.
My cynical self thinks that this is not a genuine offer but one for the headlines in a time where good news are sorely needed (Leicester lockdown, general covid-19 omnishambles)
It's not obviously about replacing EU immigration. Hong Kong a higher GDP per capita than the UK - and about four times the GDP per capita of the eastern European countries that provide so many workers to British farms and warehouses.
Britain's motivation is they contend that this is a violation of the treaty between Britain and China from the handover of Hong Kong [1], and letting one other country violate your treaties with impunity makes other countries think they can get away with the same thing.
But at the same time there's also no appetite in Britain to go head-to-head with China - in fact, if the HK stuff wasn't going on they'd be looking for a trade deal right now.
So if you see something that's a response, but not a really tough muscular response, that's exactly what the UK government is aiming for.
Pretty soon the law-abiding and obedient people will become aware that life outside of authoritarianism is better and safer, and they will either run away or revolt.
No, the authoritarian right which includes US liberals. The left doesn't even exist worldwide except in extremely small insignificant numbers pumped up by media to create new red scare conditions among the population. The left has been crushed for the last 40+ years by the authoritarian right and has absolutely no backbone.
The authoritarian right runs the gig, the authoritarian right creates the violence.
Edit: DSA, arguably the USA's largest, most mainstream true left group is only ~65,000 members across the nation. Quite tiny. I've been to bigger soccer matches.
The ways things are going currently, if you don't agree with the left on things you can lose your job. You can't voice an opinion that is different or you get labeled a racist. You can see this every day in plain sight.
There's a reason some portion of the left is pretty intolerant of the current situation - it literally results in violence to people who don't even share their opinions in the first place.
The "current situation" is not as clear-cut as many would make it out to be. Watching an emotional video is not the smoking gun that shows one side to be completely right, but that's what's happening now.
I would think a good write up/analysis using high quality statistics would be the way to decide what is happening in the "current situation".
But a graphic and emotional video is going to pull the strings much harder.
A lot of people have been trying "good write-ups" and "high quality statistics" for a long time, it turns out they don't actually change people's minds - people make up their mind before reading the article. The production of "high quality statistics" hasn't been the turning point in any civil rights movement I'm aware of.
For what it's worth, I've read the statistics, I've read the counterpoints to the statistics, I believe based on them that there is a right-wing violence problem in the US and some other specific places.
When the market doesn't like your actions, the market makes you pay. That's how the system works. Regulating that market response seems like the actual authoritarian move.
I don't know how you can write such a nonsensical comment as left wing groups across the country are tearing down statues, rioting and looting, destroying businesses, and terrorizing communities (see residents and business owners inside CHAZ, for example).
Can you show me some examples of right wing violence?
Yes, but it's a lot more distributed. It's people being assaulted in public spaces for being in any way different. It's the bathroom bills encouraging people to assault people in bathrooms based on nothing but perceived trans status - and then this actually happening. I've suffered both in a country where I theoretically have protections, and I am aware that my friends in the US have suffered worse. I am not going to go into what folk outside my communities suffer from, but I imagine it's not a whole lot better.
This isn't violence based on stating an opinion - it's violence based on simply daring to exist in a public space.
There's very little news coverage of it because it's "small" things - assaults that leave bruises and not much more, but which the victims know mean they're not welcome in the public spaces everybody else takes for granted - that happen all the time to people minding their own business, and this is and has been the norm for a very long time.
Do you want me to spend the next 24 hours finding you news stories of right-wing violence against people minding their own business? Actually, no, you do it.
There's nothing that indicates any of these were committed by right wing people. The first article is based on a study surveying 13-17 year olds and mentions some legislation, but no sexual assault that I can see.
Two drunk women, no evidence they are right wing or support any specific ideology.
And so on.
Individual acts of violence are not the same as an authoritarian regime, like the current left wing mob.
Right, so violence against trans folk is totally left-wing. There's never been anybody encouraging violence against trans folk as part of right-wing ideology. Got it.
Many individual acts over time can be worse than a single instance of violence that affects many, you realise?
I am aware of TERFs, I currently live in a country where they recently managed to convince the Prime Minister to harass us in order to split the opposing party (which has multiple factions and where the primary reason they stay together is similar opinions on workers' rights) which had started gaining footing.
I also very much disbelieve that they constitute any of the left, given that the left largely won't talk to them or acknowledge the validity of their ideas, and they tend to wind up making deals with right-wing anti-feminist (even anti-cisgender-woman) organisations to push their agenda.
Calling yourself a "feminist" doesn't make you one, especially when you stomp on other women's hard-earned rights and privileges in order to pursue your goal of burying "men".
Find me a TERF who openly supports Black Lives Matter and spends a bunch of time advocating for women's rights other than the oppression of trans women, and I'll eat my hat.
EDIT: On the other hand, Black Lives Matter groups by and large support trans folk, at least in words. Black Lives Matter UK: "All forms of oppression are interrelated, you cannot be for Black lives if you do not emphatically support the cause for Black queer lives, Black trans lives [and] the lives of Black women." - and this demo: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/black-trans-... - and this trans person who cofounded a part of BLM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elle_Hearns
If it is so bad in the US, what is keeping you there? Many developed countries have relatively few immigration hurdles for US Americans to pass. UK in particular, European countries are lax in general in these regards (I live in Germany).
"Relatively few" usually means a significant employment barrier - you usually have to be making a certain amount of money which is hard to come by at the lower rungs of STEM employment, especially if you're restricted to applying for companies you can interview with from overseas.
I believe that in all countries in Europe, there's a requirement that the pay be at market level to avoid the exploitation of immigrants (there's no distinction based on country of origin as you seem to imply), and that the job be advertised first with the EU's job agency (whatever that is called, I forgot now) and EU citizens are able to apply before an immigrant may be allowed to apply and take the job.
I believe that is called minimum wage? So that would be already a given.
there's no distinction based on country of origin as you seem to imply
there is a distinction: There is a German by-law as well as a EU-decree that classifies US Americans as citizens of a "priviliged country" (§ 26 BeschV (Verordnung über die Beschäftigung von Ausländern)).
You then also need to make more, as you continue to be taxed in the USA, until you've lived abroad long enough to qualify for citizenship in your new host country, and can give up your USA citizenship.
Because the US has an incredibly restrictive immigration policy towards most of the world, most countries retaliate by having an incredibly restrictive immigration policy against americans.
It's very hard to give up your home, your friends, your connections, and potentially your family even if you have an opportunity for a better life.
Yes, a lot of those connections can potentially move to the same city & country as you but will your neighbor still be your neighbor? Will the bar at the end of the street you go to after a hard day still be there and know exactly what you want when you walk through the door?
The revolt started almost 15 months ago against this kind of crap from China. Emigration may protect you from getting arrested but you're giving up everything you know and love in exchange. That's not much of a deal.
Not the person you’re replying to, but I know a number of people with this sentiment. They’re all former residents of the Soviet Union and were able to get out as refugees to the US when it collapsed.
Who in their right mind downvotes this ^? If you do downvote, I'd really like to know why.
Communism is manifestly a negative influence on mankind's well-being... don't know how anyone could rationally think otherwise (unless you grew up in a communist country and believe the propaganda).
No, chances are the person who downvoted you is someone who never has actually lived in a communist country and likely did so from the comforts of an overpriced western coffee shop. They probably think they're an intellectual who wouldn't be first against the wall in such a situation.
Take the downvote with pride, since you're speaking truth to abuse.
In particular as GP didn't even make a political statement about theoretical political systems whose veracity could be discussed on some abstract grounds, but made a personal statement about themselves and their direct experience.
My wife grew up in the PRC. Before Communism they were a very prominent family (her great uncle was a literary pioneer; his brother, her grandpa, a judge prominent enough that he was mentioned in the movie Lust Caution; and their brother a successful MD), and as a result were "black" under the Communist regime.
With the exception of my wife's grandmother, every member of her extended family spent time in either prison or forced-work camps. One of her aunts translated for me the "confession" she was forced to sign. None of this was related to what we'd consider crimes, but was entirely political.
The Communists took the family's house. They had a refrigerator and a piano, which the Red Guard destroyed on the basis that if everyone didn't have such bourgeois goods, then no one should. When TVs were made available for neighborhood viewing, my wife wasn't allowed to attend.
And there's the malnutrition and squalor they were subjected to. They shared one floor of a brownstone with 2 other families - so, 3 entire families sharing one kitchen and 1.5 baths. There was insufficient food, to the point where they had to eat insect-infested grain - while Party members got plenty.
So, all in all, my wife's experience with Communism wasn't positive, and having lived through that, she's the first to speak up against anything that exhibits any of those traits.
This is of course terrible, and I'm sorry your family went through any of it.
I though think it's worth mentioning that the China of today is absolutely not the China of the 50's.
I've personally spent quite a bit of time in China, and it's never seemed particularly "communist" - the middle class has long since been established and continues to grow, and capatalism is very much thriving. On a personal note, I've always really enjoyed my time in China.
I'm not saying it's a model of wonderdrous virtue either of course; there is a lot of corruption (hardly unique to China, mind), many people wouldn't even dream of openly criticising the CCP, there is little press freedom, and of course the Uigher (spelling?) camps are an abomination. Yet the overwhelming majority of the population have never had it better, and are happy with the way things are (of course, few will know everything about the way things are).
There's a lot of truth in your response. My own personal feeling, from my visits to the country from the 90s to the present, is that in some ways the day-to-day life on the streets of Shanghai seem more free than America. It seems like the government has been mostly laissez-faire toward the individual people, so long as those people leave the oligarchy alone.
The thing is, it's very much a pendulum. The Cultural Revolution, when my wife was growing up, was one of the worst times. The couple decades starting in the 90s was relatively quite good. The thing is, since Xi took control the pendulum has been swinging back in the other direction. That's most obvious back in Hong Kong, but is also evident within the mainland, as reported by family members and we can see ourselves through online interactions (e.g., on multiple occasions my wife's WeChat comments have been censored).
The CCP has not at all let up on its persecution of people, groups, and ideas that are deemed "enemies of the state": Christians who do not meet in a State-registered/3-self (= state-controlled) church (persecution of those Christians has worsened significantly), Falon Gong practitioners, and minority group members, among others.
In addition to religious and ideological persecution, we see grave human rights abuses continue unabated: forced abortions, arbitrary (non-rule-of-law) treatment of citizens, lack of habeas corpus, ruling officials and legislators who are unelected (or who are only eligible for election if they are CCP members), a secret police, massive slave labor camps, long prison sentences for journalists and human rights activists, etc.
Perhaps the only difference we're seeing since the 1950's is that capital and property ownership in themselves are not seen as anti-state.
Eastern bloc country. Grandfather tortured for being a priest after his house got confiscated and family ran out of town. My other grandfather had a similar experience but got his house back eventually. Constant persecution. Fear of anyone who was not family because they could be spies for the state. Food rationing. 6 day workweek. Bribe doctors so you don't die on the operating table and everyone else too. Can't read in public. Tons of censorship. I was very young and my family was doing well, the communist equivalent of middle class. Others had it much worse. Being a child I was shielded from a lot but children are not stupid. Imagine having murderous hate for your president at seven, eight years old. Education was quite good though, but I missed most of that. Highly doubt China much different in many respects from my visit there.
Of course it is better to live in a liberal as opposed to an authoritarian system, but this type of thinking (an inherent inevitability of liberalism to win over authoritarianism) breeds complacency and can ultimately be the downfall of western liberal democracy.
There is no guarantee that the system that is more just will win out. That's the reason why we have to do everything we can to make sure that liberal democracy works and to impede authoritarianism in all its forms and guises. The CCP should never have had the amount of international investment and export markets it has had, given the overall strategy of the party to hoard power and crush dissent.
I'm not sure we need to impede authoritarianism or any other form of government. It is more than likely that level of investment that has gone into China over the last few decades have put the country in the a strong position. But I think the CCP and the Chinese people in general can take a lot of credit for what they have achieved. And to my point...if the end result is rising incomes for all, better life expectancy and an overall better quality of life does it matter that it came about through an authoritarian regime?
>if the end result is rising incomes for all, better life expectancy and an overall better quality of life does it matter that it came about through an authoritarian regime?
And when this growth ends, what will happen? An authoritarian system is able to withstand challenges with the full power of the state behind it. People that dissent are crushed, and many times the people that dissent do so with the most honourable of intentions. Viewed under the prism of authoritarianism this matters not. It's a system that remains not because of consent and merit, but ultimately due to suppression of dissent.
Just because China is able to catch-up some of the growth that it completely missed out on due to the turmoil of the Communist revolution and the turbulent 50s and 60s, doesn't validate this system one bit. Other countries were ahead of China, with more growth and sustainability, minus the cruelty.
>Just because China is able to catch-up some of the growth that it completely missed out on due to the turmoil of the Communist revolution and the turbulent 50s and 60s, doesn't validate this system one bit. Other countries were ahead of China, with more growth and sustainability, minus the cruelty.
The most powerful countries in the world were literally coasting on stolen Chinese wealth for 100 years of so. When the UK couldn't coast anymore, it lost world reserve currency status.
That era ended long before the Communists took power. Which they did by allowing the KMT to deplete their resources by fighting the Japanese first. They contributed surprising little in the war effort.
Now, can we get back on the subject of how the CCP is treating dissidents (and neighbouring countries)?
Was India next to a financial hub like Hong Kong and a electronics and manufacturing hub like Taiwan that rapidly industrialised in the 60s and 70s? India is also further positioned from the Pacific and the sea routes to the US market, but that's a secondary reason, not the primary one.
Just because they both have large populations don't make them alike.
Life in China is fine right now. They are living about 50x better off than their parents. They are educated.
The CCP is super clever and imbued a sort of nationalistic pride from birth. Instead of the US's more complicated dualistic individualism/patriotism combo, the Chinese people actually get some sort of pride for being a cog in the CCP machine.
It's a completely different paradigm and obviously super dangerous because it allows the people at the top who aren't elected to pull the strings on a machine of 1.4 billion people. If they run the system correctly, it can be much more "effective".
Democracy has lots of pressure outlets, and it is definitely much more healthy longterm. That's why I think it's the better system, even vs a well-run (and let's even assume benevolent) CCP.
Not brainwashed, but socialized. In East Asian countries and China especially, collectivism and Confucianism are pervasive, with deep cultural roots. The CCP is, of course, supporting and reinforcing those ideals, but it's just as much simply taking advantage of the pre-existing culture. Just like how the US is strongly culturally capitalist and individualistic -- as we value bootstraps capitalism and the "American Dream", the people of mainland China value supporting each other and the state, even when it's not explicitly in their best interests.
So you are basically saying that the cohesion of China is because they are doing better economically these past few decades... and thus people's egos are at an all-time high. Thus they support the regime.
Which is not far off the mark. In China there is a pervasive feeling that the reason it is behind in development is due to the Imperialism in the 1800s and the domination of Western powers over China. This developed into some sort of inferiority complex. With economic development they claim that China is no longer the 'sick man of Asia', the shaking off of which imbues them some sort of pride. That pride is the source of support for the CCP, not any inherent properties of the system.
Yup, and exactly part of the reason they are protesting. Goes to show how much "relative" economic success is important to peoples' satisfaction of government.
Even in the US, that is the #1 issue in every Pres election. How's the economy? Aka do people with 401k's think that they are better off, and thus do they think they are doing better against their peers (their competition for finding a mate/maintaining their mate)
It will disproportionately take away the more wealthy and better educated. The majority of HKers live in public housing, pay no tax and are unlikely to have the means to live in the UK since there will be no recourse to public funds.
This level of brain drain, as in the other mass migration events away from HK, could trigger the government to loosen their grip.
> This level of brain drain, as in the other mass migration events away from HK, could trigger the government to loosen their grip.
I've heard that HK is no longer as important to China as it was 20 years ago. HK's contribution to China's GDP has declined in relative terms as the rest of China has developed. With regards to the brain drain I get the impression that there are plenty of people from the mainland that could fill the gap.
Our biggest advantage is that we are a trilingual society with a deep understanding of both western and Chinese culture. Although there are many people in the mainland who have studied abroad, the ability to understand the needs of Chinese and Western business is definitely not as pervasive. But I agree that HK isn't anywhere as near valuable to China, especially in terms of finance.
That's only dubiously a net advantage, even historically, of HK for the PRC. It's instrumental in some of the business advantages, but it also contributes to it's big political liability for a national regime for which the law is a convenience, not a limitation.
Good point. I meant advantage for companies (or individuals) to base themselves there (rather than eg in China), not advantage in terms of benefit to China.
That's in GDP terms. But lots of money flow through Hong Kong. If HK was to fail and get disconnected, China will lose a significant portion of their exports. Hong Kong imported around $264bn of products from China. These are unlikely going to HK mainland but rather re-routed to other parts of the world.
It doesn't help that China is in bad terms with the U.S. and India. India is on track to become the third-world economy. China is gradually isolating itself from the rest of the world.
Just because HK couldn't facilitate it anymore doesn't mean the world will stop buying $260bn worth of goods and services. It would just be 'rerouted'.
Sure, just as New York is not as central to the American economy as it was in the 19th and early 20th century. It would still be a very heavy cost to lose it. A few percentage points of GDP might seem small on paper, and won’t be the end of the country, but it’s not something to scoff at.
> It will disproportionately take away the more wealthy and better educated.
Which for Hong Kong as the universe of analysis would be a travesty, but for China is probably not a significant consideration against removing that population as a source of unrest which can spread beyond HK.
From what I've heard almost everyone tries to get out, so I expect that the alleged hope of the CPC will come true.
Nonetheless it is the right thing to do for the UK (where are the EU nations on this?), and exile doesn't have to mean abandoning the future of your birthplace. Hong Kongers might be able to achieve more for HK from the UK than under a Beijing cyber-dictatorship.
That's if their children don't assimilate and forget their HK identity. Children of Asian migrants in anglophone countries losing touch with their language and heritage is a very common phenomenon.
Actually that raises an interesting comparison with the Tibetan diaspora that mostly left during around 1950. How many of their descendants growing up in India/US/UK still know how to speak Tibetan?
IMO assimilation isn't a bad thing, rather an indicator of a culture they bring with them which is accustomed to concepts of citizenry (or even more evolved) and the state (confucianism?).
Assimilation means the next generation won't be willing to fight the the memories of a HK half a world and century away. Also, most of the Asian diaspora in the anglophone sphere assimilate simply because there's not enough population, not because of some special cultural quality. 5% of the US is Asian American, and that's divided among all the different Asian nations. The Asian diaspora in Southeast Asia do a much better job of preserving their languages and culture.
If by remembering their heritage you mean how half the US remembers they're 1/16 Irish only when St. Patrick's day rolls around, then yes.
HK is in a catch-22. Stay where they are and get absorbed into the Mandarin speaking behemoth that's mainland China like Hakka, Wu, and Hokkien speakers once the CCP starts tearing down border and population movement restrictions, or move abroad to a dozen different countries and be absorbed piecemeal into the Anglosphere. The third option would be for 1 million or so HKers to build a new city somewhere where they could be the dominant culture. Unfortunately, Singapore is a very unusual case in world history where Malaysia didn't care about sovereignty over the land Singapore stood on and actually forced them out. Very little chance of that happening a second time.
> Hong Kongers might be able to achieve more for HK from the UK
Hong Kongers are likely to achieve more for the world - from UK rather than from authoritarian China.
The fate of Hong Kong, specifically, is not that important.
Talking to a Chinese friend who is quite pro-CCP, they are pissed that UK is offering this and say that mass emigration of HKers would be a major loss of face for the CCP.
I don't know if you aren't aware of the history - Hong Kong was a British colony until on this day in 1997. Many people in Hong Kong have very strong connections to the former Empire - many people married, there were many social, cultural, military connections, and so on.
Sure, but is nostalgia enough to move from a very advanced, high-tech city and highly educated society, to one where several dozen people are knifed in the capital every day and there isn't even AC in the tube in the summer, so people are collapsing from heat stroke.
They need to stop strong-arming the rest of us into accepting their made-up-reality. They can live in fantasy land if they want, but they don't get to make me live in their fantasy.
It's interesting to see how proactive a lot of developed countries are being with getting ready to welcome refugees from Hong Kong, especially compared to the Syrian crisis a few years ago.
Not surprisingly, China has clearly breached almost any agreement they've made with the rest of the developed world since they've starting making agreements
Hong Kong was a British colony for generations and is still strongly influenced by western culture. Probably why China has such an obsession with crushing it.
Adopting HK citizens is a far easier sell than Syrians. They already speak English, are highly educated, wealthy, westernized, and have special status in UK law.
Letting a ton of refugees in is a large burden on the host country. They don't share British culture and values, tend to have no education or marketable skills, are in poor health, don't speak the language, need a lot of government support, and depress wages for already poor citizens of the host country. It should still be done for humanitarian reasons but there's a lot of pushback from citizens for reasonable concerns.
After reading Open Borders by Bryan Cahlan, I’m convinced that if there is a burden on the host country it’s temporary. Long term, I think the host country has much more to gain than to lose.
Your belief does not make it a reality. Studies have shown that all kinds of immigration greatly benefits host countries, and especially aging Western ones with declining populations.
This really isn't a one-dimensional question with an easy "studies have shown" answer. For a start, it would require a definition for what "benefits host countries" means -- benefits tax receipts? Proportion willing to volunteer for the army? Benefits eployers of low/high-wage labor? Number of companies founded? Strength of the literary tradition?
That said, the most obvious parallel here is the indians expelled from Uganda [1], who were essentially the merchant class of that country. And I believe have done very well in England.
I don't think that's exactly what eggsnbacon1 was saying.
It may be true that all kinds of immigration greatly benefit host countries in the long term, but this is more debatable than that allowing wealthy, liberal, educated immigrants is a net benefit to host countries.
We can argue about the long-term benefits of open borders. I don't believe eggsnbacon1 was stating a position there--more like pointing out that there are some short-term costs that generate popular pushback. But ushering in the cream of the crop is obviously beneficial; it's a no-brainer.
Most studies does not account for what people dislike in immigration : fracturing social contract and communities shattering. Frictions in the salad bowl are poorly translated to economic figures but folks live it everyday.
So look carefully at what each study says and its perimeter.
It’s the reverse, the burden is definitive and ever growing. A large group of immigrants allow them to keep themselves in a cultural bubble, build a parallel economy (and society, actually), occupy some part of cities and setup political parties. Source: I’m French, and I quit my country in part for this reason.
Seems to me that they immigrated to another country because of a specific type of cultural phenomenon that was happening in their country of origin resulting from immigration. Maybe the same type of phenomenon is not happening in their country of choice? Doesn't seem sarcastic at all.
Sure. The thread is about how immigration is beneficial to countries in long term.
It was the OP who came up with the example of France to say that is not true.
> It’s the reverse, the burden is definitive and ever growing.
So there are two possibilities
* The French example is one of the very few exceptions -> This means the point OP is trying to make is kind of useless. Exceptions are present in almost all the theories.
* French example is what will happen in all most all the countries -> In that case OP's point becomes just ironic.
So then by this logic, we should be attempting to have every person on earth living in the UK, since all migration is positive, right? Or is there an upper limit to the desirable population of the UK before life becomes intolerable?
The UK is physically large enough that everyone on Earth actually could live there with a reasonable amount of space to themselves. The issue would be feeding everyone, since even now the UK needs to import its food, and it's not clear who would grow it if literally everyone lived in Britain. But because of how markets work, as more people moved to the UK, prices would go up and people would have more incentive to stay in their own country where they could grow food for export.
Also, if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?
> The UK is physically large enough that everyone on Earth actually could live there with a reasonable amount of space to themselves.
Clearly we have different ideas about reasonableness.
> if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?
I do, especially in those parts of the world in which fertility is particularly high yet ability to actually look after those children is particularly low
If you divide the world population by the UK's area, you get 80,700 people/mile², which is slightly less than the population density of Mumbai, and only 13% higher than Manhattan. You might consider that "unreasonable," but it's not unlivable, or anything.
An "open border" does not mean "force everyone to live in one country". It means potentially emigrants have the choice to move. Given that, the upper limit is determined by the number of willing individuals - that they've evaluated that life is better in the target country.
The caveat is that this only works for economies that are growing, have a small natural population growth and hence actually need more people quite desperately.
Trying to apply this same logic to a country that's stagnant economically or that already has a fast growing population would be silly.
> Adopting HK citizens is a far easier sell than Syrians. They already speak English
No they don't. According to the Hong Kong government's 2011 census only 41% of residents spoke English moderately well (not even fluently, just moderately well). 20% reported not being able to speak any English whatsoever; not even a few sentences.
Only 57% of residents of Hong Kong considered themselves "bilingual".
Only 30% of students attended an EMI school (English as a Medium of Instruction).
And I doubt the numbers have become more favorable to English in the decade since that census.
> No they don't. According to the Hong Kong government's 2011 census only 41% of residents spoke English moderately well (not even fluently, just moderately well). 20% reported not being able to speak any English whatsoever; not even a few sentences.
You have to consider which ones are being adopted. It is overwhelmingly the educated and wealthy ones who will go, and a far higher percentage of them speak English.
This is irrelevant because the offer is only for the 3 million people eligible. That group includes:
==About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.==
==Under the government's plans, all British Overseas Nationals and their dependants will be given right to remain in the UK, including the right to work and study, for five years. At this point, they will be able to apply for settled status, and after a further year, seek citizenship.==
Do you know (or care to speculate) on how those eligible for this offer would compare to residents captured by the census?
e.g. Did lots of people arrive from the mainland post-97, who might drive down the average? Or perhaps those with overseas-british papers are older, and the younger generation speaks much more English? I don't know enough to guess.
Generally speaking, more people = more power. But you need people who integrate well and won’t cause trouble, and will be net contributors to the welfare system. Hong Kong people are likely a very safe bet.
Of course they do: if they claim China is threatening them with prison for political reasons, they absolutely can claim asylum based on political persecution.
Please enlighten me. As a German, I have yet to see even a statement of any German politician to do as the Brits do. Is there any non-english speaking country being "proactive"?
Japan and Taiwan are seemingly being open to immigration and open to poaching skilled immigrants specifically. Both Taiwan and Japan are typically fairly difficult to immigrate to in general unless it's for temp guest workers.
It's more typically known as the "5-year route" and it means that after 5-years of living/working/residing in the UK they become eligible for permanent residence (which is known as "indefinite leave to remain"). So yes - it is a genuine and good offer. There will be catches though - the visa's will likely cost a fair bit of money (for example a UK spouse visa costs over £1000, and must be renewed when it is 2.5 years old) - I would imagine the BNO HK visa will be similar in cost. Similarly, the ILR (permanent residence) visa's cost around £2500. It is also possible that the BNO HK visa may have criteria on it such as a requirement to prove your current salary or available savings/funds are above a certain amount.
Many of the richer English-speaking Hong Kong residents send their children to school in England (or at any rate did thirty years ago).
And the schools they were sent to are largely the same as the schools that the people who run the UK went to (at least when there's a Conservative government).
So when the cabinet visualise "someone from Hong Kong", they think "one of us".
The government they made the contract with didn't even exist anymore. The Qing Empire made that contract with the UK. Independence or just keeping HK in the UK both make at least as much sense as giving it to a country that didn't even exist when the contract was formed.
It may have made sense technically but China has a huge army and HK is dependent on water, electricity and food which comes from the mainland. The mainland government made very clear that if HK wasn't returned, they would cut off the water supply.
The UK running HK in the first place was stealing from China. They originally got it as part of the peace settlement from the Opium Wars, then signed the 99-year lease later when the Qing empire was in terminal decline and unable to resist.
If UK had not switched recognition from ROC to PRC, they could have returned it to ROC instead.
UK could have demanded a lease renewal from PRC as the price for switching recognition. Instead they just got some “alliance” against the Soviets and it is questionable what that actually delivered.
If you're gonna go pro-colonialist might makes right, that's your prerogative, but then you're just gonna have to eat it on the fact that the PRC had a lot more might nearby.
Do you think we are happier now that we have been "handed back to the motherland" or is China happy? Why does the opinion and desires of Hong Kong citizens not mater in your mind?
I don't want to devalue your experience, but Anglo powers have a terrible record of "colonialism for their own good", "we'll be greeted as liberators", etc.
The government that ruled the territory of the Qing Empire was willing to roll tanks into HK--Deng Xiaoping said "I could take it in an afternoon". China made it clear that they were going to end up with HK one way or another.
Then Honk Hong should have been given back to the Republic of China (Taiwan) which is the direct successor of the Qing empire, not the PRC. RPC is not a successor of Qing nor ROC since ROC still exists.
Hum I was half trolling half serious, having skin in the game in favour of Taiwan. Interesting the game Wargame: Red Dragon has exactly a campaign about UK vs PRC over HK.
And I spoke that after having of talk with a Japanese people today and they fear they are the next on the list. I told them Japan at like 6th or 5th powerful army despite Article 9, + US alliance (that we all understand as half trustable only), so quite able to defend themselves. A lot of people in East Asian (HK, Vietnam, Philipines, Japan) fear China. This is what I got from talking with friends from this country. Everyone think there will be war at some point, only the time and starting place is unknown.
The UK already formally recognized the PRC as the sole government of China, and, as such the successor to ROC and Qing interests. Sure, this was in large part about who has the most guns, but it's not like the UK control of HK itself was a result of a free and uncoerced agreement of the parties, either.
You really want to set the precedent that regime change voids all international agreements, rather than obligations and rights under them passing to successor regimes?
That's a wildly different situation for a couple reasons. The debt is in the opposite direction, and the UK had HK for 100 years, not "immediately". It's not really a relevant thought experiment.
While the reasoning resonates with me, it does have undertones of whataboutism in it: Do I really expect CPC-historians to label colonial era contracts to be legitimate?
Edit: I stand corrected - Not "to fight". However, the point being (as with Belize, Israel, India or other colonies which became independent) by no means was it clear what entities were to became out of its former colonies.
Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia because they were majority Han Chinese and Malaysia wanted racial policies favoring Malays which would get outvoted in a democratic Malysia with Singapore in it. Singapore is one of those unusual countries where they didn't want independence but was forced into it.
The British could have done what they did with Belize. Belize wanted independence but Guatemala claimed that it was actually a province/state of Guatemala. The British supported independence and left a battalion of troops in Belize, the British Forces Belize, in order to act as a deterrent to a Guatemalan invasion.[1][2]
While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years.
The real issue is that HK wasn't viable without support from the mainland -- support they would have lost had this tactic been tried.
"Although not quite a piece of "barren rock" as derided by Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary during the First Opium War, from 1839 to 1842, the fact remains that Hong Kong isn’t endowed with the necessary natural resources to support its population of 7 million. The Hong Kong special administrative region of China gets over 70 percent of its water from Dongjiang, a river in neighboring Guangdong province. Meanwhile, over 90 percent of fresh meat and vegetables consumed in Hong Kong is sourced from the mainland. And mainland energy sources generate more than half of the electricity consumed locally."[3]
They would have had to bear a massive cost, investing in desalination plants, nuclear power plants, and imported their food from elsewhere.
That cost -- while extreme -- might be looked at in hindsight as cheaper than the current outcome with the likely significant brain drain from HK.
> While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala,
China isn't just more powerful than Guatemala, it's more powerful than the UK.
> they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war.
If Deng Xiaoping really thought the UK would accept nuclear ese as the cost of keeping China out of HK, sure, that might have kept China out. But literally no one would believe that.
They haven't invaded Taiwan with the US providing an even less direct security guarantee.
The USA previously had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. That was replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
"The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan nor does it relinquish it, as its primary purpose is to ensure the US's Taiwan policy will not be changed unilaterally by the president and ensure any decision to defend Taiwan will be made with the consent of Congress. The act states that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities". However, the decision about the nature and quantity of defense services that America will provide to Taiwan is to be determined by the President and Congress. America's policy has been called "strategic ambiguity" and it is designed to dissuade Taiwan from a unilateral declaration of independence, and to dissuade the PRC from unilaterally unifying Taiwan with the PRC."[1]
If the US didn't have this agreement with Taiwan, I believe the PRC would have invaded long ago. Instead, they have been playing a long game of deeply entangling their economies and increasing their influence in the region with the hope of Taiwan following HK and joining the one country, two systems approach. I believe that is fundamentally dead now that the PRC has revealed one country, two systems to be a complete lie.
Thus, I hope Taiwan declares independence and has the backing the USA in such a manner that China won't consider invading.
Nonetheless, the point stands that China hasn't invaded Taiwan with a far less secure security guarantee than the one I proposed by the UK for HK.
No nuclear power has yet wanted to test whether or not a rival nuclear power is willing to follow through on their promise. Nuclear deterrence has been exceedingly effective. Furthermore, while China is more powerful than the UK, in 1997 the UK had a larger GDP and the EU was on the upswing.[2][3] That would have been sufficient counterweight to China then.
> Furthermore, while China is more powerful than the UK, in 1997 the UK had a larger GDP
Which, while it could reasonably have been taken as an indication of the capacity to generate power over the long term if that advantage was preserved, has pretty much nothing to do with immediate power of the relevant type, whether globally or, more to the point, locally applicable to HK. Which, actually, creates more of an incentive for China to fully exploit it's then-current power advantage.
> If you don't return something at the end of a contract is that theft? or piracy?
I'll take, “A routine practice of European (including states that are former European colonies) colonialism in dealing with non-Europeans”. So, like, no one would have been surprised with Hong Kong.
> We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
The UK was pulling that kind of thing before the US existed, so, sure, why not? I lean, ignoring the poder balance in the región, which is the real issue.
The UK didn't have much of choice. Their lease on the New Territories (basically all of HK except Kowloon and the Island) expired in 1997, so that was going back to China regardless, and they concluded that HK was not viable without it.
That would never have happened for obvious political reasons (China). If it ever had happened, I don't think it would have ended well for the HK citizens...
The UK (and other Western countries) had a massive bargaining chip over PRC as long as they recognised ROC instead. They could have demanded a higher price for recognising PRC, and I think PRC wanted their recognition enough they would have paid. (And a better deal on HK could have been part of that price.) Instead, the West gave this bargaining chip away for cheap-some short-term alliance against the Soviets which the end of the Cold War made irrelevant, which probably did little or nothing to contribute to the Soviet Union’s fall, and which cost PRC very little since PRC and USSR were already on bad terms anyway. PRC played their hand very well, the West played very poorly.
In theory perhaps, but in reality when the choice is between two Empires, people have often embraced the one that they perceive as less harmful to their interests. An independent Hong Kong was never a realistic prospect.
I don't understand this comment. People in Hong Kong don't want to be a part of the British empire. Most want to be a part of the PRC. Less than 20% want to be independent.
Supporting HK in gaining independence wouldn't have been an act of Colonialism. It would have been enabling self determination of a population. Colonialism is "the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically." Giving the HK people independence is literally the opposite of colonialism.
In contrast, the new law by by the CPC is an act of colonialism by definition as it is the CPC overriding 1 country, 2 systems and asserting political control over HK.
The British providing a path to independence could have been very similar to Belize (with CPC being equivalent to Guatemala in this case).
The British left a battalion of troops in Belize, the British Forces Belize, in order to act as a deterrent to a Guatemalan invasion.[1][2]
While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years.
It would have been enabling self determination of a population. Nope, it would be to hurt China. If UK truly value this so much, then why they didn't make it a big deal about the 2017 Catalan independence referendum[1]?
The CPC cannot be colonialist against Hong Kong. HK has been part of China for thousands of years and is ethnically Chinese. Hong Kong exists today because Britain used military power to force the Chinese government to import opium. In the process they annexed Hong Kong.
Not to mention, HKers DO NOT want independence. In a recent poll only 20% of HKers desire independence.
While HKers are Chinese, they speak an entirely different language than Beijing that isn't even mutually intelligible.
This is part of the manipulation of the narrative by the Chinese government. It refuses to even recognize that these are truly different languages and calls them "varieties of Chinese" or "dialects of Chinese" when Cantonese or Taiwanese are more distant from Mandarin than the Romance languages are from one another. Then it tries to pretend like there are only a single people in China and is systematically eradicating minority communities.[1]
Thus, Mandarin political domination over other Chinese communities is imperialism at the very least, if not colonialism. Imperialism and colonialism aren't really that different from one another.[2]
Additionally, every group always like to claim the land that they had at their maximal imperial state. But borders change over time. People move around -- even Taiwan was only recently colonized by Chinese in the 17th/18th century in large numbers and before and after that was owned by other empires. Another example is when the Dutch decolonized Indonesia. The Dutch were simply replaced by the new "foreign imperialists" of the central Indonesian government, which the Balinese people and other such peoples of Indonesia considered a different group than themselves.
Furthermore, simply a region has been part of a broader empire for centuries or even millennia, doesn't mean isn't still being oppressed by an imperialist empire. The Russian Empire, Spanish oppression of other provinces and minorities for hundreds of years, etc.
Thus perhaps instead of focusing on the colonialism part we should focus on the imperialism part. The aim should be to empower self determination of a people and enabling them to be free of oppressive, imperial influence.
Even if this were true, there are millions who speak Cantonese in mainland China. And Hong Kong is still part of China. Regardless of whether or not some westerner on Hacker News wants to believe that.
Instead of an ad hominem, could you actually cite some facts.
Here are several citations to back up my claim:
"The varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be regional variants of ethnic Chinese speech, without consideration of whether they are mutually intelligible. Due to their lack of mutual intelligibility, they are generally described as distinct languages (perhaps hundreds) by linguists who sometimes note that they are more varied than the Romance languages.[b] Investigation of the historical relationships among the Sinitic languages is just getting started. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups, based on often superficial phonetic developments, of which the most populous by far is Mandarin (about 800 million speakers, e.g. Southwestern Mandarin), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese) and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese).[4] These groups are unintelligible to each other and generally many of their subgroups are mutually unintelligible as well (e.g., not only is Min Chinese a family of mutually unintelligible languages, but Southern Min itself is not a single language). There are, however, several transitional areas, where languages and dialects from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility between neighboring areas. Examples are New Xiang and Southwest Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu and Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin and Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan (though these are unintelligible with mainstream Hakka)."[1]
David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 312. "The mutual unintelligibility of the varieties is the main ground for referring to them as separate languages."[2]
Linguists in China often use a formulation introduced by Fu Maoji in the Encyclopedia of China: “汉语在语言系属分类中相当于一个语族的地位。” ("In language classification, Chinese has a status equivalent to a language family.")[3]
Norman (1988), p. 1. "[...] the modern Chinese dialects are really more like a family of languages [...]"[4]
DeFrancis (1984), p. 56. "To call Chinese a single language composed of dialects with varying degrees of difference is to mislead by minimizing disparities that according to Chao are as great as those between English and Dutch. To call Chinese a family of languages is to suggest extralinguistic differences that in fact do not exist and to overlook the unique linguistic situation that exists in China."[5]
Let me guess, you don't speak any of these Chinese dialects: Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin. Because if you did, you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically. Are they mostly "mutually unintelligible"? For sure. But to claim that they are more distant from one another than the Romance languages? Complete and utter bullshit.
You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
Not at all. I'm simply asking you to actually make arguments based upon facts then attacks on a person. Thus, the conversation is meaningful and worth each of our time.
> Let me guess, you don't speak any of these Chinese dialects: Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin.
My wife is Taiwanese and knows Mandarin. Her father was born on the mainland and his family had to flee to Taiwan when he was 2. He speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese. His parents only spoke Mandarin. We've been together for 15 years and discuss linguistics quite often.
> You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
(1) English isn't a Romance language. It is a Germanic language. Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin. They include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and many smaller languages.
(2) I actually do speak Spanish, and I studied Latin for 11 years. My wife's mother is Latina and her parents (both the Chinese father and Latina mother) live in Latin America. They don't speak English. Thus, my primary way of communicating with them is Spanish.
> you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically
Languages sounding the same in no way makes them the same language or closer together linguistically. A great example is the vowels in Spanish and Japanese are identical to one another, purely by coincidence. This makes it much much easier for a native Spanish speaker to become aurally proficient in Japanese and vice versa despite the two languages not being related to each other at all.
> Are they mostly "mutually unintelligible"? For sure. But to claim that they are more distant from one another than the Romance languages? Complete and utter bullshit.
(1) Literally the definition dialects vs separate languages is mostly derived from mutual intelligibility. It is simply a fact that many Romance languages are mutually intelligible to one another. Spanish speakers can understand Italians and vice versa. Portuguese can understand Spanish and Italian, but not the other way around. These are simply facts. Thus, by linguistic definitions, it is indisputable that the Romance languages have less variation from one another / are closer to each other than the Chinese languages are from each other.
(2) You didn't respond to any of my citations above including one by Fu Maoji, who was a Chinese linguist.
On the Wikipedia page discussing "Mutually intelligible languages or varieties of one language", it states "In addition, political and social conventions often override considerations of mutual intelligibility. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties."[1] Translation -- that the PRC has overridden the linguistic definition of what defines languages vs dialects and replaced it with its arbitrary definition that all Sinitic languages are dialects of a single language for political purposes. The reason - the PRC wants to pretend that there is one China and homogenize the people of China into a single entity. It is why it is forcefully reeducating the Uighurs, why it pretends minorities don't exist in China, and why it has been pushing a Mandarin agenda for decades. However, the government realizes that Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc aren't going away. Thus, it instead likes to pretend like they are all simply dialects of Chinese in order to make the differences seem less pronounced. This aids in supporting Han ethnic nationalism over regional linguistic pride.
That's an impressive list of credentials. But it confirmed my suspicion: you don't speak Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin.
>> You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
> (1) English isn't a Romance language. It is a Germanic language. Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin.
> (2) I actually do speak Spanish, and I studied Latin for 11 years.
I stand corrected.
>> you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically
>Languages sounding the same in no way makes them the same language or closer together linguistically. A great example is the vowels in Spanish and Japanese are identical to one another, purely by coincidence.
No. I meant that the same word (or more precisely, character) in Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin often sound the same or similar, not often enough that they are mutually intelligible, but often enough. Again, you'd have to speak at least two of these to know that.
> (1) Literally the definition dialects vs separate languages is mostly derived from mutual intelligibility.
Let me guess, some euro-centric linguists came up with that definition. It's probably a fine definition in the study of European languages, but it's by no means the only definition.
I will concede, however, that judging by this definition, these Chinese dialects may be more distant from one another phonetically than the Romance languages.
What you are forgetting (and what those euro-centric linguists failed to account for) though, is the shared written form of the Chinese language. Even when a word sounded wildly different in Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin, they all know it's the same word.
> why it pretends minorities don't exist in China
That's a straight up lie. China has long celebrated diversity and the 55 or so ethnic minorities. These minorities even get special privileges, e.g. not being subject to the one-child policy imposed for decades on the majority Han ethnicity, preferential placement in schools, etc.
> Indeed, promoting Mandarin Chinese among Hong Kong students has been a political task for the Hong Kong government since 1997... The Hong Kong government launched a scheme 10 years ago to incentivize schools to use Mandarin instead of Cantonese in Chinese language classes.
Promoting and incentivizing? What unspeakable evil? Honestly how is this worse than Quebecois or Puerto Ricans having to learn English?
> the PRC wants to pretend that there is one China and homogenize the people of China into a single entity.
China is what it is today because of the shared language, culture, values, heritage, and history. It behooves you to understand that, instead of simply being outraged because China claims your wife's homeland as part of its territory.
Your "logic" doesn't make any sense. Cantonese is spoken in mainland China. It's an official language of China. There are hundreds of languages spoken in China. Just because Mandarin is the dominant language doesn't mean that China is imperialist for imposing security laws on HK, a territory they control and a territory that WANTS to be controlled by China.
And to expand on your point about wanting to empower self determination, then you should stand with the HK government against foreign influence in HK domestic affairs. There is ample evidence of the United States pumping millions of dollars into the protests. The leaders of the protests have met with US officials to get their support. This is not normal. Imagine if news came out that BLM leaders in certain cities were meeting with Xi or Putin, and receiving millions in funds.
In what sense do you believe HK wants to be controlled by Beijing? The last poll I saw put support for the pro-democracy protests at 51%, opposition at 34%. Opposition to the security law is 56%, support 34%. Hardly unanimous, but in a democracy that would count as a strong public position.
As you note, a much smaller fraction want independence. That doesn't mean they want to be subject to PRC law, though I agree the thing the people of HK seem to want (autonomy without independence) isn't usually how international (intranational?) relations work, especially when the "protecting power" is a dictatorship.
And yes, the linguistic argument was embarrassing; Westerners should learn more about Asia, and he'll surely abandon such arguments once he learns what language they speak in Taiwan. You could likewise learn more about life with Western-style freedoms, and you might understand why the people of Hong Kong (and America, misinformed as we might often be) so value them.
As you mention, the article you link says that the majority of HKers want to be a part of China. That's where I'm getting that from. I do believe China could do better in terms of securing individual liberty for their citizens, but if that comes at the cost of its sovereignty, then obviously some concessions have to be made.
For example, the majority of people would agree that they do not want their taxes to be raised (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1714/taxes.aspx). Those same people might not like the ramifications of that, but that wouldn't necessarily change their opinion.
Back to HK. The existence of HK as a semi-autonomous region that is still part of China provides a great way for foreign powers to extend their influence into China's domestic affairs. In this scenario, the US clearly has its hand in HK domestic affairs. US leaders are meeting with protest leaders. US organizations are funding protests. Flip this with domestic affairs in America, and you'll see that there is something deeply wrong with this picture. Although it isn't 1 to 1, imagine if China were funding BLM protests and inviting BLM leaders to Beijing.
I'm going to add a few links which support these claims if you were unaware. You could find some more yourself if you'd like:
Sidenote: I am American. I have learned about Western-style "freedoms" and find them very contradictory with America as it exists today. For example, the American rate of incarceration is the highest in the world, surpassing even the highest rates of incarceration of Stalin's USSR. Obviously, not everything China does is good and not everything America does is bad, but I'd encourage you to take a more critical eye to any mainstream Western sentiment on foreign countries, especially when that sentiment usually results in thousands being killed.
> As you mention, the article you link says that the majority of HKers want to be a part of China. That's where I'm getting that from.
There's certainly a contradiction there. I'd attribute HK public opinion against independence as recognition that they're geopolitically unable to exist as an independent country, and a desire for the perceived next best thing (which they really did have until recently), and not as any actual desire to be controlled by the PRC. How else do you explain public opposition to the national security law?
> I do believe China could do better in terms of securing individual liberty for their citizens, but if that comes at the cost of its sovereignty, then obviously some concessions have to be made.
And I'm not sure how Hong Kong's previous autonomy (or any other freedoms) would come at the cost of the PRC's sovereignty? If the CCP wanted to hold democratic elections tomorrow for all territory within their military control, then they could do it. Inertia being what it is, they'd probably even win! No outside force is preventing the PRC's government from responding to the will of the mainland's or HK's people; but instead, Beijing is transitioning from the pragmatic sort of technocracy that Deng Xiaoping introduced to plain dictatorship. The end of Hong Kong's autonomy is just another step down that path.
Finally, countries express opinions about the affairs of other countries all the time. The USA exists in part because of French meddling in a British colony. Everyone likes to do it, and no one likes it when others do it to them. As long as it's happening openly, I can't get too upset either way. America is certainly flawed in many important ways, but I can express those ways openly without fear for my personal safety, and that free expression has historically resulted in what I consider positive change. Something close to that used to be true in HK, and now it isn't. I suspect that became inevitable with the handover and with Xi's self-coronation, but I think it's a great loss.
ETA: And I'm not sure whether it's by coincidence, but your points closely track Beijing's usual talking points against the USA (sovereignty / "internal matter", incarceration rate, etc.). If you don't mind sharing, where did you develop these beliefs?
>How else do you explain public opposition to the national security law?
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Hong Kong benefits immensely from its autonomous position in regards to the Chinese government, so they don't want to disrupt the status quo. The protests have revealed HK to be a national security issue for the Chinese government, so they want to create laws to make sure HK isn't used as a center of political dissent. These two ideas are contradictory with each other, so a law like this was inevitable.
>And I'm not sure how Hong Kong's previous autonomy (or any other freedoms) would come at the cost of the PRC's sovereignty?
To answer your question, if criminals are able to easily escape China into Hong Kong, that fundamentally weakens the justice system. HKers and mainland Chinese move between HK and the mainland constantly. It would obviously be a failure of justice if you could go to a city within your country and encounter the man who killed your daughter. A similar law exists within Puerto Rico, a US territory. This is the bill that originally sparked the protests.
Recently Beijing passed the bill we are talking about that also gives them much more power in terms of being able to imprison HKers that try to subvert the government. This can be seen as a response to the protests, whose leaders have been revealed to be funded and supported by foreigners. China's sovereignty is absolutely threatened by protests and riots that seek to destabilize Chinese places of power, like Hong Kong.
>As long as it's happening openly, I can't get too upset either way
If you can't get upset about the US meddling in Chinese affairs, then you can't get upset about China trying to stop internal subversion. Not to mention, it absolutely doesn't just happen openly. The US has a long history of covert regime change operations. This happens completely undemocratically. Here's a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
I mean, just look at the hysteria surrounding Russian involvement in US elections. Rumors of Trump officials meeting with Russian officials has set public discourse on fire for years. And yet, it's unreasonable for China to oppose Demosisto party leaders who have openly met with US officials. I'm not trying to use whataboutism to deflect, I'm trying to paint an equivalency between the situations of these two countries.
>where did you develop these beliefs?
I'm fairly left leaning. China is a leftist country. I know China isn't perfect, but you can easily rationalize their decisions as being made by a government that cares about its people, not power-mad evil dictators as most people would have you believe. If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend reading Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti. https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/michael-parenti...
So I've never met anyone who actually believed the PRC's pretext for the extradition bill, and I'm kind of fascinated. What do you think "Chinese [PRC] law" even means? Do you think a judge in China could rule against Xi's wishes?
I think the extradition bill means "anyone can be extradited to the mainland at any time, to be punished in any manner for any reason, according to Xi Jinping's personal judgment". Do you disagree? If so, what makes you doubt that Xi has that power? Or do you agree, but think it's good for him to extend that dictatorial power into Hong Kong?
Finally, have you been to Hong Kong? To the PRC? How much time have you spent living or doing business there? You have a picture of the region that I'm afraid departs considerably from that lived experience.
ETA: And to be clear, you're saying here that you were born into relative freedom, and have chosen to use that freedom to advocate for a one-man dictatorship to impose further control over a precarious quasi-state with elements of democracy and a highly-functioning rule of law. This is apparently because you consider that dictatorship to be "leftist". I hope you're not surprised by the cool reception that you're getting to this.
China has existed for thousands of years as a rough idea and not as a continuous country for all that time. For many hundreds of years it was a set of countries like Europe and for others it was a single entity. So to say that China has always been a single continuous entity for thousands of years is kind of pure propaganda.
Also when the British took Hong Kong it was only an island with some small fishing and charcoal making villages. Not the same as the huge metropolis it is today. So it exists today because of people going there and building the place up. My guess is because it wasn't part of communist China proper so you could do and say things that you couldn't on the mainland.
UK isn't going to be able to protect Hong Kong territory from the Chinese military. It would be a bloody fight and there will be a lot of lives lost, and likely anger from the people of Hong Kong.
The UK wouldn't have to win a stand-up fight against the PLA. Just taking China to the brink would be sufficient.
Is the CCP willing to jeopardise its position and future in the World for the sake of a few humid islands with no natural resources or strategic advantages?
And even more mind-focusing is the fact that the UK had the nuclear option on the table against Argentina in 1982.
Not like they had much of a choice. I think Deng Xiaoping said to Thatcher "we'll roll the PLA in come 1997 with or without an agreement". Basically, we can have an agreement to save face all around or will just go in. Especially since the water and food from Hong Kong are basically supplied from the mainland.
We are well pass the time when a technologically advance oceanic power can establish and hold enclaves on the heartland. That was only possible in the past because of the huge development lead the European power's developed through industrialization and colonialism.
> Especially since the water and food from Hong Kong are basically supplied from the mainland.
Hong Kong used to have a desalination plant. The British closed it because importing water from PRC was cheaper. Instead, they could have expanded desalination for water self-reliance, and built nuclear power stations to produce electricity to power it. But the UK wasn’t willing to make that investment.
I'm not sure it's best to think of that situation as an occasion when the UK made a choice.
If the US had said "we wish Hong Kong to declare independence and will provide military backing as required", I expect the UK would have gone along with it (I offer no opinion on whether that would have worked). But in the absence of that that I don't think there was much of a decision to make.
Quite possibly the UK were out-diplomatted and a somewhat better deal would have been available in principle. But ultimately (as we have seen in recent years) there's nothing that stops a superpower saying "we're now going to walk away from this treaty we previously signed".
> About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.
Hong kong has a population of over 7 mil so this is less than half. What's the criteria for this chance at a uk citizenship?
I found a good video about the special passports given to hong kong from the uk. It is a bit complicated but this video seems to summarise the important bits quite well.[1]
The summary is that before the handover in 1997 everyone was offered a status called British National (Overseas). Anyone who accepted this offer retained their nationality after the handover, and anyone who didn't permanently lost their chance to be a BNO.
Pity they did not extend the same courtesy to all the descendants of the "Windrush" immigration wave from the Caribbean but then they are just poor black folk.
Is it surprising? UK has a problem with certain races coming over. What’s the difference between Syrian refugees and Hong Kongers? They would both be seeking refugee status essentially.
I don’t think it’s wrong to prefer to have educated immigrants over non-educated. One creates wealth and resources and the other drains it. One is more likely to be law abiding and the other less likely. If Wakanda existed I doubt there would be much opposition to letting their citizens immigrate.
I suspect that description applies to a lot of migrants to the UK from the EU - certainly most of the people I know who migrated here from Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy....
Does the UK? Or do some subsection of the UK population?
I know I don't have a problem with Syrian refugees and I would imagine that just one person out 60 something million would be enough to refute your statement.
Hong Kong is very British, though. Most of the other colonized parts are not (Exceptions maybe Canada, NZ and Australia). But traveling from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, you can feel that there is a significant culture gap.
Also Hong Kong appears to have lots of British banking connections like HSBC and Standard Chartered.
Hongkong looks somewhat British in some aspects but not many. I think the main culture gap is that HK has kept a traditional Chinese culture that was swept away on the mainland.
> like HSBC
The name which means the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company. A bank founded in China (Hongkong) by the British.
Sure it was founded in HongKong but at that time it's purpose was to facilitate trade and banking between the UK and mainland China. My point is that they still have lots of these relations up to this day.
It kind of depends, immigration wasn't a big part of it from talking with many business partners. Many just dont like the idea rules are being made in Brussels.
The claim that Turkey was soon going to join the EU (which isn't going to happen) and flood the country with Turkish immigrants was a major component of vote leave messaging: "Turkey/NHS/£350 million".
Edit: FYI Dominic Cummings actually blogged about the important of Turkey to their success:
They may be disappointed when they discover the rules aren't made in Brussels because the UK joined the EU, but because it's the UK's largest trading partner and the largest trade bloc in the world.
If we have a deal that's going to include freedom of movement; if we don't have a deal we're going to be forced to include freedom of movement to get trading.
There's no version of the UK in 2022 that doesn't have freedom of movement for EU citizens.
The problem with trying to threaten the EU with a no deal exit is it's like a bank robber threatening to blow his own head off - messy, undesirable, but ultimately not very persuasive.
Like the bank robber, you seem to mistake a threat of self-harm by the UK for an existential threat to the EU. No deal is not mutually assured destruction, it's certain destruction for the UK and some damage to the EU.
That's not a very convincing lever in a negotiation. The final relationship will benefit the EU far more than the UK, simply because of the balance of power, regardless of delusions to the contrary and empty bombast from Johnson.
> but because it's the UK's largest trading partner and the largest trade bloc in the world.
The North American trade bloc (NAFTA/USMCA) is actually slightly bigger by both GDP and population, though the EU is, yes, the UK’s biggest trade partner.
OK second largest. It makes them a formidable interlocutor in negotiations, and the power imbalance means things will inevitably be decided in Berlin which impact the UK on regulations, trade, tariffs and FOM. The UK has little leverage and power in this relationship.
We could have opted in to stricter controls on migration from Eastern Europe, but no-one wanted to at the time, as there would have been no benefit to doing so.
There’s nothing “perceived” about it—the UK was forced to admit any “EU citizen” who wanted to come and immediately grant them permanent residency, which already represents a fundamental loss of control.
While there was no obligation to grant permanent residency, the criteria that would allow removal before the five years (or two years in some cases) are narrow. If someone had a job and in some cases when they didn’t, it was impossible to remove them unless they posed a serious threat. That is, in fact, a significant limitation on the control the UK could exert over immigration from the EU.
Well, yes, there was freedom of movement. I'm not sure why being unable to remove someone who has a job is so terrible. We could have chosen to put a cap on migration from relatively poor EU countries, but we chose not to.
So basically the existing word "racism" didn't fit (because racist Brits would hate Asian HKers just as much as brown Syrians and black Africans) so you invented a new completely concept but conveniently attached the word "racism" to it for maximal emotional impact?
> because racist Brits would hate Asian HKers just as much as brown Syrians and black Africans
Even a racist as extreme and obsessed with whiteness specifically as Hitler deemed some nonwhite races worthy of respect, even as he plotted others' extermination. Clearly it is absurd to define 'racist' so narrowly that even the actual Nazis don't qualify
Eh? Racism judges people by their race, and judges different races differently. The word fits just fine. Adding "differential" was unnecessary, but maybe added to highlight the uneven extent of the negative judgement.
Having said that, the GP does not provide any evidence that racism was the motivating factor here.
Racism works fine for what is described, there is nothing about racism which requires it to be “my race good, all other races equally bad”. “Differential racism” is a perfectly good way of distinguishing a multitiered racial heirarchy from a binary one.
Though I think nationalism may be at least as much of a factor as race-based differentiation. (That is, that nationalism in the context of colonial history is why HKers are treated more favorably by opinion than other non-white, or even white, immigrants.)
Racism is a perfectly fine term for weighting East Asian race less negatively than other non-white races in a function with multiple other factors besides race, resulting in certain East Asian immigrants being favored over white European immigrants.
Though, as explained already in GP, I think nationalism is the more relevant factor here, whether or not racism (binary or differential) is also involved (which at some level it obviously is.)
The UK is not weighting Asians higher than other non-white races. It’s favouring people from the Commonwealth and others to whom we have historical commitments above countries where no such ties exist.
> The UK is not weighting Asians higher than other non-white races.
I didn't say it was. I said that the upthread commenter’s use of “differential racism” to describe their explanation in which Britain was doing that was, contrary to the claim that it was redefining “racism”, a perfectly valid use of the term “racism”.
I've also said in every post in which I've argued that point that I think that what is actually happening involves nationalism in light of the HKs colonial history, not, or at least more decisively than, racism, differential or otherwise.
There two different issues here, one about whether a hypothetical scenario is within the usual definition of “racism” and one about whether than hypothetical is the best explanation of what is factually occurring.
The explanation is the obvious one. The UK has a treaty with China intended to prevent what is happening from happening. China is in breach of the treaty and, in light of that, the UK is acting to protect people to whom it believes it has an obligation. It has nothing to do with either racism or nationalism.
No one is arguing that point. What is being debated is why very conservative racists in the UK culture are overwhelmingly supportive of Asians over Syrians and North Africans. ...and differential racism is my belief as to why.
So you’re starting from the presupposition that British conservatives are racist and then trying to explain away evidence contrary to that presupposition.
You are using “very conservative racists” and “differential racism” to explain something which is better explained by historical relationships and obligations. No such relationships or obligations exist with Syria or most of North Africa.
No country can invite everyone to immigrate. They have to be selective, and that doesn’t make them racist. No one has the right to immigrate to another country: it’s a privilege granted by the government and people of that country who make decisions about who to accept according to their own interests and perceived obligations - again, not racism.
I think most people accurately assume that not many Hong Kong citizens will come, and none of the focus of recent anti-immigrant sentiment has been on ethnic Chinese people.
Hong Kong is a part of the Empire that was severed recently, and not because the people there actively sought that outcome. I suspect that for some of the people concerned about immigration, that makes Hong Kongers more British-separated-by-ill-conceived-policy than foreigners.
Whether UK citizens approve this or not, logistical challenge of making this happen is immense. I think UK politicians know this is just a threat.
Moving people & jobs physically to UK, when people have physical investment in a house, school, bank accounts, investments is not easy. I can see people moving if CCP is literally killing non-protesting citizens like holocaust. On top of it, what is to prevent CCP from blocking people from leaving?
People will take a lot before they physically leave the country. And CCP knows that very well.
To be honest I think that the Chinese government would not care or actually be quite OK with it.
Indeed, who would leave HK? Arguably the anti-CCP, the "troublemakers". So that'd mean less 'trouble' in HK and there is a large supply of mainlanders happy to move to HK.
Obviously the Chinese government will officially be outraged but privately they may think good riddance.
Talking to a Chinese friend who is quite pro-CCP, they are pissed that UK is offering this and say that mass emigration of HKers would be a major loss of face for the CCP.
One of the major phenomena of Hong Kong in the 1980s and early 1990s was families getting out if they could afford it, because everyone was nervous about the Chinese handover. This wave of emigration even plays a role in contemporary Hong Kong film of the era like Chungking Express. And even before the fears of the handover, many educated HKers were emigrating to the US for the sake of higher wages.
Yes, HKers have ties to HK that are a hassle to break, but plenty of people have broken them and up and left.
> The continued relevance of these questions meant that thirty years later, in June 2020, YouGov were able to asked respondents the same questions, allowing us to discover how public opinion has changed in the intervening period.
> Interestingly, the results reveal a fall in public awareness on the issue. In 2020, about half the population (51%) reported having heard about the proposals – though this figure seems likely to rise with the PM’s recent announcement. Back in 1990, the figure was a much higher 78%.
It goes on to list the coronavirus and Tiananmen as possible reasons; isn't the most obvious contributory factor that a lot of voters have been born since then, and it hasn't been on the national curriculum or often reported on?
It applies to Hong Kongers who applied for British National (Overseas) Citizenship (BNO) before registration closed in 1997, and it can not be inherited. Many of the young HK protestors will therefore be ineligible for it.
BNO is an obscure post-Colonial status applicable to Hong Kongers which did not up till now grant long term residence to the UK.
BNOs who now want to take up the government's offer for long term residence in the UK will have to fork a significant up front fee. This makes it available only to wealthy BNOs. If the government wanted to they could have changed the law to allow them to skip much of this, but they haven't.
Hong Kong as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) instead of a Special Administrative Region (SAR) would be an easy transition. Although I don't see it more appealing than other SEZ's Shanghai's Free Trade Zone or the entire Hainan Province.
But the consolidation of existing companies and operations in Hong Kong would still be pretty unique, its uniqueness still not that relevant. For regional price discovery it would be useful, like for some publicly traded companies or local futures markets.
HK has the inertia of having lots preexisting international HQs there. Any takers on how many of those will move out over the coming decades? > or < 50% of them?
Losing its special trading status with the US should already be the catalyst for that.
But the market based economies of China's Special Economic Zones should make Hong Kong as attractive as any other major financial center, instead of as a micro-state.
There are many international HQs in major financial centers under high tax regimes, whether it is Shanghai, New York City, London, Frankfurt.
I would say 30% move, so less than 50%. Incumbents in Hong Kong are already beneficiaries of the Communist Party in Beijing, otherwise corporate consensus in the LegCo would have matched the individual consensus already.
No, only to a tiny subset of HK residents on a very arbitrary basis, specifically excluding anyone under 23 (so most protestors) and any child (so most people who don't want to literally abandon their kids).
I'm super curious to see how this will turn out for the UK. A lot of the comments here mention HK's relative high education, English proficiency and wealth.
If those are true: the upside will be easier settlement into the UK, maybe increased entrepreneurship. The downsides are: driving up local housing prices, increased competition for jobs.
If those are false, the UK may experience an influx of lower-wage labor and increased competition for blue-collar jobs. Possibly even increased crime (maybe Triads would move to the UK?)
I have a feeling anti-Asian/Chinese racism would spike in the UK. It has popular bipartisan support right now (another comment mentioned that) because anti-China/CCP sentiment is probably at an all-time high, but you can't take in thousands/millions of people in a short amount of time from a different culture without expecting an impact on your own.
I think you would have to be slightly crazy to invest in UK property right now. COVID is leading to mass lay offs across many sectors and destroying what little was left of the high streets.
Add in lots more working from home - property values will probably, IMO, level out across the country rather than being concentrated heavily in the south east, London and major cities as less people need to commute. Why live close to London if you don’t need to travel in everyday? Businesses will then undoubtedly scale down or reduce the burden of commercial property with more homeworkers, etc. leading to an increase in available real estate, etc. Just my opinion.
> The downsides are: driving up local housing prices, increased competition for jobs.
No, no.
Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.
If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.
Nope, not buying those. Perhaps I should have defined "downside" with "for whom".
> Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.
Would you apply that same argument to say, Vancouver? Would you say their increased housing prices is a welcome boost? The locals certainly don't think so.
> If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.
My understanding is that the "brain drain" is because the finance jobs would move to somewhere in the EU (and the expertise would simply move with them). It's not like they're leaving because the UK doesn't pay well in that sector (e.g., Canada vs. the US in the tech, medical sectors).
Great initiative, given that most of the immigrants are educated, experienced professionals, and have English as their second native language. Definitely, democratic progressive countries should compete for the right to host Hong Kongers.
I'm really happy the UK did not leave the former colony to suffer under the communist regime. Reminds me of the situation with Jews before WWII - if they were given the same kind of refuge by any country, Holocaust would hot had happened.
Sometimes I dream, who'd have offered citizenship or at least refuge to residents of Russia, to escape our ongoing Soviet Union restoration.
The pattern for many Hong Kong immigrants is to have the mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.
So they enjoy the benefits of a low tax HK income. And they get all the nice things that go with living in high tax Canada while not contributing to it -free healthcare, subsided University, safe communities, clean environment, low income benefits.
It's so common it has a name, satalite family/astronaut dad.
If the dad stays an astronaut, he will get lost in space once China finishes engulfing HK. I don't think HKers are going to be as worried about reducing their tax rates as staying free right now..
The whole reason for getting Canadian citizenship is for the day that China engulfs HK and they want to leave. China isn't going to restrict the movement of hundreds of thousands of foreigners legally living in HK.
> China isn't going to restrict the movement of hundreds of thousands of foreigners legally living in HK.
At least, they are less likely to do so than they are people who aren’t foreigners, although even them I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.
China ending the two-systems arrangement in Hong Kong despite the Joint Declaration is basically saying “As far as HK (and, implicitly, anything we consider Chinese territory) is concerned, we aren't concerned about what other countries think, or international law or agreements, only power.”
Well, not just Iran—the US does the same thing pretty blatantly a lot, and it's pretty much Israel’s only mode of operation. There's an argument that it's essentially all of international politics, masked by the fact that most countries, on all but the most existential issues, see the power vs interest calculus as favoring adhering to consensus international law and direct agreements.
It would be an even better deal if the father worked in Canada and paid Canadian taxes.
Besides, you are assuming that the children of this tax evader aren't going to figure out some other method of avoiding Canadian taxes - like doing literally exactly the same thing.
This is extremely common in many countries. Even in the US, there are many families that simply omit reporting income earned abroad. Sure, it's technically illegal, but it's not like the Chinese government is going to help enforce US tax laws.
Same is true for Chinese families in New Zealand and Australia as well. ...and it's not restricted to Chinese people either - obviously.
Canada, in general, is famous for massive tax loopholes and hiding income. It is not really a hk issue and is in the news on its own “merits” all the time. There are so many wealthy Canadians avoiding taxes that apparently the national debt could be cleared if we could find a way to make them pay
"The global elite, as well as criminals and foreigners avoiding economic sanctions, can set up shell companies to 'make suspect transactions seem legitimate' under the cover of Canada's reputation for fiscal integrity."
Then shouldn't the government be closing this loophole and taxing whatever vehicle they use to transfer wealth?
I'd criticize an individual for evading taxes, but a "group" of people is just doing what people do.
EDIT: If you want to talk about the "functional" value of immigrants, then you need to get to the root purpose and bring in whoever is having the most kids.
Legislation that has any kind of a racial (or perceived to be racial) aspect to it cannot really be discussed freely. Even though closing such loopholes may be perfectly legitimate, if exploitation of the loophole happens to correlate to a racially identifiable group, in the current age of social media based hyper propaganda it is a very dangerous political move for a career politician (or their party) to touch.
There were significant quantities of racism accusations in social and mainstream media, as there also had been for years during the money laundering in casinos debacle, that most politicians and right thinking news reporters also wouldn't touch.
Who knows what's really true, but there sure seem to be a lot of correlative coincidences, with similar stories in many different countries.
You are assuming that money ever gets to Canada. Half the time it's just kept in an account in Panama to be used when the family is on vacation or wants to buy a second home in another country.
Either that or it's brought in in literal cash. That's why the stories of Chinese home buyer showing up with literal briefcases in cash are all over the place.
> mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.
Why would the father pay taxes in Canada when he lives and works in HK (or anywhere else) and (likely) is not a Canadian tax resident? It doesn't make any sense.
After all they pay local taxes in Canada while spending (GST, PST, property tax etc.)
At first, I was also going to post about how Canada uses a residential income tax system: even if you’re a citizen, you don’t pay income tax if you live and work overseas. But it turns out where your spouse lives is relevant for determining residency. [1]
Regardless of whether the “astronaut” dads are evading taxes, the bigger question is about designing a tax system that’s both fair and easy to enforce.
It is regressive when you consider the position of the buyer. People need to buy large items, and low income people are disproportionately hurt by taxes on those items.
That doesn't mean it's regressive. It's just a demagogy.
Low income people buy less things and pay lower sales tax proportionally. Wealthy people spend more on luxurious goods and pay way higher tax in absolute numbers. Everyone is hurt the same.
On top of that, necessities (food, medication, books) are usually exempt from the sales tax.
The logic of calling a flat sales tax regressive is (I think) that poor people spend most of their income, while rich people save more, and thus pay a lower percentage of their income.
Agree that this isn't a great way to look at things. And that (as you say) there are often different rates of sales tax on potatoes vs yachts.
Fixed rate sales tax is regressive. A loaf of bread, a car, and a yacht should not be taxed at the same rate, and not only because of the demographic of the buyers, but also because of the introduced externalities.
Variable rate sales tax on the other hand is more progressive than any income tax.
Nobody wants to leave Hong Kong. We're on the streets fighting for our home alongside people who love it just as much as we do. We have spent the past year gathering to sing, to celebrate, to mourn, and to fight for this place that we love. The past year has made it immensely clear how special a place Hong Kong is—even with the many things that can be improved.
This offer is appreciated and I believe that those who accept it as expedient will not be looked down upon by others. When you have the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head it is an exhausting existence. Many in the resistance will move overseas and continue their efforts.
From an economic standpoint, any emigration of Hong Kongers is likely to be beneficial to the places where they land. Those most likely to take this offer in the short term will coincide with those who are most materially wealthy. Given that the CCP has threatened to revoke the Chinese Nationality of those who accept an offer of this sort (and has been known to use family members as leverage), I do not expect that, as a sibling comment states, we would see people trying to use this as a tax avoidance scheme.
From a demographic standpoint, many of the people who will choose to leave are young. This is a significant benefit to many places in the world who have declining birth rates. The UK population pyramid, for example, would appear to benefit from immigration of a younger cohort. [1]
As to efficacy, there is a gap in coverage for those born shortly after the handover. It's unclear how many will fall into that gap but it does represent a cohort of people who tend more toward exclusively identifying as Hong Kongers. [2] People who qualify as dependents of BNO holders appear to be eligible so that gap may be approximately six years: July 1, 1997 - July 1, 2003. It also doesn't account for children of HK immigrants and I have no insight into those demographics and their opinions (possibly a significant number of mainland immigrants who identify as Chinese).
As a real gesture, instead of the words that have been spent accomplishing nothing for the past year, this is a welcome change. Hong Kongers are now hoping for 攬炒, "if we burn, you burn with us." But if nobody holds the CCP accountable it just becomes "we burn."
(I'm a US passport holder. I am a Hong Kong immigrant. My wife was born and raised in Hong Kong (土生土長香港人). I'm currently studying Cantonese full time at CUHK (中文大學). I have a 光復香港時代革命 flag hanging in my apartment. I wrote this quickly: there will be errors, glosses, and poorly expressed things. I do not speak for all Hong Kongers and their experiences, hopes, wishes, desires, and dreams.)
408 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 343 ms ] threadThey know how many current BN(O) holders there are. But they don't know how many are eligible exactly -- they have the entire list of people who have received one, but that's over 20 years ago, and a lot could have happened to them since.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838
* Beijing will establish a new security office in Hong Kong, with its own law enforcement personnel - neither of which would come under the local authority's jurisdiction
* This office can send some cases to be tried in mainland China - but Beijing has said it will only have that power over a "tiny number" of cases
* Beijing will have power over how the law should be interpreted, not any Hong Kong judicial or policy body. If the law conflicts with any Hong Kong law, the Beijing law takes priority
"Crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces are punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison"
I'm not sure if criticizing Chairman Xi or the CCP would qualify as subversion.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/brooklyn-molotov-lawyers-p...
You are free to criticize the government all you want.
You can also advocate for independence without fear of imprisonment. Both California and Texas have supporters of succession.
You aren't free to blow up police cars though. For that you'll face consequences.
This stands in contrast to these "kickers" since they are already Chinese law – and let's not even start comparing Beijings supreme court with that of the US…
Both allow for everything that has happened, which suggests restraint by both Hong Kong and Chinese authories.
Hong Kong Basic Law (its constitution) allows for National Security to be controlled by Beijing.
I can see the symbolism of 50 year autonomy being undermined, but can someone explain why this topic never has a legal discussion attached, whereas other topics do?
[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-police-make-first-sec...
Which outside of a few details like bilingual signs or legislation, is more aspirational than reality.
On the legislation point, while it is translated into Irish and legally speaking the Irish version takes precedence, it's usually drafted in English and translated. This has caused issues such as embarrassment for the government where they had to update the proposed constitutional amendment required to legalise same sex marriage as the Irish translation accidentally legalised _only_ same sex marriage: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/irish-language-vers...
You could say the same for Wales. Not sure if they are included or excluded traditionally.
On a slight tangent, it makes me giggle to see the Gaelic versions of towns on the outskirts of Glasgow. If Ireland is aspirational, Scotland is comically optimistic. The average Glaswegian knows more Spanish or French than they do Gaelic.
"The locality with the largest absolute number is Glasgow with 5,878 such persons, who make up over 10% of all of Scotland's Gaelic speakers." Of course, they all speak English and many if not most nearby town names are of non-Gaelic origin.
But throughout the Highlands and Western Isles, Gaelic toponyms do dominate, with no English equivalent, e.g. here, not far from Glasgow: https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=a58ce425-2098-47f0-b9e0-8bc90...
I'm sure they'll get around to it though - it will reinflate their property markets which have sagged a bit this year.
I think the Australian government is worried about further deterioration in the Australia-China relationship. I think they’ll do something if UK/US/Canada/NZ make the first move.
Still, it is the decent thing to do. It also underlines once again this country has no real power or influence left in the superpower age. Before, we could at least try to get the EU to go to bat for our interests, and have a real impact. We have none of that now, which is probably part of the reason the Chinese accelerated the process.
the same EU that rewrote its coronavirus report several times in fear of CCP repercussions?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/world/europe/disinformati...
come on
several of which are keen to preserve or grow their CCP trade
Still, is it just a coincidence that Xi accelerated his plans shortly after Brexit? Between that and Trump, we are effectively isolated and fundamentally vulnerable to this sort of power play.
most likely, I doubt the EU or UK even register on the CCP's plans for the Chinese century
"delusions of grandeur"
Then there is also the reduced power of the EU post-Brexit. Just because Brexit costs the UK influence doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost the EU too — without the UK, the EU is only about 85% of the GDP of the other two big trade giants (the USA and China are each about equal to what the EU was with the UK).
But there is also no reason why they should even try, whereas before there was.
This makes no sense. There's countless examples of independent nations/supra-national bodies etc. with wildly diverging goals across many areas also managing to work together on shared goals.
You seem to be pushing the same false dichotomy again, that is, that it's either the UK within the EU, else a cold war type situation, and there is no possibility whatsoever of a third situation. I'd suggest that's very obviously bogus.
What I find revealing is that years on from the referendum it's the same crude, tired and spurious anti-Brexit arguments being trotted out. If after all this time the only tactic is Project Fear mk. infinity, what can one conclude about the supposed benefits of EU membership?
> the same EU that rewrote its coronavirus report several times in fear of CCP repercussions?
And you’re saying it to people who are coming up with reasons why the post-Brexit EU doesn’t share your concerns.
This does not require a “cold war type situation”. It just requires every other EU member state to have more important things from their own perspective.
It’s not hatred you’re seeing from the EU, it is apathy.
The false dichotomy is your own.
everything the UK does is automatically bad
And no, not everything, and definitely not automatically — that’s one mind-trap I am keen to avoid. It’s just that competent “no-EEA Brexit” planning would take the UK about 10 of the last 4 years even if it hadn’t done anything else. Heck, if Cameron has said “Oh well, EEA it will be then like the Leave campaigners asked for :(” I would probably still be in the UK, because EEA membership requires the government to allow me to use the metaphorical stick I want to keep the IP Act at bay.
if you say so, I actually worked with you before in meatspace and have seen the dogmatic behaviour before (several times)
And that big flashing neon “if” is still true with a competent government, let alone the current lot which (as per recent news) is pouring money into a failed multinational project that cannot fit their requirements just to avoid the embarrassment of continuing to spend money on entirely successful multinational projects that happen to be EU-branded.
Also, what do ducks have to do with anything?
> yet another canard
1a : a false or unfounded report or story especially : a fabricated report The report about a conspiracy proved to be a canard. b : a groundless rumor or belief the widespread canard that every lawyer is dishonest
My cynical self thinks that this is not a genuine offer but one for the headlines in a time where good news are sorely needed (Leicester lockdown, general covid-19 omnishambles)
I hope my cynical self is wrong
Britain's motivation is they contend that this is a violation of the treaty between Britain and China from the handover of Hong Kong [1], and letting one other country violate your treaties with impunity makes other countries think they can get away with the same thing.
But at the same time there's also no appetite in Britain to go head-to-head with China - in fact, if the HK stuff wasn't going on they'd be looking for a trade deal right now.
So if you see something that's a response, but not a really tough muscular response, that's exactly what the UK government is aiming for.
[1] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-protests-britain/...
The authoritarian right runs the gig, the authoritarian right creates the violence.
Edit: DSA, arguably the USA's largest, most mainstream true left group is only ~65,000 members across the nation. Quite tiny. I've been to bigger soccer matches.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/dsa-gro...
The ways things are going currently, if you don't agree with the left on things you can lose your job. You can't voice an opinion that is different or you get labeled a racist. You can see this every day in plain sight.
I would think a good write up/analysis using high quality statistics would be the way to decide what is happening in the "current situation".
But a graphic and emotional video is going to pull the strings much harder.
Can you show me some examples of right wing violence?
This isn't violence based on stating an opinion - it's violence based on simply daring to exist in a public space.
There's very little news coverage of it because it's "small" things - assaults that leave bruises and not much more, but which the victims know mean they're not welcome in the public spaces everybody else takes for granted - that happen all the time to people minding their own business, and this is and has been the norm for a very long time.
What about this - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-caro... - right-wing violence, kidnapping and sexually violating someone for taking a fucking piss.
Do you want me to spend the next 24 hours finding you news stories of right-wing violence against people minding their own business? Actually, no, you do it.
EDIT: Ooh, this one, where right-wing violence resulted in literally needing bone surgery to repair the victim's face: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/us/man-guilty-hate-crime-...
You try and explain to me how property damage is the same thing as murdering people in cold blood for simply existing. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/18/chicago...
What do you want to see? What would convince you that right-wing violence is a problem? Number of hate crimes?
Two drunk women, no evidence they are right wing or support any specific ideology.
And so on.
Individual acts of violence are not the same as an authoritarian regime, like the current left wing mob.
Many individual acts over time can be worse than a single instance of violence that affects many, you realise?
I also very much disbelieve that they constitute any of the left, given that the left largely won't talk to them or acknowledge the validity of their ideas, and they tend to wind up making deals with right-wing anti-feminist (even anti-cisgender-woman) organisations to push their agenda.
Calling yourself a "feminist" doesn't make you one, especially when you stomp on other women's hard-earned rights and privileges in order to pursue your goal of burying "men".
Find me a TERF who openly supports Black Lives Matter and spends a bunch of time advocating for women's rights other than the oppression of trans women, and I'll eat my hat.
EDIT: On the other hand, Black Lives Matter groups by and large support trans folk, at least in words. Black Lives Matter UK: "All forms of oppression are interrelated, you cannot be for Black lives if you do not emphatically support the cause for Black queer lives, Black trans lives [and] the lives of Black women." - and this demo: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/black-trans-... - and this trans person who cofounded a part of BLM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elle_Hearns
If it is so bad in the US, what is keeping you there? Many developed countries have relatively few immigration hurdles for US Americans to pass. UK in particular, European countries are lax in general in these regards (I live in Germany).
- if you're looking for a job here, as an US citizen you get 3 months visa without questions asked
- there is no minimum amount of money needed in Germany for US citizens, neither as a deposit nor as pay
I believe that is called minimum wage? So that would be already a given.
there's no distinction based on country of origin as you seem to imply
there is a distinction: There is a German by-law as well as a EU-decree that classifies US Americans as citizens of a "priviliged country" (§ 26 BeschV (Verordnung über die Beschäftigung von Ausländern)).
https://www.bdae.com/journalbeitraege/dezember-2016-leben-un...
Yes, a lot of those connections can potentially move to the same city & country as you but will your neighbor still be your neighbor? Will the bar at the end of the street you go to after a hard day still be there and know exactly what you want when you walk through the door?
The revolt started almost 15 months ago against this kind of crap from China. Emigration may protect you from getting arrested but you're giving up everything you know and love in exchange. That's not much of a deal.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-...
Communism is manifestly a negative influence on mankind's well-being... don't know how anyone could rationally think otherwise (unless you grew up in a communist country and believe the propaganda).
No, chances are the person who downvoted you is someone who never has actually lived in a communist country and likely did so from the comforts of an overpriced western coffee shop. They probably think they're an intellectual who wouldn't be first against the wall in such a situation.
Take the downvote with pride, since you're speaking truth to abuse.
USSR : "The Gulag Archipelago" :: modern China : ?
Anyone got a suggestion for a well written modern book that exposes the sins of the CCP?
With the exception of my wife's grandmother, every member of her extended family spent time in either prison or forced-work camps. One of her aunts translated for me the "confession" she was forced to sign. None of this was related to what we'd consider crimes, but was entirely political.
The Communists took the family's house. They had a refrigerator and a piano, which the Red Guard destroyed on the basis that if everyone didn't have such bourgeois goods, then no one should. When TVs were made available for neighborhood viewing, my wife wasn't allowed to attend.
And there's the malnutrition and squalor they were subjected to. They shared one floor of a brownstone with 2 other families - so, 3 entire families sharing one kitchen and 1.5 baths. There was insufficient food, to the point where they had to eat insect-infested grain - while Party members got plenty.
So, all in all, my wife's experience with Communism wasn't positive, and having lived through that, she's the first to speak up against anything that exhibits any of those traits.
I though think it's worth mentioning that the China of today is absolutely not the China of the 50's.
I've personally spent quite a bit of time in China, and it's never seemed particularly "communist" - the middle class has long since been established and continues to grow, and capatalism is very much thriving. On a personal note, I've always really enjoyed my time in China.
I'm not saying it's a model of wonderdrous virtue either of course; there is a lot of corruption (hardly unique to China, mind), many people wouldn't even dream of openly criticising the CCP, there is little press freedom, and of course the Uigher (spelling?) camps are an abomination. Yet the overwhelming majority of the population have never had it better, and are happy with the way things are (of course, few will know everything about the way things are).
The thing is, it's very much a pendulum. The Cultural Revolution, when my wife was growing up, was one of the worst times. The couple decades starting in the 90s was relatively quite good. The thing is, since Xi took control the pendulum has been swinging back in the other direction. That's most obvious back in Hong Kong, but is also evident within the mainland, as reported by family members and we can see ourselves through online interactions (e.g., on multiple occasions my wife's WeChat comments have been censored).
In addition to religious and ideological persecution, we see grave human rights abuses continue unabated: forced abortions, arbitrary (non-rule-of-law) treatment of citizens, lack of habeas corpus, ruling officials and legislators who are unelected (or who are only eligible for election if they are CCP members), a secret police, massive slave labor camps, long prison sentences for journalists and human rights activists, etc.
Perhaps the only difference we're seeing since the 1950's is that capital and property ownership in themselves are not seen as anti-state.
Apart from reading in public and murderous hate for the president, can relate to everything you wrote. Never been to China to comment.
There is no guarantee that the system that is more just will win out. That's the reason why we have to do everything we can to make sure that liberal democracy works and to impede authoritarianism in all its forms and guises. The CCP should never have had the amount of international investment and export markets it has had, given the overall strategy of the party to hoard power and crush dissent.
And when this growth ends, what will happen? An authoritarian system is able to withstand challenges with the full power of the state behind it. People that dissent are crushed, and many times the people that dissent do so with the most honourable of intentions. Viewed under the prism of authoritarianism this matters not. It's a system that remains not because of consent and merit, but ultimately due to suppression of dissent.
Just because China is able to catch-up some of the growth that it completely missed out on due to the turmoil of the Communist revolution and the turbulent 50s and 60s, doesn't validate this system one bit. Other countries were ahead of China, with more growth and sustainability, minus the cruelty.
The most powerful countries in the world were literally coasting on stolen Chinese wealth for 100 years of so. When the UK couldn't coast anymore, it lost world reserve currency status.
Now, can we get back on the subject of how the CCP is treating dissidents (and neighbouring countries)?
India springs to mind as a good 1:1 comparison candidate and it seems to be doing much worse than China in most economic metrics.
Just because they both have large populations don't make them alike.
The CCP is super clever and imbued a sort of nationalistic pride from birth. Instead of the US's more complicated dualistic individualism/patriotism combo, the Chinese people actually get some sort of pride for being a cog in the CCP machine.
It's a completely different paradigm and obviously super dangerous because it allows the people at the top who aren't elected to pull the strings on a machine of 1.4 billion people. If they run the system correctly, it can be much more "effective".
Democracy has lots of pressure outlets, and it is definitely much more healthy longterm. That's why I think it's the better system, even vs a well-run (and let's even assume benevolent) CCP.
In East Asian countries and China especially, nobody gives a flying .... about collectivism and Confucianism, and cultural roots.
It's by far the most egoistic, conflict driven, cut throat society I've ever been.
Ahem... most Chinese can't get more curses for it. Even unranked CPC members, and civil servants quietly hate them.
One needs to read a lot of People's Daily to drink this koolaid
The few who do almost all are the poor, underachieving, and angry "little pink" flag waving youth, or are the actual accessories to the system.
Even in the US, that is the #1 issue in every Pres election. How's the economy? Aka do people with 401k's think that they are better off, and thus do they think they are doing better against their peers (their competition for finding a mate/maintaining their mate)
This level of brain drain, as in the other mass migration events away from HK, could trigger the government to loosen their grip.
I've heard that HK is no longer as important to China as it was 20 years ago. HK's contribution to China's GDP has declined in relative terms as the rest of China has developed. With regards to the brain drain I get the impression that there are plenty of people from the mainland that could fill the gap.
Plus the rule of law, I'd say. Well, historically.
It doesn't help that China is in bad terms with the U.S. and India. India is on track to become the third-world economy. China is gradually isolating itself from the rest of the world.
HK has a trade tax loophole with the US that Trump is cancelling, just like the postal subsidy. #MAGA
Which for Hong Kong as the universe of analysis would be a travesty, but for China is probably not a significant consideration against removing that population as a source of unrest which can spread beyond HK.
Nonetheless it is the right thing to do for the UK (where are the EU nations on this?), and exile doesn't have to mean abandoning the future of your birthplace. Hong Kongers might be able to achieve more for HK from the UK than under a Beijing cyber-dictatorship.
Actually that raises an interesting comparison with the Tibetan diaspora that mostly left during around 1950. How many of their descendants growing up in India/US/UK still know how to speak Tibetan?
IMO assimilation isn't a bad thing, rather an indicator of a culture they bring with them which is accustomed to concepts of citizenry (or even more evolved) and the state (confucianism?).
But it doesn't mean they are forgetting about their ancestors struggle or their heritage either.
not because of some special cultural quality
It could easily transcribed as education, no need to imply cultural patronzing.
HK is in a catch-22. Stay where they are and get absorbed into the Mandarin speaking behemoth that's mainland China like Hakka, Wu, and Hokkien speakers once the CCP starts tearing down border and population movement restrictions, or move abroad to a dozen different countries and be absorbed piecemeal into the Anglosphere. The third option would be for 1 million or so HKers to build a new city somewhere where they could be the dominant culture. Unfortunately, Singapore is a very unusual case in world history where Malaysia didn't care about sovereignty over the land Singapore stood on and actually forced them out. Very little chance of that happening a second time.
Hong Kongers are likely to achieve more for the world - from UK rather than from authoritarian China. The fate of Hong Kong, specifically, is not that important.
They're silent. It's not their ex-colony and, very sorry to say it like this, but HK isn't worth angering China over.
Adopting HK citizens is a far easier sell than Syrians. They already speak English, are highly educated, wealthy, westernized, and have special status in UK law.
Letting a ton of refugees in is a large burden on the host country. They don't share British culture and values, tend to have no education or marketable skills, are in poor health, don't speak the language, need a lot of government support, and depress wages for already poor citizens of the host country. It should still be done for humanitarian reasons but there's a lot of pushback from citizens for reasonable concerns.
That said, the most obvious parallel here is the indians expelled from Uganda [1], who were essentially the merchant class of that country. And I believe have done very well in England.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Asians_from_Ugand
It may be true that all kinds of immigration greatly benefit host countries in the long term, but this is more debatable than that allowing wealthy, liberal, educated immigrants is a net benefit to host countries.
We can argue about the long-term benefits of open borders. I don't believe eggsnbacon1 was stating a position there--more like pointing out that there are some short-term costs that generate popular pushback. But ushering in the cream of the crop is obviously beneficial; it's a no-brainer.
Most studies does not account for what people dislike in immigration : fracturing social contract and communities shattering. Frictions in the salad bowl are poorly translated to economic figures but folks live it everyday.
So look carefully at what each study says and its perimeter.
One should curb down its sureness of that matter.
It was the OP who came up with the example of France to say that is not true.
> It’s the reverse, the burden is definitive and ever growing.
So there are two possibilities
* The French example is one of the very few exceptions -> This means the point OP is trying to make is kind of useless. Exceptions are present in almost all the theories.
* French example is what will happen in all most all the countries -> In that case OP's point becomes just ironic.
Also, if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?
Clearly we have different ideas about reasonableness.
> if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?
I do, especially in those parts of the world in which fertility is particularly high yet ability to actually look after those children is particularly low
Trying to apply this same logic to a country that's stagnant economically or that already has a fast growing population would be silly.
No they don't. According to the Hong Kong government's 2011 census only 41% of residents spoke English moderately well (not even fluently, just moderately well). 20% reported not being able to speak any English whatsoever; not even a few sentences.
Only 57% of residents of Hong Kong considered themselves "bilingual".
Only 30% of students attended an EMI school (English as a Medium of Instruction).
And I doubt the numbers have become more favorable to English in the decade since that census.
You have to consider which ones are being adopted. It is overwhelmingly the educated and wealthy ones who will go, and a far higher percentage of them speak English.
==About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.==
==Under the government's plans, all British Overseas Nationals and their dependants will be given right to remain in the UK, including the right to work and study, for five years. At this point, they will be able to apply for settled status, and after a further year, seek citizenship.==
Do you know (or care to speculate) on how those eligible for this offer would compare to residents captured by the census?
e.g. Did lots of people arrive from the mainland post-97, who might drive down the average? Or perhaps those with overseas-british papers are older, and the younger generation speaks much more English? I don't know enough to guess.
https://twitter.com/SimonCh15198572/status/12783360604063375...
Please enlighten me. As a German, I have yet to see even a statement of any German politician to do as the Brits do. Is there any non-english speaking country being "proactive"?
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1535138-20200701.h...
That's not nothing.
And the schools they were sent to are largely the same as the schools that the people who run the UK went to (at least when there's a Conservative government).
So when the cabinet visualise "someone from Hong Kong", they think "one of us".
It would have been better if they made it into an independent city state like Singapore.
Its not like the UK had a choice. We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
It's not stealing from China to not give them something taken from someone else.
UK could have demanded a lease renewal from PRC as the price for switching recognition. Instead they just got some “alliance” against the Soviets and it is questionable what that actually delivered.
Giving HK back to China is an act of decolonization. Putting them under Taiwan and loading up the island with US weapons would not be.
PRC is itself a colonialist power. See all the Uighurs in concentration camps.
I don't want to devalue your experience, but Anglo powers have a terrible record of "colonialism for their own good", "we'll be greeted as liberators", etc.
China doesn't like to take credit for that, but personally I believe its alliance with the West was instrumental in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
And I spoke that after having of talk with a Japanese people today and they fear they are the next on the list. I told them Japan at like 6th or 5th powerful army despite Article 9, + US alliance (that we all understand as half trustable only), so quite able to defend themselves. A lot of people in East Asian (HK, Vietnam, Philipines, Japan) fear China. This is what I got from talking with friends from this country. Everyone think there will be war at some point, only the time and starting place is unknown.
You really want to set the precedent that regime change voids all international agreements, rather than obligations and rights under them passing to successor regimes?
Anyways, Singapore's independence wasn't a given either, they had to fight for theirs from "the mother land" as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_in_Malaysia
Edit: I stand corrected - Not "to fight". However, the point being (as with Belize, Israel, India or other colonies which became independent) by no means was it clear what entities were to became out of its former colonies.
While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years.
The real issue is that HK wasn't viable without support from the mainland -- support they would have lost had this tactic been tried.
"Although not quite a piece of "barren rock" as derided by Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary during the First Opium War, from 1839 to 1842, the fact remains that Hong Kong isn’t endowed with the necessary natural resources to support its population of 7 million. The Hong Kong special administrative region of China gets over 70 percent of its water from Dongjiang, a river in neighboring Guangdong province. Meanwhile, over 90 percent of fresh meat and vegetables consumed in Hong Kong is sourced from the mainland. And mainland energy sources generate more than half of the electricity consumed locally."[3]
They would have had to bear a massive cost, investing in desalination plants, nuclear power plants, and imported their food from elsewhere.
That cost -- while extreme -- might be looked at in hindsight as cheaper than the current outcome with the likely significant brain drain from HK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_te...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Supp...
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient...
China isn't just more powerful than Guatemala, it's more powerful than the UK.
> they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war.
If Deng Xiaoping really thought the UK would accept nuclear ese as the cost of keeping China out of HK, sure, that might have kept China out. But literally no one would believe that.
The USA previously had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. That was replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
"The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan nor does it relinquish it, as its primary purpose is to ensure the US's Taiwan policy will not be changed unilaterally by the president and ensure any decision to defend Taiwan will be made with the consent of Congress. The act states that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities". However, the decision about the nature and quantity of defense services that America will provide to Taiwan is to be determined by the President and Congress. America's policy has been called "strategic ambiguity" and it is designed to dissuade Taiwan from a unilateral declaration of independence, and to dissuade the PRC from unilaterally unifying Taiwan with the PRC."[1]
If the US didn't have this agreement with Taiwan, I believe the PRC would have invaded long ago. Instead, they have been playing a long game of deeply entangling their economies and increasing their influence in the region with the hope of Taiwan following HK and joining the one country, two systems approach. I believe that is fundamentally dead now that the PRC has revealed one country, two systems to be a complete lie.
Thus, I hope Taiwan declares independence and has the backing the USA in such a manner that China won't consider invading.
Nonetheless, the point stands that China hasn't invaded Taiwan with a far less secure security guarantee than the one I proposed by the UK for HK.
No nuclear power has yet wanted to test whether or not a rival nuclear power is willing to follow through on their promise. Nuclear deterrence has been exceedingly effective. Furthermore, while China is more powerful than the UK, in 1997 the UK had a larger GDP and the EU was on the upswing.[2][3] That would have been sufficient counterweight to China then.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act#Military_...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=china+gdp+1997&oq=china+GDP+...
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=UK+GDP+1997&oq=UK+GDP+1997&a...
Which, while it could reasonably have been taken as an indication of the capacity to generate power over the long term if that advantage was preserved, has pretty much nothing to do with immediate power of the relevant type, whether globally or, more to the point, locally applicable to HK. Which, actually, creates more of an incentive for China to fully exploit it's then-current power advantage.
I'll take, “A routine practice of European (including states that are former European colonies) colonialism in dealing with non-Europeans”. So, like, no one would have been surprised with Hong Kong.
> We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
The UK was pulling that kind of thing before the US existed, so, sure, why not? I lean, ignoring the poder balance in the región, which is the real issue.
Alternatively, UK could have made switching recognition from ROC to PRC conditional on a New Territories lease renewal.
In contrast, the new law by by the CPC is an act of colonialism by definition as it is the CPC overriding 1 country, 2 systems and asserting political control over HK.
The British providing a path to independence could have been very similar to Belize (with CPC being equivalent to Guatemala in this case).
The British left a battalion of troops in Belize, the British Forces Belize, in order to act as a deterrent to a Guatemalan invasion.[1][2]
While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_te... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Supp...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Catalan_independence_refe...
Not to mention, HKers DO NOT want independence. In a recent poll only 20% of HKers desire independence.
This is part of the manipulation of the narrative by the Chinese government. It refuses to even recognize that these are truly different languages and calls them "varieties of Chinese" or "dialects of Chinese" when Cantonese or Taiwanese are more distant from Mandarin than the Romance languages are from one another. Then it tries to pretend like there are only a single people in China and is systematically eradicating minority communities.[1]
Thus, Mandarin political domination over other Chinese communities is imperialism at the very least, if not colonialism. Imperialism and colonialism aren't really that different from one another.[2]
Additionally, every group always like to claim the land that they had at their maximal imperial state. But borders change over time. People move around -- even Taiwan was only recently colonized by Chinese in the 17th/18th century in large numbers and before and after that was owned by other empires. Another example is when the Dutch decolonized Indonesia. The Dutch were simply replaced by the new "foreign imperialists" of the central Indonesian government, which the Balinese people and other such peoples of Indonesia considered a different group than themselves.
Furthermore, simply a region has been part of a broader empire for centuries or even millennia, doesn't mean isn't still being oppressed by an imperialist empire. The Russian Empire, Spanish oppression of other provinces and minorities for hundreds of years, etc.
Thus perhaps instead of focusing on the colonialism part we should focus on the imperialism part. The aim should be to empower self determination of a people and enabling them to be free of oppressive, imperial influence.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53220713
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/
Please kindly refrain from making statements about things you clearly know very little about.
Here are several citations to back up my claim: "The varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be regional variants of ethnic Chinese speech, without consideration of whether they are mutually intelligible. Due to their lack of mutual intelligibility, they are generally described as distinct languages (perhaps hundreds) by linguists who sometimes note that they are more varied than the Romance languages.[b] Investigation of the historical relationships among the Sinitic languages is just getting started. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups, based on often superficial phonetic developments, of which the most populous by far is Mandarin (about 800 million speakers, e.g. Southwestern Mandarin), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese) and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese).[4] These groups are unintelligible to each other and generally many of their subgroups are mutually unintelligible as well (e.g., not only is Min Chinese a family of mutually unintelligible languages, but Southern Min itself is not a single language). There are, however, several transitional areas, where languages and dialects from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility between neighboring areas. Examples are New Xiang and Southwest Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu and Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin and Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan (though these are unintelligible with mainstream Hakka)."[1]
David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 312. "The mutual unintelligibility of the varieties is the main ground for referring to them as separate languages."[2]
Linguists in China often use a formulation introduced by Fu Maoji in the Encyclopedia of China: “汉语在语言系属分类中相当于一个语族的地位。” ("In language classification, Chinese has a status equivalent to a language family.")[3]
Norman (1988), p. 1. "[...] the modern Chinese dialects are really more like a family of languages [...]"[4]
DeFrancis (1984), p. 56. "To call Chinese a single language composed of dialects with varying degrees of difference is to mislead by minimizing disparities that according to Chao are as great as those between English and Dutch. To call Chinese a family of languages is to suggest extralinguistic differences that in fact do not exist and to overlook the unique linguistic situation that exists in China."[5]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language [2][3][4][5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#cite_note-5
That touched a nerve, didn't it?
Let me guess, you don't speak any of these Chinese dialects: Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin. Because if you did, you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically. Are they mostly "mutually unintelligible"? For sure. But to claim that they are more distant from one another than the Romance languages? Complete and utter bullshit.
You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
Not at all. I'm simply asking you to actually make arguments based upon facts then attacks on a person. Thus, the conversation is meaningful and worth each of our time.
> Let me guess, you don't speak any of these Chinese dialects: Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin.
My wife is Taiwanese and knows Mandarin. Her father was born on the mainland and his family had to flee to Taiwan when he was 2. He speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese. His parents only spoke Mandarin. We've been together for 15 years and discuss linguistics quite often.
> You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
(1) English isn't a Romance language. It is a Germanic language. Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin. They include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and many smaller languages.
(2) I actually do speak Spanish, and I studied Latin for 11 years. My wife's mother is Latina and her parents (both the Chinese father and Latina mother) live in Latin America. They don't speak English. Thus, my primary way of communicating with them is Spanish.
> you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically
Languages sounding the same in no way makes them the same language or closer together linguistically. A great example is the vowels in Spanish and Japanese are identical to one another, purely by coincidence. This makes it much much easier for a native Spanish speaker to become aurally proficient in Japanese and vice versa despite the two languages not being related to each other at all.
> Are they mostly "mutually unintelligible"? For sure. But to claim that they are more distant from one another than the Romance languages? Complete and utter bullshit.
(1) Literally the definition dialects vs separate languages is mostly derived from mutual intelligibility. It is simply a fact that many Romance languages are mutually intelligible to one another. Spanish speakers can understand Italians and vice versa. Portuguese can understand Spanish and Italian, but not the other way around. These are simply facts. Thus, by linguistic definitions, it is indisputable that the Romance languages have less variation from one another / are closer to each other than the Chinese languages are from each other.
Please see this enumeration of which languages are mutually intelligible with one another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#List_of...
(2) You didn't respond to any of my citations above including one by Fu Maoji, who was a Chinese linguist.
On the Wikipedia page discussing "Mutually intelligible languages or varieties of one language", it states "In addition, political and social conventions often override considerations of mutual intelligibility. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties."[1] Translation -- that the PRC has overridden the linguistic definition of what defines languages vs dialects and replaced it with its arbitrary definition that all Sinitic languages are dialects of a single language for political purposes. The reason - the PRC wants to pretend that there is one China and homogenize the people of China into a single entity. It is why it is forcefully reeducating the Uighurs, why it pretends minorities don't exist in China, and why it has been pushing a Mandarin agenda for decades. However, the government realizes that Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc aren't going away. Thus, it instead likes to pretend like they are all simply dialects of Chinese in order to make the differences seem less pronounced. This aids in supporting Han ethnic nationalism over regional linguistic pride.
This can be seen clearly by...
That's an impressive list of credentials. But it confirmed my suspicion: you don't speak Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin.
>> You probably don't speak any Romance language outside of English, do you?
> (1) English isn't a Romance language. It is a Germanic language. Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin.
> (2) I actually do speak Spanish, and I studied Latin for 11 years.
I stand corrected.
>> you would know there's massive overlap between them, phonetically
>Languages sounding the same in no way makes them the same language or closer together linguistically. A great example is the vowels in Spanish and Japanese are identical to one another, purely by coincidence.
No. I meant that the same word (or more precisely, character) in Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin often sound the same or similar, not often enough that they are mutually intelligible, but often enough. Again, you'd have to speak at least two of these to know that.
> (1) Literally the definition dialects vs separate languages is mostly derived from mutual intelligibility.
Let me guess, some euro-centric linguists came up with that definition. It's probably a fine definition in the study of European languages, but it's by no means the only definition.
I will concede, however, that judging by this definition, these Chinese dialects may be more distant from one another phonetically than the Romance languages.
What you are forgetting (and what those euro-centric linguists failed to account for) though, is the shared written form of the Chinese language. Even when a word sounded wildly different in Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Mandarin, they all know it's the same word.
> why it pretends minorities don't exist in China
That's a straight up lie. China has long celebrated diversity and the 55 or so ethnic minorities. These minorities even get special privileges, e.g. not being subject to the one-child policy imposed for decades on the majority Han ethnicity, preferential placement in schools, etc.
> Indeed, promoting Mandarin Chinese among Hong Kong students has been a political task for the Hong Kong government since 1997... The Hong Kong government launched a scheme 10 years ago to incentivize schools to use Mandarin instead of Cantonese in Chinese language classes.
Promoting and incentivizing? What unspeakable evil? Honestly how is this worse than Quebecois or Puerto Ricans having to learn English?
> the PRC wants to pretend that there is one China and homogenize the people of China into a single entity.
China is what it is today because of the shared language, culture, values, heritage, and history. It behooves you to understand that, instead of simply being outraged because China claims your wife's homeland as part of its territory.
And to expand on your point about wanting to empower self determination, then you should stand with the HK government against foreign influence in HK domestic affairs. There is ample evidence of the United States pumping millions of dollars into the protests. The leaders of the protests have met with US officials to get their support. This is not normal. Imagine if news came out that BLM leaders in certain cities were meeting with Xi or Putin, and receiving millions in funds.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-poll-ex...
As you note, a much smaller fraction want independence. That doesn't mean they want to be subject to PRC law, though I agree the thing the people of HK seem to want (autonomy without independence) isn't usually how international (intranational?) relations work, especially when the "protecting power" is a dictatorship.
And yes, the linguistic argument was embarrassing; Westerners should learn more about Asia, and he'll surely abandon such arguments once he learns what language they speak in Taiwan. You could likewise learn more about life with Western-style freedoms, and you might understand why the people of Hong Kong (and America, misinformed as we might often be) so value them.
For example, the majority of people would agree that they do not want their taxes to be raised (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1714/taxes.aspx). Those same people might not like the ramifications of that, but that wouldn't necessarily change their opinion.
Back to HK. The existence of HK as a semi-autonomous region that is still part of China provides a great way for foreign powers to extend their influence into China's domestic affairs. In this scenario, the US clearly has its hand in HK domestic affairs. US leaders are meeting with protest leaders. US organizations are funding protests. Flip this with domestic affairs in America, and you'll see that there is something deeply wrong with this picture. Although it isn't 1 to 1, imagine if China were funding BLM protests and inviting BLM leaders to Beijing.
I'm going to add a few links which support these claims if you were unaware. You could find some more yourself if you'd like:
US role in Hong Kong protests - https://www.workers.org/2019/06/42820/?fbclid=IwAR2ZjOUSl2Bt...
US Senator Ted Cruz visiting Hong Kong - https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1182937896795246593
American Gov’t, NGOs Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests - https://www.mintpressnews.com/hong-kong-protests/259202/
Sidenote: I am American. I have learned about Western-style "freedoms" and find them very contradictory with America as it exists today. For example, the American rate of incarceration is the highest in the world, surpassing even the highest rates of incarceration of Stalin's USSR. Obviously, not everything China does is good and not everything America does is bad, but I'd encourage you to take a more critical eye to any mainstream Western sentiment on foreign countries, especially when that sentiment usually results in thousands being killed.
There's certainly a contradiction there. I'd attribute HK public opinion against independence as recognition that they're geopolitically unable to exist as an independent country, and a desire for the perceived next best thing (which they really did have until recently), and not as any actual desire to be controlled by the PRC. How else do you explain public opposition to the national security law?
> I do believe China could do better in terms of securing individual liberty for their citizens, but if that comes at the cost of its sovereignty, then obviously some concessions have to be made.
And I'm not sure how Hong Kong's previous autonomy (or any other freedoms) would come at the cost of the PRC's sovereignty? If the CCP wanted to hold democratic elections tomorrow for all territory within their military control, then they could do it. Inertia being what it is, they'd probably even win! No outside force is preventing the PRC's government from responding to the will of the mainland's or HK's people; but instead, Beijing is transitioning from the pragmatic sort of technocracy that Deng Xiaoping introduced to plain dictatorship. The end of Hong Kong's autonomy is just another step down that path.
Finally, countries express opinions about the affairs of other countries all the time. The USA exists in part because of French meddling in a British colony. Everyone likes to do it, and no one likes it when others do it to them. As long as it's happening openly, I can't get too upset either way. America is certainly flawed in many important ways, but I can express those ways openly without fear for my personal safety, and that free expression has historically resulted in what I consider positive change. Something close to that used to be true in HK, and now it isn't. I suspect that became inevitable with the handover and with Xi's self-coronation, but I think it's a great loss.
ETA: And I'm not sure whether it's by coincidence, but your points closely track Beijing's usual talking points against the USA (sovereignty / "internal matter", incarceration rate, etc.). If you don't mind sharing, where did you develop these beliefs?
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Hong Kong benefits immensely from its autonomous position in regards to the Chinese government, so they don't want to disrupt the status quo. The protests have revealed HK to be a national security issue for the Chinese government, so they want to create laws to make sure HK isn't used as a center of political dissent. These two ideas are contradictory with each other, so a law like this was inevitable.
>And I'm not sure how Hong Kong's previous autonomy (or any other freedoms) would come at the cost of the PRC's sovereignty?
I'm not sure if you understand the original impetus of the extradition bill. Here's a good Twitter thread that details the provisions: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/117502034599824588...
To answer your question, if criminals are able to easily escape China into Hong Kong, that fundamentally weakens the justice system. HKers and mainland Chinese move between HK and the mainland constantly. It would obviously be a failure of justice if you could go to a city within your country and encounter the man who killed your daughter. A similar law exists within Puerto Rico, a US territory. This is the bill that originally sparked the protests.
Recently Beijing passed the bill we are talking about that also gives them much more power in terms of being able to imprison HKers that try to subvert the government. This can be seen as a response to the protests, whose leaders have been revealed to be funded and supported by foreigners. China's sovereignty is absolutely threatened by protests and riots that seek to destabilize Chinese places of power, like Hong Kong.
>As long as it's happening openly, I can't get too upset either way
If you can't get upset about the US meddling in Chinese affairs, then you can't get upset about China trying to stop internal subversion. Not to mention, it absolutely doesn't just happen openly. The US has a long history of covert regime change operations. This happens completely undemocratically. Here's a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
I mean, just look at the hysteria surrounding Russian involvement in US elections. Rumors of Trump officials meeting with Russian officials has set public discourse on fire for years. And yet, it's unreasonable for China to oppose Demosisto party leaders who have openly met with US officials. I'm not trying to use whataboutism to deflect, I'm trying to paint an equivalency between the situations of these two countries.
>where did you develop these beliefs?
I'm fairly left leaning. China is a leftist country. I know China isn't perfect, but you can easily rationalize their decisions as being made by a government that cares about its people, not power-mad evil dictators as most people would have you believe. If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend reading Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti. https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/michael-parenti...
I think the extradition bill means "anyone can be extradited to the mainland at any time, to be punished in any manner for any reason, according to Xi Jinping's personal judgment". Do you disagree? If so, what makes you doubt that Xi has that power? Or do you agree, but think it's good for him to extend that dictatorial power into Hong Kong?
Finally, have you been to Hong Kong? To the PRC? How much time have you spent living or doing business there? You have a picture of the region that I'm afraid departs considerably from that lived experience.
ETA: And to be clear, you're saying here that you were born into relative freedom, and have chosen to use that freedom to advocate for a one-man dictatorship to impose further control over a precarious quasi-state with elements of democracy and a highly-functioning rule of law. This is apparently because you consider that dictatorship to be "leftist". I hope you're not surprised by the cool reception that you're getting to this.
Also when the British took Hong Kong it was only an island with some small fishing and charcoal making villages. Not the same as the huge metropolis it is today. So it exists today because of people going there and building the place up. My guess is because it wasn't part of communist China proper so you could do and say things that you couldn't on the mainland.
Is the CCP willing to jeopardise its position and future in the World for the sake of a few humid islands with no natural resources or strategic advantages?
And even more mind-focusing is the fact that the UK had the nuclear option on the table against Argentina in 1982.
We are well pass the time when a technologically advance oceanic power can establish and hold enclaves on the heartland. That was only possible in the past because of the huge development lead the European power's developed through industrialization and colonialism.
Hong Kong used to have a desalination plant. The British closed it because importing water from PRC was cheaper. Instead, they could have expanded desalination for water self-reliance, and built nuclear power stations to produce electricity to power it. But the UK wasn’t willing to make that investment.
If the US had said "we wish Hong Kong to declare independence and will provide military backing as required", I expect the UK would have gone along with it (I offer no opinion on whether that would have worked). But in the absence of that that I don't think there was much of a decision to make.
Quite possibly the UK were out-diplomatted and a somewhat better deal would have been available in principle. But ultimately (as we have seen in recent years) there's nothing that stops a superpower saying "we're now going to walk away from this treaty we previously signed".
Hong kong has a population of over 7 mil so this is less than half. What's the criteria for this chance at a uk citizenship?
I found a good video about the special passports given to hong kong from the uk. It is a bit complicated but this video seems to summarise the important bits quite well.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9XB3JIa0o
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/0...
But hey, Hong Kongers are “better” immigrants. We can all see through this I hope.
I know I don't have a problem with Syrian refugees and I would imagine that just one person out 60 something million would be enough to refute your statement.
Also Hong Kong appears to have lots of British banking connections like HSBC and Standard Chartered.
> like HSBC
The name which means the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company. A bank founded in China (Hongkong) by the British.
Edit: FYI Dominic Cummings actually blogged about the important of Turkey to their success:
https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-...
Rural Turkey has unemployment issue, but that's a separate matter to Turkish migrants to EU.
Turkish migration to EU is much more white collar, and urban.
P.S. The most hilarious rightist conspiracy theory I've heard of was that of Boris Johnson being a Turkish spy
Brexit will simply make their position worse.
A bill passed its 3rd reading in house of commons. It needs to get through the House of Lords. It still has some way before becoming law.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage-bill/common...
And when the UK crashes out of EU with no deal we'll inevitably re-allow free movement of EU workers because we have no bargaining power.
It’s incredible how many times people have cried wolf about this.
There's no version of the UK in 2022 that doesn't have freedom of movement for EU citizens.
Regarding your last sentence: leaving no-deal off the table, and this being unable to walk away, would have meant we have no bargaining power.
That's not a very convincing lever in a negotiation. The final relationship will benefit the EU far more than the UK, simply because of the balance of power, regardless of delusions to the contrary and empty bombast from Johnson.
The North American trade bloc (NAFTA/USMCA) is actually slightly bigger by both GDP and population, though the EU is, yes, the UK’s biggest trade partner.
Although unemployment was officially low, many in low end jobs felt that the huge influx of Eastern Europeans pushed wages down.
There is also the societal aspect of it because of the demographic change caused by a large influx of immigrants into an area.
Then, the prospect of Turkey joining the EU was raised, which would mean free movement for Turkish nationals and that scared people as well.
https://theconversation.com/the-huge-political-cost-of-blair...
The UK was certainly not obliged to immediately grant them permanent residency. See e.g. here https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-ri...
It's a combination of differential racism and elitism.
Is it possibly more representative of your own prejudices that you see only negative motivation here?
So basically the existing word "racism" didn't fit (because racist Brits would hate Asian HKers just as much as brown Syrians and black Africans) so you invented a new completely concept but conveniently attached the word "racism" to it for maximal emotional impact?
Despicable.
Even a racist as extreme and obsessed with whiteness specifically as Hitler deemed some nonwhite races worthy of respect, even as he plotted others' extermination. Clearly it is absurd to define 'racist' so narrowly that even the actual Nazis don't qualify
Having said that, the GP does not provide any evidence that racism was the motivating factor here.
That was exactly the point.
Though I think nationalism may be at least as much of a factor as race-based differentiation. (That is, that nationalism in the context of colonial history is why HKers are treated more favorably by opinion than other non-white, or even white, immigrants.)
Though, as explained already in GP, I think nationalism is the more relevant factor here, whether or not racism (binary or differential) is also involved (which at some level it obviously is.)
I didn't say it was. I said that the upthread commenter’s use of “differential racism” to describe their explanation in which Britain was doing that was, contrary to the claim that it was redefining “racism”, a perfectly valid use of the term “racism”.
I've also said in every post in which I've argued that point that I think that what is actually happening involves nationalism in light of the HKs colonial history, not, or at least more decisively than, racism, differential or otherwise.
There two different issues here, one about whether a hypothetical scenario is within the usual definition of “racism” and one about whether than hypothetical is the best explanation of what is factually occurring.
No country can invite everyone to immigrate. They have to be selective, and that doesn’t make them racist. No one has the right to immigrate to another country: it’s a privilege granted by the government and people of that country who make decisions about who to accept according to their own interests and perceived obligations - again, not racism.
Moving people & jobs physically to UK, when people have physical investment in a house, school, bank accounts, investments is not easy. I can see people moving if CCP is literally killing non-protesting citizens like holocaust. On top of it, what is to prevent CCP from blocking people from leaving?
People will take a lot before they physically leave the country. And CCP knows that very well.
Indeed, who would leave HK? Arguably the anti-CCP, the "troublemakers". So that'd mean less 'trouble' in HK and there is a large supply of mainlanders happy to move to HK.
Obviously the Chinese government will officially be outraged but privately they may think good riddance.
This offer of residency is political and possibly symbolically negative for China, but in practical terms it does not hurt China at all.
Yes, HKers have ties to HK that are a hassle to break, but plenty of people have broken them and up and left.
It goes on to list the coronavirus and Tiananmen as possible reasons; isn't the most obvious contributory factor that a lot of voters have been born since then, and it hasn't been on the national curriculum or often reported on?
https://www.freemovement.org.uk/bno-visa-hong-kong-dominic-r....
tldr;
It applies to Hong Kongers who applied for British National (Overseas) Citizenship (BNO) before registration closed in 1997, and it can not be inherited. Many of the young HK protestors will therefore be ineligible for it.
BNO is an obscure post-Colonial status applicable to Hong Kongers which did not up till now grant long term residence to the UK.
BNOs who now want to take up the government's offer for long term residence in the UK will have to fork a significant up front fee. This makes it available only to wealthy BNOs. If the government wanted to they could have changed the law to allow them to skip much of this, but they haven't.
But the consolidation of existing companies and operations in Hong Kong would still be pretty unique, its uniqueness still not that relevant. For regional price discovery it would be useful, like for some publicly traded companies or local futures markets.
But the market based economies of China's Special Economic Zones should make Hong Kong as attractive as any other major financial center, instead of as a micro-state.
There are many international HQs in major financial centers under high tax regimes, whether it is Shanghai, New York City, London, Frankfurt.
I would say 30% move, so less than 50%. Incumbents in Hong Kong are already beneficiaries of the Communist Party in Beijing, otherwise corporate consensus in the LegCo would have matched the individual consensus already.
Arbitrary? This is the opposite of arbitrary, it's everyone who is eligible for BNO status (i.e. was alive during the handover) and their dependents.
If those are true: the upside will be easier settlement into the UK, maybe increased entrepreneurship. The downsides are: driving up local housing prices, increased competition for jobs.
If those are false, the UK may experience an influx of lower-wage labor and increased competition for blue-collar jobs. Possibly even increased crime (maybe Triads would move to the UK?)
I have a feeling anti-Asian/Chinese racism would spike in the UK. It has popular bipartisan support right now (another comment mentioned that) because anti-China/CCP sentiment is probably at an all-time high, but you can't take in thousands/millions of people in a short amount of time from a different culture without expecting an impact on your own.
tl;dr: How do I invest in British real estate?
Builders (e.g. Persimmon) and LSE-listed investment trusts buying land for development, assuming you mean residential.
If you mean commercial, there's a wider choice of funds, developers, and management companies.
This might be more like the ethnic cleansing that happened in Kenya and Uganda - where people where forced out leaving behind a lot of assets.
Add in lots more working from home - property values will probably, IMO, level out across the country rather than being concentrated heavily in the south east, London and major cities as less people need to commute. Why live close to London if you don’t need to travel in everyday? Businesses will then undoubtedly scale down or reduce the burden of commercial property with more homeworkers, etc. leading to an increase in available real estate, etc. Just my opinion.
No, no.
Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.
If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.
> Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.
Would you apply that same argument to say, Vancouver? Would you say their increased housing prices is a welcome boost? The locals certainly don't think so.
> If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.
My understanding is that the "brain drain" is because the finance jobs would move to somewhere in the EU (and the expertise would simply move with them). It's not like they're leaving because the UK doesn't pay well in that sector (e.g., Canada vs. the US in the tech, medical sectors).
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11920027.scotland-could-...
Edit: I'm sure we could find a bit that was fairly similar to the scenery of Hong Kong, though not sure we can do much about the weather....
The pattern for many Hong Kong immigrants is to have the mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.
So they enjoy the benefits of a low tax HK income. And they get all the nice things that go with living in high tax Canada while not contributing to it -free healthcare, subsided University, safe communities, clean environment, low income benefits.
It's so common it has a name, satalite family/astronaut dad.
This isn't a good deal for Canada and Canadians.
https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/the-unsettled-live...
300,000 Canadians living in HK right now.
At least, they are less likely to do so than they are people who aren’t foreigners, although even them I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.
China ending the two-systems arrangement in Hong Kong despite the Joint Declaration is basically saying “As far as HK (and, implicitly, anything we consider Chinese territory) is concerned, we aren't concerned about what other countries think, or international law or agreements, only power.”
When these children grow up - they will pay taxes in Canada.
It looks like a good deal for Canada. Even if father's income is taxed in Hong Kong only.
Besides, you are assuming that the children of this tax evader aren't going to figure out some other method of avoiding Canadian taxes - like doing literally exactly the same thing.
And many of the children of Hk immigrants will go back to HK to earn more money.
They will do whatever is in their best interest.
Just like every other living being
Same is true for Chinese families in New Zealand and Australia as well. ...and it's not restricted to Chinese people either - obviously.
It's the curse of high tax jurisdictions.
"The global elite, as well as criminals and foreigners avoiding economic sanctions, can set up shell companies to 'make suspect transactions seem legitimate' under the cover of Canada's reputation for fiscal integrity."
I'd criticize an individual for evading taxes, but a "group" of people is just doing what people do.
EDIT: If you want to talk about the "functional" value of immigrants, then you need to get to the root purpose and bring in whoever is having the most kids.
Weren’t they talking about taxing vacant properties in Vancouver recently? Was there social media backlash?
Who knows what's really true, but there sure seem to be a lot of correlative coincidences, with similar stories in many different countries.
Either that or it's brought in in literal cash. That's why the stories of Chinese home buyer showing up with literal briefcases in cash are all over the place.
Why would the father pay taxes in Canada when he lives and works in HK (or anywhere else) and (likely) is not a Canadian tax resident? It doesn't make any sense.
After all they pay local taxes in Canada while spending (GST, PST, property tax etc.)
Earning money and sitting on it doesn't hurt anyone. But in buying a nice life in Canada, you are in part buying what the government provides.
At first, I was also going to post about how Canada uses a residential income tax system: even if you’re a citizen, you don’t pay income tax if you live and work overseas. But it turns out where your spouse lives is relevant for determining residency. [1]
Regardless of whether the “astronaut” dads are evading taxes, the bigger question is about designing a tax system that’s both fair and easy to enforce.
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/interna...
Sales taxes are small and regressive.
It's a monster difference.
Like the more I spent the less I pay in sales tax? I don't think so.
Low income people buy less things and pay lower sales tax proportionally. Wealthy people spend more on luxurious goods and pay way higher tax in absolute numbers. Everyone is hurt the same.
On top of that, necessities (food, medication, books) are usually exempt from the sales tax.
Agree that this isn't a great way to look at things. And that (as you say) there are often different rates of sales tax on potatoes vs yachts.
Variable rate sales tax on the other hand is more progressive than any income tax.
This offer is appreciated and I believe that those who accept it as expedient will not be looked down upon by others. When you have the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head it is an exhausting existence. Many in the resistance will move overseas and continue their efforts.
From an economic standpoint, any emigration of Hong Kongers is likely to be beneficial to the places where they land. Those most likely to take this offer in the short term will coincide with those who are most materially wealthy. Given that the CCP has threatened to revoke the Chinese Nationality of those who accept an offer of this sort (and has been known to use family members as leverage), I do not expect that, as a sibling comment states, we would see people trying to use this as a tax avoidance scheme.
From a demographic standpoint, many of the people who will choose to leave are young. This is a significant benefit to many places in the world who have declining birth rates. The UK population pyramid, for example, would appear to benefit from immigration of a younger cohort. [1]
As to efficacy, there is a gap in coverage for those born shortly after the handover. It's unclear how many will fall into that gap but it does represent a cohort of people who tend more toward exclusively identifying as Hong Kongers. [2] People who qualify as dependents of BNO holders appear to be eligible so that gap may be approximately six years: July 1, 1997 - July 1, 2003. It also doesn't account for children of HK immigrants and I have no insight into those demographics and their opinions (possibly a significant number of mainland immigrants who identify as Chinese).
As a real gesture, instead of the words that have been spent accomplishing nothing for the past year, this is a welcome change. Hong Kongers are now hoping for 攬炒, "if we burn, you burn with us." But if nobody holds the CCP accountable it just becomes "we burn."
(I'm a US passport holder. I am a Hong Kong immigrant. My wife was born and raised in Hong Kong (土生土長香港人). I'm currently studying Cantonese full time at CUHK (中文大學). I have a 光復香港時代革命 flag hanging in my apartment. I wrote this quickly: there will be errors, glosses, and poorly expressed things. I do not speak for all Hong Kongers and their experiences, hopes, wishes, desires, and dreams.)
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
[2] https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/pori_table_chart/EthnicIdentity/Q0...