Given the HKHRDA passed the Senate unanimously and in the House by 417-1,⁰ bipartisan consensus even ignoring your entirely unsourced claim that Biden is a Chinese puppet means that there is some will to resist this prospect.
The problem in the US is not intent but competence. Biden can be relied upon to not e.g. flip-flop as Trump did on North Korea or petulantly ask what the point of a long-term alliance is, and therefore is much better for those countries in Asia who want to resist China but want their major ally not to behave so erratically. In fact, Trump seemed to think of China as a counterparty with whom a ‘deal’ could be struck for his own political purposes:¹ he had no actual ideological objection to e.g. the camps in Xinjiang; Biden, like most members of the blob, at least pretends (probably even to himself!) to consistently and resolutely oppose that sort of thing (the obvious examples of e.g. support for Saudi Arabia notwithstanding), which means far more consistency. And consistency is good for alliances.
I don't entirely trust Biden when it comes to this, however, you can't really compare Taiwan to Hong Kong. To take Taiwan, China needs to annex an entirely separate country. They can do that through soft influence (pretty sure everyone agrees that's totally a failure), through economic means (Taiwan has been diversifying it's economy so not sure how great that option is anymore), or militarily. Even if other countries were to stay out of it, it would extremely risky for China. They very well could fail. Comparing Taiwan to Hong Kong in this instance really is kind of ludicrous.
It may be risky for China, but if you actually read Chinese media (or even the halfway house that is the SCMP), you can see to them it's not a question of IF but WHEN...
What downsides? Even ignoring the economic and political fallout (which could leave them entirely isolated on the world stage), they could _fail_ in their attempted invasion even if only going head to head with Taiwan. The result after both a successful and an unsuccessful invasion could very well be a collapse of the PRC. They certainly understand this. That's way they've simply used the threats as a tool of internal propaganda. They may one day go for it, but it is very far from risk-free.
If we care at all about our future and the generations to come, we must oppose China at all costs.
They extinguish dissent. Not just locally, but abroad. They censor our domestic companies that want a foothold in their market (Disney, Blizzard, the NBA, Apple).
We need to stop taking their money, and we need to move manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and Africa. Strategic manufacturing (medical and tech) needs to be re-onshored.
They're flexing their muscles because they know they will be on top. If we continue the status quo, it's only a matter of time.
We will wind up just like them if we continue to let this cancer grow.
It will be incredibly painful, but we need to stop importing. Now.
We can play hard. Militarize Japan. Strengthen our partnership with Vietnam. Offer US statehood to Taiwan and build a base there. Dispute the South China Sea takeover, start building oil rigs, and police the area.
Be a better ally to Europe and our democratic partners.
edit: Here come the anti-US downvotes. We're overrun with the enemies of democracy. It doesn't matter if you're a liberal of conservative - we have to unite to protect our precious, priceless freedom.
I don't see this going down the path of "we wind up just like them". I see this going down the path of WW III. What we need is another cold war. Any hot war will be unimaginably costly and drawn out.
I agree, but we need to show teeth. We have to shut down their domestic growth engine, crater nationalistic confidence, and make them understand they have no path forward but to concede to international pressures.
The Chinese people deserve freedom and liberty. The Uyghurs and Tibetan people deserve self-determination should they themselves choose it.
Look what playing nice and friendly has gotten us.
There is zero chance we'll shut down their domestic growth. They're self sufficient. There is no international pressure that can be brought to bear that will be of consequence. The only thing I see being effective is providing technology to their citizens to fight their way out of it. Provide them ways to communicate and disrupt, providing resources and broadcasting their message and documenting their efforts to the world, so they don't die in the dark and their government doesn't respond with impunity. Combined with the private wealth creation already happening, I see that as a feasible way forward. Then they can join us in living in a self directed democracy mediated by the dark money of corporations and uber wealthy individuals lol.
> There is zero chance we'll shut down their domestic growth. They're self sufficient.
China imports food and energy. They don't produce enough to meet their own needs.
Their population is largely male, old, and they're not having children. As more reach retirement age, growth will be diverted to take care of the elderly.
Their domestic economy is a mystery. Investing in Chinese companies is a risk. They like to show positive numbers, but can they be trusted?
Shut off their imports and stop buying from them, and they'll have lots of trouble.
Hypersonic weapons changes that. Hypersonic weapons are very difficult to confuse with nuclear weapons. Combine that with cyber warfare and drone/robotic warfare... And it is now possible to have an all out conventional warfare style war again. MAD no longer applies here. MAD was relevant when "destruction" required nuclear weapons. It didn't really mean "you destroy me I destroy you." It meant, you launch nuclear weapons (which will destroy me) and I have enough left over to destroy you. That warfare no longer presents the likely scenario as would unfold between two superpowers.
I dont understand. Both ear sides want to win. If loosing side has nuclear weapons, they will use them eith the goal to win. Why would they NOT use it?
There are different degrees to losing a war. The end result of losing a conventional war could be (IMO "would be") much better than the result for that same side if it let loose nukes. A direct war between two nuclear powers need not lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Of course it's only rational to fear such a result.
If tou could give an example (hipothetical scenario), maybe I would get what you mean.
How I see it. Let's say, russia dared to enter a real multi-battle direct war with usa, to take alaska, and is winning a bit more each day. When would usa say "we give up, please take the alaska, we will not use our nukes?".
- Immediately after the start while there are no casualties?
- after 1k casualties on both sides?
- after going to total war mode, when each side bombs industry complex'es and later cities on the other side?
Backing down would say "nukes are not deterant anymore. Same thing can be done to us again."
btw. Nukes can be used, not only on cities, but also on fleets and divisionsand camps.
So the only way nukes would be not used if victory would be very instantaneous and total, which does not seem probable.
That's not a fact, and in fact a known piece of propaganda.
First. Even, an all out nuclear exchange in between superpowers, in an unrealistic scenario without counterstrikes, and zero nuclear attrition, a superpower like US, Russia, or China will "only" loose a low single digits of population.
Communist countries not only wouldn't hesitate to do so, but have a history doing that to themselves.
USSR killed at a minimum 10% of its own population with fully intentional punitive starvation. Mao did the same, and Pol Pot have beaten both.
Second. Even after a nuclear exchange, both superpowers would have at least a half of its military functioning, and very, very angry.
Third, after exhausting all nukes, and high-tech weaponry, both countries would proceed to a long, and exhausting conventional war, which will kill way more people than any nukes can.
America has enough nukes to take out every population center in Asia before the day end tomorrow. It’s sad but true that nuclear power is so incredible that people haven’t dared move against it.
Do we need that? These cold wars run at the expense of 3rd world countries who experience them as a hot war. Good for you that no one in your country dies, but people in mine will.
Thing is, U.S. and all of the civilised world does not have enough resources for a cold war with China. It will be simply defeated the way Soviet Union was defeated - just run out of money and overall steam.
It's time to adapt to Chinese leadership and extract benefits of democracy and freedom which they don't have. Too late to keep trying to oppose it.
Example: Chinese military shipbuilding delivers more tonnage per year than the rest of the world combined. And they don't even try all too hard.
China will simply own the world in the XXI century, probably concentrating the majority of worldwide economic output in every sector of production and consumption, in as little as a generation from now.
What's left to be done is to cave in - try to be as little dependent on them as possible, make hot war unattractive to them - by being as little of a threat to them as possible, and by having little of interest for them to take too, and in general self-isolate.
On the good side of things, Chinese are very unlikely to proselytize the way U.S. does or the way Soviet Union did: they understand very well that Maoism is linked to the traits of Chinese national character and will not work outside of East/Southeast Asia. They just seek to become, and will become what they always seen themselves as being: the Middle Kingdom where all interesting things happen, with the rest of the world being just a side story. Think 1960 USA. 30 years down the road, we will for sure see it happen.
> Maoism is linked to the traits of Chinese national character
A virulent strain of communism, a disease that plagued Europe for close to a century, and even managed to put up roots of its more violent forms in the New World.
You say Maoisim-Communism is only a Chinese problem?
Soviet Communism (Bolshevism) WAS a virulent strain: millions upon millions of even comfortably living people in developed countries wholeheartedly believed in it, and developing world submitted to it without a second thought. Soviets did not take Africa by force in 1960s - they didn't have nearly enough long range force projection capability - they made Africans want communism. Same in Southeast Asia.
Maoism is nothing like that. It is despised by everyone including China's closest neighbours both culturally and geographically - even by Vietnamese who are sort of Commies themselves. Vietnam is willing to ally with the U.S. - who it lost millions of people fighting with 50 years who and who's completely opposite to it ideologically on paper - only to avoid Chinese bullying.
But, it seems to be a good way of government for China. It works there. Nothing at all worked in China in the previous 150 years of trying, nothing else allowed to marry industrial civilisation and Chinese national character. KMT figured an alternative but only when they were already stuck to Taiwan, and only with the massive U.S. aid (which would be insufficient for Chinese mainland even under best assumptions), and only because most of Taiwanese are part Japanese and their culture had a strong Japanese influence.
DPRK, Indonesian Maoist insurgency, Malaysian Maoist subversion, Singapore coup attempt, Burma, Laos, Campuchia, Nepal, India Naxalite insurgency, Albania, South Yemen, South Peru insurgency, Brazil Araguaia Guerrilla War, ~10 African countries
>"Offer US statehood to Taiwan and build a base there"
>"police the area."
So you basically want to start a process that will most likely lead to a "hot" war. And you of course would not mind countless lives lost as the result on either side.
It is nice to know we have such peaceful and rational thinkers here on HN.
I don't agree with statehood, but you could just as well argue that putting a base there is the best way to _avoid_ a war* between China and Taiwan. Doing so could be a _peaceful_ action.
You can not put a base in a single day. This will be a process which you can not hide from China. You think they'll just swallow it and will not attack Taiwan at the first hint of event? In my opinion it is not a _peaceful_ action but an act of a lunatic who does not give a shit about human lives.
Of course you can't hide it. And of course it's possible they may decide to attack Taiwan if it were attempted. It's also possible that not doing so _guarantees_ an attack by China. It's all a balance of probabilities. One could very well rationally decide the likelihood of China attacking Taiwan decreases by putting a base there. I'm not saying that conclusion is guaranteed correct, or that you should agree with it, but you should have the intellectual honestly to admit it's possible. Pretending such an act is lunacy is ridiculous.
I don't think it's a good idea to nurse this idea for the following reasons:
1. I don't believe Taiwanese want to be part of the US. They already have their own country.
2. The US shouldn't counter the Chinese imperialist ambitions of annexing Taiwan by doing something that could be viewed as the same thing.
3. It's not really necessary for what you want. The US could enter an open alliance with Taiwan if it wanted to making a Chinese declaration of war against Taiwan a declaration of war against the US.
4. The US should make a stand that the independent country of Taiwan has a right to exist and support that right alone not precondition on joining the US.
I could go on, but I think this "Taiwan becomes a US state" thing that I see repeated a lot is just plain silly.
Please stop taking HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar, or any flamewar. We've had to ask you this many times. It's starting to get not cool.
Edit: this is worse than I thought. You've been posting tons of comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25700845. HN is not a site for nationalistic flamewar. If you keep doing this we're going to have to ban you. No (to address the objection someone is bound to come up with), I'm not a communist foreign agent. I'm just trying to spare this site from descending further into hell—or at least to stave that off a little longer: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
>"It's also possible that not doing so _guarantees_ an attack by China."
Pissible and _guarantees_ - You can pretty much shorten it to "possible". There is no guarantee in here.
Opening US base will be much closer to guarantee. But this is mute. I think/hope that US/Taiwan are not that stupid and do not start their morning routine by planning what's the best way to provoke war with China.
I am not from the US or from China. I sincerely feel like your opinion is born of propaganda, but not only that, your call to action is itself propaganda.
On only a 10000 year arc sure but kind of hoping we buck the inborn tendency at some point. Humans won't make it very long (relatively of course) without that.
Anti-US faux-liberals downvoting some sensible suggestions as to how we should counterbalance the growing influence of a fascistic authoritarian genocidal state. Why am I not surprised or even disappointed anymore?
This timing is unsurprising; it’s clear there’s nobody at the wheel in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, lowering the odds of reprisal during this window of opportunity. What would shift this? Does the E.U. have sufficient clout?
Someone will "be at the wheel" in a few days. And you will not see China back down. Why? China will soon overtake the United States - and not just by a little - by a lot.
China annexed the Scarborough Shoal 8 years ago. And the guy who will "be at the wheel" soon did nothing back then (despite of there being a defense treaty).
These mass arrests are just China getting ready to annex Hong Kong as soon as "the wheel" is in the hand of the guy they already know will no nothing.
Germany / Merkel (because she is the one who determines German foreign policy de facto) will not do anything that is against German business interests. As of 2021, Germany is neither left, nor right, neither liberal, nor conservative - on the international scene, it is a purely business-oriented nation.
The EU has clout but is unlikely to do anything that might threaten investment ties between China and the EU. Investment (and the promise of jobs) takes priority over human rights concerns:
The west needs to sanction China. This is violation of China's treaty obligations, it's not just a domestic issue, it's an international law issue, and it should have international consequences.
But that’s how treaties work. We’re just upset we’re not the ones breaking treaties anymore. Ironically, the treaty was signed because the British pretended they were in a Position to unilaterally re-negotiate a previous treaty obligating them to return HL.
The Chinese had no obligation to sign the 1980s treaty to get HK back, and were hardly intimidated by the UK’s 1980s military might to do so (I mean an British admiral said about the Falkland war: “if not for a few defective fuses we would have lost”. Against Argentina. Pretty pathetic)
The UK was delusionaly saying it might not give HK back to commies (understandable sentiment, surely) and the commies signed something to let the Brits save face.
The relative strengths of the nations help to dictate the terms. Treaty of Nanking was signed after the defeat of the Qing army, you think the terms were favourable to the Qing Emperor?
First of all, you seem to be talking about the PRC and not Chinese. All of us would gladly take China away from the CCP dictatorship, and give it to the Chinese people as a true democracy.
Secondly, here is such a thing as human rights, and westerners believe that such a thing is worldwide. We should not close our eyes to the wrongdoing that is done to our fellow human beings.
China produces everything. We produce dollars, scrap products, corn, soybeans, timber, plastics and some software [1]. Where would you get all of your things if we did that?
That’s not how international obligations work. Most borders were defined at gunpoint but we generally don’t allow for arbitrary redefinition when the loser gets uppity, Crimea aside.
That's not how international relations work. Appealing to some arbitrary set of conventions (that you prove in your own comment don't get followed) and then complaining that the other side is "uppity" does nothing.
china probably wouldnt mind burning Versailles n Buckingham to the ground, recovering taiwan. then taking over hawaii and returning it 100 years later.
The history of the region is far more complicated of course, you’re neglecting that Macau wasn’t lost in a war. It was leased as a trading post. There’s no reason to believe that the contiguous border China would like to espouse is either historically fair or reasonable today. Macau is more like St Pierre and Miquelon or Point Roberts. It’s governed under the same terms as HK.
It’s also unclear why Taiwan should be “recovered” at all, they were two factions of the cultural revolution sure, but that doesn’t mean they should be unified now any more than the UK should “recover” America.
For a long time American policy was also that these "unfair" treaties made by Colonial Powers should go. Roosevelt was very much of that opinion that these treaties should be abbrograted in the aftermath of World War II, and his views did lead to some differences of opinion with Churchill.
Infact all other concessions except HK and Macau were returned to Chinese about the end of the war.
Well in that case, you’re arguing that since you lost the war of 1812 when you tried to invade Canada, now that you’ve got the bigger guns you would just go for a quick stroll up north.
They've not won anything though, in fact they showed their hand to the world to wake us up, and sooner than later there will be a multi-lateral trade agreement between Democracies that will reduce the CCP's economic power - and India who' aligned with, allied with Democracies are readying to replace any economic activity in China. This isn't a war they can win.
Any others you want to revisit? Maybe the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo? How about 1812? Should America get to annex Canada? America did lose the war of 1812 after all!
If breaking a treaty is in best interest and situation permits it, it will probably get broken. Annexing Canada is not very practical at this point is it? Breaking a bunch of treaties made with Native Americans, sure why not.
If one day situation permits it, Canada will become 5X US state.
I mean of course they can but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, or even productive towards a country’s ends, or beneficial to then international community. Peace relies on honoring agreements. If you see countries start breaking their obligations, stand back and go “whelp that’s guns for ya” I’d call that a pretty regressive take on international relations.
The reason this is happening now is recent US events have shown Chinas subversion of the Democratic Party and 2020 election were successful, and they can safely act now that Trump is sidelined.
Do you understand that the West mostly sanctions itself when it tries to sanction a country which:
1. Has surreal trade surplus with it.
2. Supports nearly entire consumer spending part of your economy.
3. Provides most of your light industry goods.
4. Buys a big chunk of your debt.
This is why I was saying that China can easily do a blunder, after a blunder, and still outmatch the West economically, and you need something other than simply sanctions.
> Isn't the point of sanctions to make the offending product so expensive that other options become more viable?
The key word here is other options. Are there any?
China on other hand has many other options than the US market. They will have no problem redirecting things like household goods, and other light industry products to other markets without impact to its industrial capacity.
That's what has happened in 2008, and indeed worked marvelously for them in the end.
When the American economy was flopped, they simply took all those luxuries destined for sale to America, dumped them on developing markets, and adjusted quality-quantity balance for this target market.
We just need leaders in place who understand these systems, the economics, and trust that once investing resources into their own people and nations who are aligned with the same/similar values - with freedom of speech at their core - that they will work hard and generate an ROI for their work; understanding the human heart, mind, will, and exponentials are the key to having this faith - faith perhaps deriving from seeing the good and potential in every being.
You're correct that more than sanctions are necessary, you need to also invest in the infrastructure and production of goods that your society primarily relies on. There's tons of space for innovation and improving efficiencies in this space via automation, vertical and horizontal integration, reducing planned obsolescence, etc. There's an incredible amount of waste in our societies, along with other types of pollution we must address. All this requires is work, which means jobs, and adequate organization and appropriate directing of resources.
When the CCP invaded and annexed the Scarborough Shoal in 2012, the Obama administration ignored the defense treaty between the US and the Philippines and allowed the CCP to keep the land.
So now that Biden is practically in power, it makes sense that the CCP innitiates the process for the annexation of Hong Kong in the comming month.
My guess is that, before the end of the Biden term, the CCP will have made a move on Taiwan as well. And the West will not do anything about it other than "a strongly worded letter".
These Hong Kong supporters are a true inspiration for Americans. Their occupation of the legislature shows what a free people could do against oppression
I remember seeing them waving American flags during protests, presumably as a reference to liberty. I thought, “I wish we lived up to their perceptions of us.”
Of course the CCP used those photos as propaganda to reenforce the arguably false narrative presented to mainland Chinese that the CIA was behind the resistance. The psychological aspect of warfare never ceases to amaze me.
Not everything is a propaganda there is some truth to it, given Hong Kong is the only ground left for US to try to destabilise China to slow its growth.
This is also the reason China took hardline on Hong Kong as they see it as strategic weak spot. Moreover actions of China in Hong Kong are supported by majority of people in China. This tyranny of majority exists in democracy too, what happened in Kashmir is 100 times worse than HK.
Given the way US president pardoned people who committed genocide in Afganistan and killed scores of kids and unarmed civilians. There is hardly any ground left for them to teach others.
No real death in over an year of violent protests by police firing in Hong Kong vs 5 deaths in capitol building siege speaks volumes about the professionalism with which Hong Kong police handled the protests.
China is built by hard work of its people not by CCP [1].
May be work there for a while and than you can see why Korea, Japan and Greater China did so well not others in growth. It’s easy to talk rhetoric, but hard to do hard work to bring about transformation.
It's mostly CCP propaganda though if you actually talk to HK people and see how the majority of them tried to work within the system to "make the change" since the early 90s and fight for what was promised in the Basic Law[1] which was drafted by a committee with 36 representatives from China and 23 from HK. It promised that the Chief Executive of HK and its legislative council to be formed by an election.[2]
The Chief Executive election has been delayed for 2 decades requiring the CCP to "pre-filter" candidates which the public rejected.
The legislative council election has been controlled by disqualifying candidates as well as the mass arrest of 53 pro-democracy candidates for simply organizing the primaries and engaging in debates. [3]
TLDR;
China wasn't as strong in 90s so took a softer stance. Later decided to go back on its words so had to find ways to control the elections or the results.
> No real death in over an year of violent protests by police firing in Hong Kong vs 5 deaths in capitol building siege speaks volumes about the professionalism with which Hong Kong police handled the protests.
This is not true. After witnessing the 2019 movement and the real police behavior captured on live tv/news[4], I have a much better understanding of the Stanford prisoner experiment.
There are two sides of coin in HK. People who supported violent protestors and people who didn’t. Like any other society some support govt and some do not.
People who support govt and not protestors their shops, restaurants, businesses vandalised and were constantly harassed. It became politically impossible to voice against the protestors due to fear of violence, know this first hand not by talking but living through it.
Please read the Basic Law and also the extradition bill [1]. Extradition being better was still opposed and ultimately National security law was passed to give teeth to administration to stop violent protests.
It’s the vehement majority of Hong Kong people who gave rights to reinterpret Basic Law to stem the flow of people from mainland China (since court of final appeal was going to allow spouses and children of Hong Kong residents from other parts of China to settle in HK). This is the same provision used for implementing National security law. So in HK people got what they asked for and also majority Chinese supported this action on HK. So like any democracy like USA and India a law which appease majority pass easily same happened here.
> It’s the vehement majority of Hong Kong people who gave rights to reinterpret Basic Law to stem the flow of people from mainland China (since court of final appeal was going to allow spouses and children of Hong Kong residents from other parts of China to settle in HK)
> So in HK people got what they asked for and also majority Chinese supported this action on HK. So like any democracy like USA and India a law which appease majority pass easily same happened here.
Both statements are false. The first reinterpretation of the Basic Law on the right of adobe in 1999 wasn’t the result of ANY DEMOCRATIC PROCESS involving the majority of Hong Kongers.
Some polls may show that a large fraction of Hong Kongers prefer the RESULTING VERDICT on right of adobe, but the reinterpretation is unlike any democratic process as in the US or India, that has a rigorous and formal voting process. And certainly not a majority of Hong Kongers support repeated interpretations of the basic law by people not directly elected in Hong Kong.
The end doesn’t justify the means. You have confused the end and the means.
> The first reinterpretation of the Basic Law on the right of adobe in 1999
You mean Hong Kong people wholeheartedly supported the spouses and Children to settle in Hong Kong from other parts of China in millions?
Even if you support violent protestors please don't be double face, even during one year of protests there was a constant call for throwing people from other parts of China back to China from Hong Kong, they were called locusts and what not.
The reinterpretation had a majority support of Hong Kong people and they liked that Tung Chee Hwa was able to stem the flow (instead of court of final appeal which in earlier ruling allowed spouses and childrent to settle in HK) and make it limited to 150 people / day instead of over million moving to HK.
> Democratic Process
Hong Kong is not a democracy, UK never granted it autonomy and always controlled it with appointed chief executive. With handover at least China made the committee which selected the chief executive. So not sure which is more democratic an appointed head by UK or a person elected by people from various sections of society (although it's flawed as most or rich and has allegiance to China, but it's still better than what UK had in Hong Kong).
> beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
> Chinese leaders were so opposed to the prospect of a democratic Hong Kong that they threatened to invade should London attempt to change the status quo.
Re: your link - Could you point me specifically to what you were referencing as part of saying "China is built by hard work of its people not by CCP"? Thanks in advance.
The way to slow China's growth most efficiently is through economics; it's not the people of China that we want growth to slow for, the purpose and intent is to take power away from the CCP - to free the people of China, as in America and other Democracies, we inherently trust - have faith - that individuals can make the right, good, best decisions for themselves.
"Moreover actions of China in Hong Kong are supported by majority of people in China" - this is the functional result of control-oppression systems on free speech with threat of a spectrum of potential harm that can come to you, your family, even your place of work. This isn't the positive argument point you think it is. The CCP can control the narrative and suppress the truth as they see fit.
"Given the way US president pardoned people who committed genocide..." - this is a very weak argument considering the US compared to the China is an apples to oranges comparison to begin with: every 4 years the US has an election vs. in China it's the CCP in control always; this is a weak foundation to argue from on its own. It's an even weaker argument when you don't understand that Democracy - and the freedom to vote - is literally polling the population to understand that state of the union, of the nation, their health and their beliefs. Trump is a symptom of multi-generational dis-ease progression, where the efficiencies of capitalism, along with the duopoly that's been able to form and solidify - along with the regulatory capture that has occurred for 4+ decades, industrial complexes and bad actors tightening their grip of society by extracting more and more resources from the average person, and allowing suffering and dis-ease progression to occur. Mainstream media has played a role as well, the amalgamation of it into just a small handful of controllers - for TV and newspapers - has allowed the narrative to be more easily controlled; not as much as the CCP's control but it gets close to it, resulting in only 2 main narratives - of the duopoly. It’s incorrect, a mistake to believe Trump is America, he simply made his way up through broken-weak systems that I just described - that exist via currently inadequate policy, this current state - status quo - that we can and have learned from - and will evolve from with new, updated policy to help steer, right this ship called America.
Sorry but the "no deaths" is a false dichotomy - the treatment of these people can be like of the Uighurs if they don't fall in line with whatever rules they want to enforce; and certainly the CCP will be looking into everyone in HK's past to then see what they should do with them on a case-by-case basis.
"China is built by hard work of its people not by CCP." - you're injecting an argument that that makes it seem like I or other people believe Chinese people aren't hard workers? I bet no reasonable person would put forward that argument, no reasonable person would think Chinese people are lazy. It sounds more like propaganda/narrative that the CCP would want to perpetuate to try to demonize the "other" - so the Chinese population will think "we" think lesser of them, to cause them to dislike, be angry with, or hate "us."
The majority of reasonable people of Democratic nations only want the best for the Chinese people, and the majority are reasonable - however there are for example the ~74 million Americans who have been mislead, manipulated, by Trump, the captured Republican party and mainstream media that these people watch - to believe Trump was the answer to "Make American Great Again" - except Trump isn't an entrepreneur or a businessman, he's a con artist and a pathological liar, and archetypical narcissist; someone like Andrew Yang, who...
As mentioned in earlier comments Chinese system will collapse if people of China do not want it, live there to really understand how it works. Please read the history of China it has more revolutions than USA. CCP cannot function without the support of majority of people like a democratic system. It just works in a different way probably watch the video in the link it’s a good explanation [1].
Chinese system is different politically and it’s hard to say it’s good or bad for its people, given on the ground it has proved good for majority with suppression of minority (see the same happening in any democracy too, tyranny of majority). So unless democratic system can really save its minority they can’t be on higher ground. Also if one needs over a billon dollar to fight election and win top positions there are favours to be done, like what happens in two largest democracies of India and USA. So every system has its positive and negative.
If you want to bring about change in China then may be go there do something great for the people and if they find it better than existing system for their livelihood and better life they will change.
So you yourself are insinuating, you believe that without the control-oppression-censorship systems of the CCP, that the Chinese people are weak, weak-minded, and incapable of re-organizing on their own? I disagree with that wholly. I believe the Chinese people could thrive even more greatly than the status quo that the CCP is controlling for - especially the Uighurs. The CCP is keeping people in check, in line, forcing them to support the current system - they don't have a choice to not support it - so there's no choice of "not wanting it." It's forced consensus, where you if you don't agree with the current system then you're sent to "re-education camps." I don't understand how you're able to conclude what you do if you know of these control-oppression-censorship systems of the CCP - unless you've been brainwashed/indoctrinated to believe they do not exist - and the failsafe to preventing these types of actions of a potential tyrant/tyranny from forming, is to prevent the government from controlling and suppressing free speech - because then they have the ability to speak the truth.
If you truly believed the Chinese people were strong, capable, if you truly believed the CCP system would be what the majority of Chinese people would want (once their fear is diminished) the CCP's control in place, then the CCP should become a Democratic nation where people can vote - where you trust your people, and the current government not have fear or fear their people. In fact the reason there isn't a voting system is the CCP knows that their citizens wouldn't vote the CCP in, and whatever truths they're trying to keep hidden will be able to come to light - whether the majority of those truths are relatively benign or malicious in nature, I don't know - whether the CCP keeps records of all of their behaviours or not, I don't know either.
Tyranny of majority? That's not tyranny. If the majority of people vote in a legitimate, fair polling with adequate systems in place to make sure there isn't cheating/fraud - then the direction of who they voted for is what the majority want and policy will be changed/evolve based on whomever is currently in power. This is in fact a feature of Democracy, not a bug. Voting is literally polling to see the state of the union and what people's current beliefs and understanding of everything is, to understand how they're doing personally - are they suffering, are they thriving, etc; it's like a Litmus test to see where on the spectrum of abundance vs. scarcity mindset they are, state of health vs. dis-ease state.
Re: "So unless democratic system can really save its minority they can’t be on higher ground" - Yes, yes they can be on higher ground - and that happens because ultimately the government, party - the group of people/politicians who's policy and policy proposals align with the benefit of EVERYONE in the population - not just those who voted them into power will result in a higher quality of life for EVERYONE; the party who wins power, gets into government, and who attempts to punish or suffocate their non-voters (Republicans/Trump and party who clearly, multiple times attempted to harm Democratic voting states) is the opposite of this, and will cause non-voters and other citizens to start voting, the impetus will exist and strengthen because their suffering and ability to survive is lessening to a degree that they realize the system needs change, a course correction for the ship called America.
"Also if one needs over a billon dollar to fight election and win top positions" - Indeed, you're correct but Democracy is evolving and the duopoly that has formed due to current policy can be EASILY broken apart with the correct policies; Andrew Yang, who was a Presidential candidate, and his core policies are what will lead to the duopoly to break apart - along with disempowering the few mainstream media channels the maj...
> No real death in over an year of violent protests by police firing
It’s just that the Hong Kong police is better at cover-ups.
A female protestors was found fully naked and dead at sea. A whistle-blower police officer confessed on a KBS documentary that the case was initially investigated as a murder case, but the higher-ups later forbade murder investigation, and hastily classified it as a “suicide”. [0]
Another man was seen suspiciously thrown out of a window at a disciplined services quarters (whose tenants are mostly police) [1], and yet the case wasn’t even investigated.
Neither of these cases is definite proof of Hong Kong police killing protestors. And yet without proper investigation, you can easily hide casualties even when there are.
I must stress that guns are forbidden in Hong Kong, whereas guns appeared in the Capitol Hill on Jan 6 among some protestors. It’s not surprising that Hong Kong police may have a milder response than the US police. You can’t compare apples to oranges.
As a not a native American. The one thing that i admire most about America is its importance to liberty as part of the constitution and as a main stream culture.
FYI the term "Native American" usually refers to the indigenous people of America. You could maybe refer to yourself as "non-American," a "first-gen American," or an "American immigrant," depending on what you are and what you're trying to say.
European here. What happend now in US was a total shitshow, but in the end it's nice to see that your democratic system took the upper hand. So be proud that your system works, and you didn't end up in some sort of Russian democracy.
> What can an individual do to help Hong Kongers? Any suggestions?
How many firearms, and ammo you can buy, and how many politicians you can lobby? Even if you are a single digit millionaire, that's just enough to arm, and feed no more than a single lightly armed battalion for a few months.
I see other option than a military solution, either limited, or not.
Even if any Western power decide on half hearted piecemeal solution like smuggling weapons into to China, and rile up the populace, it will only bleed China a very, very little. China easily endure waging a civil war the size of Syrian, and continue growing economically like if nothing happened.
How would you feel if I advocated for arming communist rebels in your country? It's disturbing how normalized calls to violence are on HN when the violence happens far away.
> Maybe the point is that armed people in a democracy is not that big of a deal, but armed people in a dictatorship can be a real problem.
You can scroll down a couple posts to see people being outraged that those who stormed the Capitol had weapons and bombs with them. I wonder how cavalier your attitude remains when the guns are pointed at your face. Then again second amendment fanatics like you are already totally fine with school shootings.
It sure is. HK was my favorite city. Great place. I liked to live in China too, but left when Xi got into power, because it was all too obvious, even 10 years ago, what would happen.
The turn to nationlism, xenophobia, and imperialism under Xi is insane. And the lack of reaction to it in the West (with the exception of the Trump administration) is even more insane.
Compared to never been there, it's particularly painful because it's a regression from a fairly just, rather first-world system. As a HKese I had the luxury to spend time on little things that make me happy in my teenage just like all teenagers do. It breaks my heart seeing youngsters standing on the front line shredding blood and tears, for things I took for granted. I really worry about the mental health of this generation.
Although it wasn't too obvious. As you might already know there's movie called Ten Years made in 2015, imagining 2025 HK after CCP erosion on culture, human rights and rule of law. 2017 me thought[0] it was an "exaggeration". Now it's just been upgraded to one of the most prophetic movies.
Boycott everything Made in China (I’ve been doing it for years, and it’s not that difficult.. I mean if you can find alternative for 9 out of 10 goods then it’s of course still a big win). Similarly, boycott companies that kowtow to China (you can probably save a lot of money by doing so, e.g. by pirating all Disney movies/tv series instead of going to the cinema/paying for Disney+).
Support companies that voice support for those oppressed by the CCP (such as ProtonVPN, Notepad++).
Vote for politicians that are not afraid to stand up to CCP (I for instance voted for Trump despite having my political views mostly align with Sanders - solely due to his anti-China stance.. you can of course also argue that his administration has singlehandedly done more to stand up to China than the rest of the world combined in the past couple decades).
Spread awareness of China’s atrocities. If more people realized that CCP are even more evil and dangerous than Nazi Germany then we’d likely see more aggressive policies towards China (such as banning their companies from our markets, keeping the tariffs (Biden said he’d end them) - hopefully with other countries similarly implementing tariffs).
The US should be forming a closer relationship with India, to work with them strategically to increase their domestic investment and try to reach some type of parity, economically, with China as a ballast.
We, the US, simply don't have the literal bodies regardless of our economy.
> We, the US, simply don't have the literal bodies regardless of our economy.
Open immigration, create tax incentives for raising children, and start minting new US states. We could close the gap with China and India if we prioritized it. I think it's of strategic importance that we do.
I think your idea is another perfectly valid alternative. I just haven't seen the appetite for it. I know the recent immigration changes were rolled back, but if the crazy requirements instituted a few months ago says anything it's that like 40% of our country are super against the immigration route.
How do people seriously not see the parallels here? The way that the CCP, and most Chinese people, view the protestors in Hong Kong, is exactly the same way that the US Government, as well as most of the US, view the protestors in DC on Weds.
HKers say they want democracy and fair elections. CCP and most Chinese think that's bullshit. MAGAs say they want democracy and fair elections. Most of the US Gov as well as most US citizens think that's bullshit.
CCP wants to ban "disharmonious activity" from social media. HKers think that's a front for suppression of dissent. US Gov wants to ban "hate speech" from social media. MAGA think that's just a front for suppression of dissent.
CCP runs pseudo-secret reeducation camps in Xianjian. US runs pseudo-secret detention camps at Guantanamo Bay.
> The way that the CCP, and most Chinese people, view the protestors in Hong Kong, is exactly the same way that the US Government, as well as most of the US, view the protestors in DC on Weds.
We're not counting the President of the United States as part of the US Government?
> Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before.
People who were at the Capitol have already started being picked off the streets by police. Many of the more prominent people have already been arrested, and there are large scale efforts to identify the rest.
I am sure he will take things seriously over the next couple weeks.
Flag all you want; unlike you donkeys I don’t care about useless internet karma on anonymous accounts. You’re just proving yourself a hypocrite over suppression of speech
HN can block the entire T-Mobile IP block for all I care
Your cognitive dissonance is stunning. “Man who failed upward his whole life will turn it around any minute now.”
They are referring to that fact that Trump is a member of the government that his supporters railed against. Admittedly not wholly fair statement as US is a congressional system, not a parliamentarian with clear cut government and opposition.
Meanwhile his former transportation secretary’s sister is married to Xi. Elaine was briefly in trouble with the media for inviting family to government meetings.
But despite the mass media being a known political collaborator, let’s merely take the content you cherry picked at face value.
Power is in bed with power. Trying to paint one side or another as above that, ignoring facts of biology for political rhetoric is putting your head in the sand.
> How do people seriously not see the parallels here? The way that the CCP, and most Chinese people, view the protestors in Hong Kong, is exactly the same way that the US Government
You need to read more about China. What you believe is simply not true. China is internally focused, The west is externally focused.
Guantanamo is a terrible violation of human rights but it's not a cultural genocide like Xianjiang. It is okay to compare these but absurd to conclude they are equivalent.
Have you actually been to HK or Beijing? I think you will find the way that the way HK protestors are viewed is not very similar to how BLM or the MAGA capital protest is viewed.
Enough of these political posts on HN. If I want to see them I would head to r/news or NY Times. Strongly opinionated conclusion supported by piecemeal information aiming to inspire meaningless online battles with strangers? No thanks.
Everything is political. If you don't think so, it means you're protected by at least some kind of privilege. Rather than denying that, think about what advantages you have in your life that insulate you from the struggles of other people.
Everything is A LITTLE BIT political. And we reserve the right on when to focus on the political or non political aspect. My pancake breakfast has ties to unions, lobbyists, international trade. Guess what, I’m just going to eat my pancakes.
You seem to believe you’ve found some absolute truths: “everything is political“, “disagreement implies privilege“. These systems of logic absolve you of: seeing the gradients of truth, making real efforts in understanding a situation, asking questions, and making up your own mind.
Gradients of truth? If one side says the election was affected by voter fraud and the other side says it wasn't, it's not some enlightened path to say "both sides have a point, so there must have been a little bit of fraud". Sometimes one side is just wrong, either by an honest mistake or by active bad faith.
Some amount of voter fraud can swing an election. You could instead have more fraud in the direction that simply reenforces results. Is that more or less of a fraud problem? Creating fictional voting entities is highly problematic. Casting a vote a second after polls officially close is less problematic. It is enlightened to remember there are no absolutes. This allows one to see nuance rather than believing the only choices are no-fraud or fraud.
I'm a relatively new user to HN. I've greatly appreciated how much more civil the conversations tend to be when compared to reddit. I have noticed, however, that news submissions, especially those which do not inherently have a technological aspect to them, tend to digress into what I can only assume are strongly held, but not adequately supported, opinions on the topic. These are then met by a flurry of flags. Further, submissions such as this one seem to directly contradict the HN guidelines, as it is arguably [1]:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
On one hand, this type of submission is not a new phenomenon and has been submitted to HN multiple times. If you search for Hong Kong arrests on HN, you get dozens of results; for example, [2][3][4][5], etc. On the other hand, I understand why people who feel strongly about this topic want to submit content pertaining to it past an initial submission some months ago.
Your [3] and [4] aren’t about most pro-democracy legislators being mass arrested under the National Security Law, and are irrelevant to the current discussion.
Your [2] and [5] are similar to the current post, and are both 3 days old. So the mass arrest of pro-democracy legislators using the National Security Law IS a new phenomenon: only 3 days old!
You are under no obligation to view or comment on posts that are not of interest to you. Should you care very strongly against a submission or comment, you can always flag them.
Counterpoint. Everyone I meet in SF is against colonialism.
Have you considered that Hong Kong is part of China, was taken as a colony, Democracy was introduced and by supporting a different system of government, in a country that isn't yours, is a form of internalized colonialism?
Our country [The United States] is literally falling apart.
Our biggest problem in the west is our tendency to export our problems. China is internally focused, and will solve its internal problems in Hong Kong. Whether you like it or not. It's simply how they operate considering their 5,000 year history.
> Counterpoint. Everyone I meet in San Francisco is against colonialism.
> Have you considered that Hong Kong is part of China, was taken as a colony, Democracy was introduced and by supporting a different system of government, in a country that isn't yours, is a form of internalized colonialism?
> Our country is literally falling apart.
> Our biggest problem in the west is our tendency to export our problems. China is internally focused, and will solve its internal problems in Hong Kong. Whether you like it or not. It's simply how they operate considering their 5,000 year history.
China itself was built by imperialist and colonial actions. If you truly are against such actions (or if you support treaty agreements) you would support Hong Kong citizens in their attempt to stay some sort of separate entity.
People have this idea that an enormous unified China is somehow natural. The linguistic variation of Chinese is larger than the romance languages today. China being some unified country speaking Mandarin is about as natural as Rome coming back today and enforcing Italian on all its previous empire. I'm not personally arguing that China should break apart, but the "5,000 year history of China" somehow implying that they need to take over everything in the area is just a made-up historical argument to support their current imperialism.
Maybe we can't go back and give Hong Kongers a voice, but we shouldn't pretend like their fate was somehow natural or just. And we shouldn't watch them go down now without a care.
> People have this idea that an enormous unified China is somehow natural. The linguistic variation of Chinese is larger than the romance languages today. China being some unified country speaking Mandarin is about as natural as Rome coming back today and enforcing Italian on all its previous empire.
More drivel by someone who likely can't speak or read any dialect of Chinese and has no idea of history. Rome has been dead for millennia. The last emperor of the Qing dynasty died in 1967.
The Romance "languages" are only considered languages because the Latin alphabet has no way of dealing with natural drifts in pronounciation. Most differences between them are superficial at best. The language spoken in Northern Italy is functionally identical to that spoken in Southern France. It is only because every province sized country in Europe insists on creating their own orthography that they seem different. If you don't believe me just look at Catalan or Cantonese Wikipedia. Despite best efforts by the people writing the articles, they still appear almost identical to standard Spanish and Chinese.
Even if we take your claims about language for granted, The city that Cantonese is named after is on the Mainland, and mainlander Cantonese far outnumber those in Hong Kong. By your logic an independent Hong Kong is as natural as Brooklyn being independent from the rest of New York.
EDIT: You don't have a point and the claims you've made are egregiously wrong. Here's a hint, 1967 >>>>> 395.
EDIT In Response because of comment limits:
> My first point is that Hong Kongers of course should have had the right to vote on the handover back to China. They were not offered that and we can't go back.
In the 60s the Hong Kongese held mass riots against the British in support of reunification.[0] Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland. Most of its residents are only a couple generations removed from the Mainland. This tactic of constantly trying to make some arbitrary strategic region of China seem like it's some cultural enclave is as ridiculous as claiming that maybe "San Francisco isn't preordained to be American". If you think there's some drastic cultural difference the burden of proof lies on you.
> You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.
I am making the point that the linguistic differences between Romance language speakers are exaggerated and nonexistent in practice, not agreeing with you that the linguistic differences in China are significant.
> You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate.
You acted as if China was some newly formed entity, and used it to imply that it isn't natural for it to be unified. The amount of times China has been unified far outstrips the amount of times when a single city that's not even self sufficient infrastructurally has been independent.
> I’ve never heard someone claim otherwise.
How many Hong Kongese and Cantonese have you met? I doubt the number is more than a dozen. You keep doing this unbacked argument that "maybe X isn't shouldn't be a part of China because maybe they have a different culture" without any evidence they have a different culture, likely because you've never encountered their culture in person. The burden of proof lies on you when X has been a part of China for millennial longer than it's ever been indepedent.
You then act as if the Hong Kongese had no say during the handover when they were clearly much more violently in favor of reunification at the time. The scale of the present protests are not nearly as great as the ones in '67.
I honestly have no idea if you're writing this in agreement with my point or in an attempt to contradict it.
edit: Either I was blind earlier or you edited your post.
> Even if we take your claims about language for granted, The city that Cantonese is named after is on the Mainland, and mainlander Cantonese far outnumber those in Hong Kong. By your logic an independent Hong Kong is as natural as Brooklyn being independent from the rest of New York.
My first point is that Hong Kongers of course should have had the right to vote on the handover back to China. They were not offered that and we can't go back.
My second point is that we shouldn't just assume Chinese are some sort of hivemind of people of a single culture. Native Hong Kongers are not somehow culturally pre-ordained to be part of China. Even ignoring that the PRC is breaking its treaty agreement, their voices should not be ignored due to some idea of inevitable PRC rule.
> You don't have a point and the claims you've made are egregiously wrong. Here's a hint, 1967 >>>>> 365.
You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.
You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate. If that's your point, okay I understand your thinking. I don't agree with it (by that reasoning the British have a claim on a lot of the world's territory), but okay then that is your thinking.
Why do you keep editing your post? It’s hard to follow your argument.
> In the 60s the Hong Kongese held mass riots against the British in support of reunification.[0] Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland. Most of its residents are only a couple generations removed from the Mainland. This tactic of constantly trying to make some arbitrary strategic region of China seem like it's some cultural enclave is as ridiculous as claiming that maybe "San Francisco isn't preordained to be American". If you think there's some drastic cultural difference the burden of proof lies on you.
“Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland.”
Linguistically they are maybe no different from mainland Cantonese, but culturally they certainly are. I’ve never heard someone claim otherwise. They were a British colony for generations after all. That obviously left an imprint.
Secondly I’m not sure why you’re bringing Canton in. To say that’s Hong Kong should be part of China because of the Cantonese connection could simply be met with the response that maybe Canton just shouldn’t be a part of China.
Really it’s Hong Kongers that should have decided their fate. Not allowing them to vote was an injustice.
Btw I find it ironic that you bring up Hong Kong protests in support of unification. Well in the last couple years there have been huge Hong Kong protests against further integration. Can I take this to mean you support them in their protests there as well?
>> You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.
> I am making the point that the linguistic differences between Romance language speakers are exaggerated and nonexistent in practice, not agreeing with you that the linguistic differences in China are significant.
>> You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate.
> You acted as if China was some newly formed entity, and used it to imply that it isn't natural for it to be unified. The amount of times China has been unified far outstrips the amount of times when a single city that's not even self sufficient infrastructurally has been independent.
So you agree that there is no natural cultural-linguestic reason for China to be unified in its current form? You argue that the reason to support unification is because of China's past successes in militaristic imperialism support current unification? I mean if that's your point, then I hope more people read this so they understand the facts on the ground. You're basically saying that Hong Kong should be part of China because it can take it. Okay that's at least a consistent argument. I find it extremely immoral, but well I guess the only thing other countries can do is try to stand against China in that case.
I can't follow this anymore. Post replies like a normal person and I'll respond. If not, okay that's fine too. I think we've mostly explained our respective beliefs and positions so it's okay either way.
> Jesus Christ how many times do I have to point out that China is linguistically unified and that the Hong Kongese have no significant cultural differences to justify independence. The burden of proof lies on you to disprove me. Countries don't stay unified for centuries without a linguistic and cultural common ground.
So basically you're just stating opinions as facts and then claiming it's my job to disprove these "facts". Okay fine like I said in my last post we've made our positions clear and I don't see any point in going back and forth. Believe what you wish.
> And I can't reply to your comments because of rate limiting on HackerNews. No need to be extremely passive aggressive about it.
There's nothing "extremely passive aggressive" about pointing out that your posting style is extremely hard to follow. Maybe you should consider posting less frequently so that you're not rate-limited? Anyway I'll stop this discussion here so that you can focus on all the other posts you're apparently making. Maybe the extra bandwidth will allow you to post normally in the other conversations at least.
> There's no way you don't have enough self awareness to notice how passive aggressive this sounds. Besides, you've posted 6 comments in the past hour. I posted 7 in the past day.
The whole world watches during this annexation of Hongkong. Worse, the UN just made CCP a member of their Human Rights Council until 2023. Meanwhile they keep expanding their concentration camps for Uyghurs and even bragging how they decreased Uyghur birthrates by applying "family planning policies".
And again, the whole world watches, this all brings me to the realization that the slogan "Never Again", is just that, a slogan, politicians and people in general throw around to signal. It really disgusts me.
Hong Kong is not China. It only takes a few weeks in each place to see. Was it wrong of the British to take HK as a colony at one time? Yes in the same way it was wrong of them to take eastern North America. Hong Kong—culturally, philosophically, politically, spiritually, virtually in every way—is not China and should not simply be “given” over to them by the rest of the world.
If anyone is looking for a relatively digestible book on China, I can wholeheartedly recommend On China by Henry Kissinger [1]. While he does tend to meander at some points, it gives a solid introduction to China's recent history (arrival of the British, the civil war, up to around 2010) and interactions with the United States throughout. At least, to someone who initially had very little knowledge on the topic.
Thanks for the recommendation! I feel as though On China sacrificed detail to allow for greater scope, and it left me wanting for more information on certain periods.
I'm assuming you're referring to how softly he tip-toes around events like the Tiananmen Square Protests or the massive famine during the Great Leap Forward? If so, I certainly agree with you and many of the Goodreads reviewers in that his approach could be considered overly diplomatic. If anything, I think knowing the weaknesses of the book in advance is advantageous for weighing what Kissinger says throughout.
If not, I'm curious to know your thoughts. My knowledge on China is limited to discussions with family friends who have some experience through their work, and this book, so I would not be surprised to know that I am severely lacking.
178 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadThe problem in the US is not intent but competence. Biden can be relied upon to not e.g. flip-flop as Trump did on North Korea or petulantly ask what the point of a long-term alliance is, and therefore is much better for those countries in Asia who want to resist China but want their major ally not to behave so erratically. In fact, Trump seemed to think of China as a counterparty with whom a ‘deal’ could be struck for his own political purposes:¹ he had no actual ideological objection to e.g. the camps in Xinjiang; Biden, like most members of the blob, at least pretends (probably even to himself!) to consistently and resolutely oppose that sort of thing (the obvious examples of e.g. support for Saudi Arabia notwithstanding), which means far more consistency. And consistency is good for alliances.
0. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/183...
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/trump-uighurs...
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/a...
They extinguish dissent. Not just locally, but abroad. They censor our domestic companies that want a foothold in their market (Disney, Blizzard, the NBA, Apple).
We need to stop taking their money, and we need to move manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and Africa. Strategic manufacturing (medical and tech) needs to be re-onshored.
They're flexing their muscles because they know they will be on top. If we continue the status quo, it's only a matter of time.
We will wind up just like them if we continue to let this cancer grow.
It will be incredibly painful, but we need to stop importing. Now.
We can play hard. Militarize Japan. Strengthen our partnership with Vietnam. Offer US statehood to Taiwan and build a base there. Dispute the South China Sea takeover, start building oil rigs, and police the area.
Be a better ally to Europe and our democratic partners.
edit: Here come the anti-US downvotes. We're overrun with the enemies of democracy. It doesn't matter if you're a liberal of conservative - we have to unite to protect our precious, priceless freedom.
I agree, but we need to show teeth. We have to shut down their domestic growth engine, crater nationalistic confidence, and make them understand they have no path forward but to concede to international pressures.
The Chinese people deserve freedom and liberty. The Uyghurs and Tibetan people deserve self-determination should they themselves choose it.
Look what playing nice and friendly has gotten us.
China imports food and energy. They don't produce enough to meet their own needs.
Their population is largely male, old, and they're not having children. As more reach retirement age, growth will be diverted to take care of the elderly.
Their domestic economy is a mystery. Investing in Chinese companies is a risk. They like to show positive numbers, but can they be trusted?
Shut off their imports and stop buying from them, and they'll have lots of trouble.
How I see it. Let's say, russia dared to enter a real multi-battle direct war with usa, to take alaska, and is winning a bit more each day. When would usa say "we give up, please take the alaska, we will not use our nukes?". - Immediately after the start while there are no casualties? - after 1k casualties on both sides? - after going to total war mode, when each side bombs industry complex'es and later cities on the other side?
Backing down would say "nukes are not deterant anymore. Same thing can be done to us again."
btw. Nukes can be used, not only on cities, but also on fleets and divisionsand camps.
So the only way nukes would be not used if victory would be very instantaneous and total, which does not seem probable.
Wait, wait, wait.
That's not a fact, and in fact a known piece of propaganda.
First. Even, an all out nuclear exchange in between superpowers, in an unrealistic scenario without counterstrikes, and zero nuclear attrition, a superpower like US, Russia, or China will "only" loose a low single digits of population.
Communist countries not only wouldn't hesitate to do so, but have a history doing that to themselves.
USSR killed at a minimum 10% of its own population with fully intentional punitive starvation. Mao did the same, and Pol Pot have beaten both.
Second. Even after a nuclear exchange, both superpowers would have at least a half of its military functioning, and very, very angry.
Third, after exhausting all nukes, and high-tech weaponry, both countries would proceed to a long, and exhausting conventional war, which will kill way more people than any nukes can.
It's time to adapt to Chinese leadership and extract benefits of democracy and freedom which they don't have. Too late to keep trying to oppose it.
Example: Chinese military shipbuilding delivers more tonnage per year than the rest of the world combined. And they don't even try all too hard.
China will simply own the world in the XXI century, probably concentrating the majority of worldwide economic output in every sector of production and consumption, in as little as a generation from now.
What's left to be done is to cave in - try to be as little dependent on them as possible, make hot war unattractive to them - by being as little of a threat to them as possible, and by having little of interest for them to take too, and in general self-isolate.
On the good side of things, Chinese are very unlikely to proselytize the way U.S. does or the way Soviet Union did: they understand very well that Maoism is linked to the traits of Chinese national character and will not work outside of East/Southeast Asia. They just seek to become, and will become what they always seen themselves as being: the Middle Kingdom where all interesting things happen, with the rest of the world being just a side story. Think 1960 USA. 30 years down the road, we will for sure see it happen.
A virulent strain of communism, a disease that plagued Europe for close to a century, and even managed to put up roots of its more violent forms in the New World.
You say Maoisim-Communism is only a Chinese problem?
Not convincing at all.
Maoism is nothing like that. It is despised by everyone including China's closest neighbours both culturally and geographically - even by Vietnamese who are sort of Commies themselves. Vietnam is willing to ally with the U.S. - who it lost millions of people fighting with 50 years who and who's completely opposite to it ideologically on paper - only to avoid Chinese bullying.
But, it seems to be a good way of government for China. It works there. Nothing at all worked in China in the previous 150 years of trying, nothing else allowed to marry industrial civilisation and Chinese national character. KMT figured an alternative but only when they were already stuck to Taiwan, and only with the massive U.S. aid (which would be insufficient for Chinese mainland even under best assumptions), and only because most of Taiwanese are part Japanese and their culture had a strong Japanese influence.
Ofc, Dick Nixon also helped a lot.
DPRK, Indonesian Maoist insurgency, Malaysian Maoist subversion, Singapore coup attempt, Burma, Laos, Campuchia, Nepal, India Naxalite insurgency, Albania, South Yemen, South Peru insurgency, Brazil Araguaia Guerrilla War, ~10 African countries
Vanilla communism: USSR, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba, 5 African countries.
Compare.
>"police the area."
So you basically want to start a process that will most likely lead to a "hot" war. And you of course would not mind countless lives lost as the result on either side.
It is nice to know we have such peaceful and rational thinkers here on HN.
*typo: "way" -> 'war"
1. I don't believe Taiwanese want to be part of the US. They already have their own country. 2. The US shouldn't counter the Chinese imperialist ambitions of annexing Taiwan by doing something that could be viewed as the same thing. 3. It's not really necessary for what you want. The US could enter an open alliance with Taiwan if it wanted to making a Chinese declaration of war against Taiwan a declaration of war against the US. 4. The US should make a stand that the independent country of Taiwan has a right to exist and support that right alone not precondition on joining the US.
I could go on, but I think this "Taiwan becomes a US state" thing that I see repeated a lot is just plain silly.
the chinese will view it as a declaration of war.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: this is worse than I thought. You've been posting tons of comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25700845. HN is not a site for nationalistic flamewar. If you keep doing this we're going to have to ban you. No (to address the objection someone is bound to come up with), I'm not a communist foreign agent. I'm just trying to spare this site from descending further into hell—or at least to stave that off a little longer: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
Pissible and _guarantees_ - You can pretty much shorten it to "possible". There is no guarantee in here.
Opening US base will be much closer to guarantee. But this is mute. I think/hope that US/Taiwan are not that stupid and do not start their morning routine by planning what's the best way to provoke war with China.
OP is calling to resist China’s rise unless they become the world’s leading power while also simultaneously being an opponent of free expression.
Many in the world do not support free expression, they have their propaganda.
Some in the world support free expression, they have their propaganda.
The likely equilibria of human behavior is the former, due to human tendency for wanting to control ones neighbor’s behavior.
Liberal democracy on the 10,000 year arc of history is more than likely a blip that disappears.
I actually see a lot of things happening domestically and globally as a regression to the mean of human civilization.
These mass arrests are just China getting ready to annex Hong Kong as soon as "the wheel" is in the hand of the guy they already know will no nothing.
Germany / Merkel (because she is the one who determines German foreign policy de facto) will not do anything that is against German business interests. As of 2021, Germany is neither left, nor right, neither liberal, nor conservative - on the international scene, it is a purely business-oriented nation.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-drive-for-eu-china-...
Who is gonna stop them? Nobody.
The Chinese had no obligation to sign the 1980s treaty to get HK back, and were hardly intimidated by the UK’s 1980s military might to do so (I mean an British admiral said about the Falkland war: “if not for a few defective fuses we would have lost”. Against Argentina. Pretty pathetic)
The UK was delusionaly saying it might not give HK back to commies (understandable sentiment, surely) and the commies signed something to let the Brits save face.
About HK:
There’s nothing we can do.
Deluding ourselves that there is weakens us
We must contain the CCP, but HK is not it.
Maybe it's time to de-colonise Hong Kong and just give it back to the Chinese properly?
It's not our business how they conduct their internal affairs.
Secondly, here is such a thing as human rights, and westerners believe that such a thing is worldwide. We should not close our eyes to the wrongdoing that is done to our fellow human beings.
[1] https://www.uschina.org/reports/us-exports/national
The Biden Administration will hand Hong Kong (and Taiwan) over to the CCP, just like they did with a part of the Phillippines 8 years ago.
It’s also unclear why Taiwan should be “recovered” at all, they were two factions of the cultural revolution sure, but that doesn’t mean they should be unified now any more than the UK should “recover” America.
we can of course disagree with china. but ignoring what they want is...i don't know...naive?
Infact all other concessions except HK and Macau were returned to Chinese about the end of the war.
If one day situation permits it, Canada will become 5X US state.
The laws of man, including international law, treaties and borders, are made up and can be change with enough will or force.
Not century old. And not at gunpoint.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
This is probing ahead of attacking Taiwan.
Do you understand that the West mostly sanctions itself when it tries to sanction a country which:
1. Has surreal trade surplus with it.
2. Supports nearly entire consumer spending part of your economy.
3. Provides most of your light industry goods.
4. Buys a big chunk of your debt.
This is why I was saying that China can easily do a blunder, after a blunder, and still outmatch the West economically, and you need something other than simply sanctions.
They would've to be hard enough to make it more cost effective to create a new production line in another nation over buying the sanctioned goods.
Not without consequences for the consumer and political suicide if attempted... but technically possible
The key word here is other options. Are there any?
China on other hand has many other options than the US market. They will have no problem redirecting things like household goods, and other light industry products to other markets without impact to its industrial capacity.
That's what has happened in 2008, and indeed worked marvelously for them in the end.
When the American economy was flopped, they simply took all those luxuries destined for sale to America, dumped them on developing markets, and adjusted quality-quantity balance for this target market.
Yes if you ask about them at the right place, like https://www.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/
You're correct that more than sanctions are necessary, you need to also invest in the infrastructure and production of goods that your society primarily relies on. There's tons of space for innovation and improving efficiencies in this space via automation, vertical and horizontal integration, reducing planned obsolescence, etc. There's an incredible amount of waste in our societies, along with other types of pollution we must address. All this requires is work, which means jobs, and adequate organization and appropriate directing of resources.
China is not subject to the first amendment, you don't like it, make your own country!
So now that Biden is practically in power, it makes sense that the CCP innitiates the process for the annexation of Hong Kong in the comming month.
My guess is that, before the end of the Biden term, the CCP will have made a move on Taiwan as well. And the West will not do anything about it other than "a strongly worded letter".
This is also the reason China took hardline on Hong Kong as they see it as strategic weak spot. Moreover actions of China in Hong Kong are supported by majority of people in China. This tyranny of majority exists in democracy too, what happened in Kashmir is 100 times worse than HK.
Given the way US president pardoned people who committed genocide in Afganistan and killed scores of kids and unarmed civilians. There is hardly any ground left for them to teach others.
No real death in over an year of violent protests by police firing in Hong Kong vs 5 deaths in capitol building siege speaks volumes about the professionalism with which Hong Kong police handled the protests.
China is built by hard work of its people not by CCP [1].
May be work there for a while and than you can see why Korea, Japan and Greater China did so well not others in growth. It’s easy to talk rhetoric, but hard to do hard work to bring about transformation.
[1] https://danwang.co/2020-letter/
The Chief Executive election has been delayed for 2 decades requiring the CCP to "pre-filter" candidates which the public rejected.
The legislative council election has been controlled by disqualifying candidates as well as the mass arrest of 53 pro-democracy candidates for simply organizing the primaries and engaging in debates. [3]
TLDR; China wasn't as strong in 90s so took a softer stance. Later decided to go back on its words so had to find ways to control the elections or the results.
> No real death in over an year of violent protests by police firing in Hong Kong vs 5 deaths in capitol building siege speaks volumes about the professionalism with which Hong Kong police handled the protests.
This is not true. After witnessing the 2019 movement and the real police behavior captured on live tv/news[4], I have a much better understanding of the Stanford prisoner experiment.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law [2]https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/chapter_4.html [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_Legislative_Cou... [4]https://tl.hkrev.info/en/police-timeline/
People who support govt and not protestors their shops, restaurants, businesses vandalised and were constantly harassed. It became politically impossible to voice against the protestors due to fear of violence, know this first hand not by talking but living through it.
Please read the Basic Law and also the extradition bill [1]. Extradition being better was still opposed and ultimately National security law was passed to give teeth to administration to stop violent protests.
It’s the vehement majority of Hong Kong people who gave rights to reinterpret Basic Law to stem the flow of people from mainland China (since court of final appeal was going to allow spouses and children of Hong Kong residents from other parts of China to settle in HK). This is the same provision used for implementing National security law. So in HK people got what they asked for and also majority Chinese supported this action on HK. So like any democracy like USA and India a law which appease majority pass easily same happened here.
[1] https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr18-19/english/bills/b201903291.pd...
> So in HK people got what they asked for and also majority Chinese supported this action on HK. So like any democracy like USA and India a law which appease majority pass easily same happened here.
Both statements are false. The first reinterpretation of the Basic Law on the right of adobe in 1999 wasn’t the result of ANY DEMOCRATIC PROCESS involving the majority of Hong Kongers.
Some polls may show that a large fraction of Hong Kongers prefer the RESULTING VERDICT on right of adobe, but the reinterpretation is unlike any democratic process as in the US or India, that has a rigorous and formal voting process. And certainly not a majority of Hong Kongers support repeated interpretations of the basic law by people not directly elected in Hong Kong.
The end doesn’t justify the means. You have confused the end and the means.
You mean Hong Kong people wholeheartedly supported the spouses and Children to settle in Hong Kong from other parts of China in millions?
Even if you support violent protestors please don't be double face, even during one year of protests there was a constant call for throwing people from other parts of China back to China from Hong Kong, they were called locusts and what not.
The reinterpretation had a majority support of Hong Kong people and they liked that Tung Chee Hwa was able to stem the flow (instead of court of final appeal which in earlier ruling allowed spouses and childrent to settle in HK) and make it limited to 150 people / day instead of over million moving to HK.
> Democratic Process
Hong Kong is not a democracy, UK never granted it autonomy and always controlled it with appointed chief executive. With handover at least China made the committee which selected the chief executive. So not sure which is more democratic an appointed head by UK or a person elected by people from various sections of society (although it's flawed as most or rich and has allegiance to China, but it's still better than what UK had in Hong Kong).
Source for your claim?
Contrary to your claim, “The Democratic Party strongly believes that reinterpretation of the Basic Law by the NPCSC is unacceptable” https://books.google.com/books?id=1nccBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=...
> UK never granted it autonomy and always controlled it with appointed chief executive
UK didn’t grant democracy to Hong Kong because of the threat from China. China is to blame, not UK.
Quotes from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu...
> beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
> Chinese leaders were so opposed to the prospect of a democratic Hong Kong that they threatened to invade should London attempt to change the status quo.
The way to slow China's growth most efficiently is through economics; it's not the people of China that we want growth to slow for, the purpose and intent is to take power away from the CCP - to free the people of China, as in America and other Democracies, we inherently trust - have faith - that individuals can make the right, good, best decisions for themselves.
"Moreover actions of China in Hong Kong are supported by majority of people in China" - this is the functional result of control-oppression systems on free speech with threat of a spectrum of potential harm that can come to you, your family, even your place of work. This isn't the positive argument point you think it is. The CCP can control the narrative and suppress the truth as they see fit.
"Given the way US president pardoned people who committed genocide..." - this is a very weak argument considering the US compared to the China is an apples to oranges comparison to begin with: every 4 years the US has an election vs. in China it's the CCP in control always; this is a weak foundation to argue from on its own. It's an even weaker argument when you don't understand that Democracy - and the freedom to vote - is literally polling the population to understand that state of the union, of the nation, their health and their beliefs. Trump is a symptom of multi-generational dis-ease progression, where the efficiencies of capitalism, along with the duopoly that's been able to form and solidify - along with the regulatory capture that has occurred for 4+ decades, industrial complexes and bad actors tightening their grip of society by extracting more and more resources from the average person, and allowing suffering and dis-ease progression to occur. Mainstream media has played a role as well, the amalgamation of it into just a small handful of controllers - for TV and newspapers - has allowed the narrative to be more easily controlled; not as much as the CCP's control but it gets close to it, resulting in only 2 main narratives - of the duopoly. It’s incorrect, a mistake to believe Trump is America, he simply made his way up through broken-weak systems that I just described - that exist via currently inadequate policy, this current state - status quo - that we can and have learned from - and will evolve from with new, updated policy to help steer, right this ship called America.
Sorry but the "no deaths" is a false dichotomy - the treatment of these people can be like of the Uighurs if they don't fall in line with whatever rules they want to enforce; and certainly the CCP will be looking into everyone in HK's past to then see what they should do with them on a case-by-case basis.
"China is built by hard work of its people not by CCP." - you're injecting an argument that that makes it seem like I or other people believe Chinese people aren't hard workers? I bet no reasonable person would put forward that argument, no reasonable person would think Chinese people are lazy. It sounds more like propaganda/narrative that the CCP would want to perpetuate to try to demonize the "other" - so the Chinese population will think "we" think lesser of them, to cause them to dislike, be angry with, or hate "us."
The majority of reasonable people of Democratic nations only want the best for the Chinese people, and the majority are reasonable - however there are for example the ~74 million Americans who have been mislead, manipulated, by Trump, the captured Republican party and mainstream media that these people watch - to believe Trump was the answer to "Make American Great Again" - except Trump isn't an entrepreneur or a businessman, he's a con artist and a pathological liar, and archetypical narcissist; someone like Andrew Yang, who...
Chinese system is different politically and it’s hard to say it’s good or bad for its people, given on the ground it has proved good for majority with suppression of minority (see the same happening in any democracy too, tyranny of majority). So unless democratic system can really save its minority they can’t be on higher ground. Also if one needs over a billon dollar to fight election and win top positions there are favours to be done, like what happens in two largest democracies of India and USA. So every system has its positive and negative.
If you want to bring about change in China then may be go there do something great for the people and if they find it better than existing system for their livelihood and better life they will change.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_...
If you truly believed the Chinese people were strong, capable, if you truly believed the CCP system would be what the majority of Chinese people would want (once their fear is diminished) the CCP's control in place, then the CCP should become a Democratic nation where people can vote - where you trust your people, and the current government not have fear or fear their people. In fact the reason there isn't a voting system is the CCP knows that their citizens wouldn't vote the CCP in, and whatever truths they're trying to keep hidden will be able to come to light - whether the majority of those truths are relatively benign or malicious in nature, I don't know - whether the CCP keeps records of all of their behaviours or not, I don't know either.
Tyranny of majority? That's not tyranny. If the majority of people vote in a legitimate, fair polling with adequate systems in place to make sure there isn't cheating/fraud - then the direction of who they voted for is what the majority want and policy will be changed/evolve based on whomever is currently in power. This is in fact a feature of Democracy, not a bug. Voting is literally polling to see the state of the union and what people's current beliefs and understanding of everything is, to understand how they're doing personally - are they suffering, are they thriving, etc; it's like a Litmus test to see where on the spectrum of abundance vs. scarcity mindset they are, state of health vs. dis-ease state.
Re: "So unless democratic system can really save its minority they can’t be on higher ground" - Yes, yes they can be on higher ground - and that happens because ultimately the government, party - the group of people/politicians who's policy and policy proposals align with the benefit of EVERYONE in the population - not just those who voted them into power will result in a higher quality of life for EVERYONE; the party who wins power, gets into government, and who attempts to punish or suffocate their non-voters (Republicans/Trump and party who clearly, multiple times attempted to harm Democratic voting states) is the opposite of this, and will cause non-voters and other citizens to start voting, the impetus will exist and strengthen because their suffering and ability to survive is lessening to a degree that they realize the system needs change, a course correction for the ship called America.
"Also if one needs over a billon dollar to fight election and win top positions" - Indeed, you're correct but Democracy is evolving and the duopoly that has formed due to current policy can be EASILY broken apart with the correct policies; Andrew Yang, who was a Presidential candidate, and his core policies are what will lead to the duopoly to break apart - along with disempowering the few mainstream media channels the maj...
It’s just that the Hong Kong police is better at cover-ups.
A female protestors was found fully naked and dead at sea. A whistle-blower police officer confessed on a KBS documentary that the case was initially investigated as a murder case, but the higher-ups later forbade murder investigation, and hastily classified it as a “suicide”. [0]
Another man was seen suspiciously thrown out of a window at a disciplined services quarters (whose tenants are mostly police) [1], and yet the case wasn’t even investigated.
Neither of these cases is definite proof of Hong Kong police killing protestors. And yet without proper investigation, you can easily hide casualties even when there are.
I must stress that guns are forbidden in Hong Kong, whereas guns appeared in the Capitol Hill on Jan 6 among some protestors. It’s not surprising that Hong Kong police may have a milder response than the US police. You can’t compare apples to oranges.
[0] https://youtu.be/7y8f3l2Eve8?t=542
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/eo1l01/zoomed_ver...
What can an individual do to help Hong Kongers? Any suggestions?
How many firearms, and ammo you can buy, and how many politicians you can lobby? Even if you are a single digit millionaire, that's just enough to arm, and feed no more than a single lightly armed battalion for a few months.
I see other option than a military solution, either limited, or not.
Even if any Western power decide on half hearted piecemeal solution like smuggling weapons into to China, and rile up the populace, it will only bleed China a very, very little. China easily endure waging a civil war the size of Syrian, and continue growing economically like if nothing happened.
How would you feel if I advocated for arming communist rebels in your country? It's disturbing how normalized calls to violence are on HN when the violence happens far away.
Maybe the point is that armed people in a democracy is not that big of a deal, but armed people in a dictatorship can be a real problem.
You can scroll down a couple posts to see people being outraged that those who stormed the Capitol had weapons and bombs with them. I wonder how cavalier your attitude remains when the guns are pointed at your face. Then again second amendment fanatics like you are already totally fine with school shootings.
I was just pointing out the fact that "arming US fanatics" was a funny statement because they can just go out and buy guns anyway.
It sure is. HK was my favorite city. Great place. I liked to live in China too, but left when Xi got into power, because it was all too obvious, even 10 years ago, what would happen.
The turn to nationlism, xenophobia, and imperialism under Xi is insane. And the lack of reaction to it in the West (with the exception of the Trump administration) is even more insane.
Although it wasn't too obvious. As you might already know there's movie called Ten Years made in 2015, imagining 2025 HK after CCP erosion on culture, human rights and rule of law. 2017 me thought[0] it was an "exaggeration". Now it's just been upgraded to one of the most prophetic movies.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776951
Support companies that voice support for those oppressed by the CCP (such as ProtonVPN, Notepad++).
Vote for politicians that are not afraid to stand up to CCP (I for instance voted for Trump despite having my political views mostly align with Sanders - solely due to his anti-China stance.. you can of course also argue that his administration has singlehandedly done more to stand up to China than the rest of the world combined in the past couple decades).
Spread awareness of China’s atrocities. If more people realized that CCP are even more evil and dangerous than Nazi Germany then we’d likely see more aggressive policies towards China (such as banning their companies from our markets, keeping the tariffs (Biden said he’d end them) - hopefully with other countries similarly implementing tariffs).
We, the US, simply don't have the literal bodies regardless of our economy.
Open immigration, create tax incentives for raising children, and start minting new US states. We could close the gap with China and India if we prioritized it. I think it's of strategic importance that we do.
HKers say they want democracy and fair elections. CCP and most Chinese think that's bullshit. MAGAs say they want democracy and fair elections. Most of the US Gov as well as most US citizens think that's bullshit.
CCP wants to ban "disharmonious activity" from social media. HKers think that's a front for suppression of dissent. US Gov wants to ban "hate speech" from social media. MAGA think that's just a front for suppression of dissent.
CCP runs pseudo-secret reeducation camps in Xianjian. US runs pseudo-secret detention camps at Guantanamo Bay.
Etc. etc. etc.
We're not counting the President of the United States as part of the US Government?
Please watch this Pompeo speech if you want to know how the Trump admin feels towards China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7azj-t0gtPM
That requires not considering the US President to be part of the US Government for it to be true.
I'd link you to the video of him saying this, but Twitter deleted it so I can't.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/democrats-tru...
> Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2021/01/08/alaska-sen-lisa-murk...
I am sure he will take things seriously over the next couple weeks.
Flag all you want; unlike you donkeys I don’t care about useless internet karma on anonymous accounts. You’re just proving yourself a hypocrite over suppression of speech
HN can block the entire T-Mobile IP block for all I care
Your cognitive dissonance is stunning. “Man who failed upward his whole life will turn it around any minute now.”
Right, that’s how brains work. Sure
But despite the mass media being a known political collaborator, let’s merely take the content you cherry picked at face value.
Power is in bed with power. Trying to paint one side or another as above that, ignoring facts of biology for political rhetoric is putting your head in the sand.
You need to read more about China. What you believe is simply not true. China is internally focused, The west is externally focused.
The GOP has a gerrymandered mathematical advantage and still lost.
At what point to the unaligned and left leaning folks, who won by majority vote, get to have their voice heard?
When did evidence become optional?
What a hypocritical joke this forum is
“But you disagreed with my contrived narrative, despite it containing rants about censorship! ban”
Words mean nothing. Literal reality defines truth.
Have you actually been to HK or Beijing? I think you will find the way that the way HK protestors are viewed is not very similar to how BLM or the MAGA capital protest is viewed.
This is called minimizing/minimization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimisation_(psychology) https://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/02/23/minimiza...
This is a perfect illustration of the privilege I was talking about, thank you.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
On one hand, this type of submission is not a new phenomenon and has been submitted to HN multiple times. If you search for Hong Kong arrests on HN, you get dozens of results; for example, [2][3][4][5], etc. On the other hand, I understand why people who feel strongly about this topic want to submit content pertaining to it past an initial submission some months ago.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25654143
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20846681
[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23698247
[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25654803
Your [2] and [5] are similar to the current post, and are both 3 days old. So the mass arrest of pro-democracy legislators using the National Security Law IS a new phenomenon: only 3 days old!
When political posts like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661474 are allowed on Hacker News (by virtue of a “new phenomenon”), I guess this post can live on, too.
You are under no obligation to view or comment on posts that are not of interest to you. Should you care very strongly against a submission or comment, you can always flag them.
Have you considered that Hong Kong is part of China, was taken as a colony, Democracy was introduced and by supporting a different system of government, in a country that isn't yours, is a form of internalized colonialism?
Our country [The United States] is literally falling apart.
Our biggest problem in the west is our tendency to export our problems. China is internally focused, and will solve its internal problems in Hong Kong. Whether you like it or not. It's simply how they operate considering their 5,000 year history.
> Have you considered that Hong Kong is part of China, was taken as a colony, Democracy was introduced and by supporting a different system of government, in a country that isn't yours, is a form of internalized colonialism?
> Our country is literally falling apart.
> Our biggest problem in the west is our tendency to export our problems. China is internally focused, and will solve its internal problems in Hong Kong. Whether you like it or not. It's simply how they operate considering their 5,000 year history.
China itself was built by imperialist and colonial actions. If you truly are against such actions (or if you support treaty agreements) you would support Hong Kong citizens in their attempt to stay some sort of separate entity.
People have this idea that an enormous unified China is somehow natural. The linguistic variation of Chinese is larger than the romance languages today. China being some unified country speaking Mandarin is about as natural as Rome coming back today and enforcing Italian on all its previous empire. I'm not personally arguing that China should break apart, but the "5,000 year history of China" somehow implying that they need to take over everything in the area is just a made-up historical argument to support their current imperialism.
Maybe we can't go back and give Hong Kongers a voice, but we shouldn't pretend like their fate was somehow natural or just. And we shouldn't watch them go down now without a care.
More drivel by someone who likely can't speak or read any dialect of Chinese and has no idea of history. Rome has been dead for millennia. The last emperor of the Qing dynasty died in 1967.
The Romance "languages" are only considered languages because the Latin alphabet has no way of dealing with natural drifts in pronounciation. Most differences between them are superficial at best. The language spoken in Northern Italy is functionally identical to that spoken in Southern France. It is only because every province sized country in Europe insists on creating their own orthography that they seem different. If you don't believe me just look at Catalan or Cantonese Wikipedia. Despite best efforts by the people writing the articles, they still appear almost identical to standard Spanish and Chinese.
Even if we take your claims about language for granted, The city that Cantonese is named after is on the Mainland, and mainlander Cantonese far outnumber those in Hong Kong. By your logic an independent Hong Kong is as natural as Brooklyn being independent from the rest of New York.
EDIT: You don't have a point and the claims you've made are egregiously wrong. Here's a hint, 1967 >>>>> 395.
EDIT In Response because of comment limits:
> My first point is that Hong Kongers of course should have had the right to vote on the handover back to China. They were not offered that and we can't go back.
In the 60s the Hong Kongese held mass riots against the British in support of reunification.[0] Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland. Most of its residents are only a couple generations removed from the Mainland. This tactic of constantly trying to make some arbitrary strategic region of China seem like it's some cultural enclave is as ridiculous as claiming that maybe "San Francisco isn't preordained to be American". If you think there's some drastic cultural difference the burden of proof lies on you.
> You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.
I am making the point that the linguistic differences between Romance language speakers are exaggerated and nonexistent in practice, not agreeing with you that the linguistic differences in China are significant.
> You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate.
You acted as if China was some newly formed entity, and used it to imply that it isn't natural for it to be unified. The amount of times China has been unified far outstrips the amount of times when a single city that's not even self sufficient infrastructurally has been independent.
> I’ve never heard someone claim otherwise.
How many Hong Kongese and Cantonese have you met? I doubt the number is more than a dozen. You keep doing this unbacked argument that "maybe X isn't shouldn't be a part of China because maybe they have a different culture" without any evidence they have a different culture, likely because you've never encountered their culture in person. The burden of proof lies on you when X has been a part of China for millennial longer than it's ever been indepedent.
You then act as if the Hong Kongese had no say during the handover when they were clearly much more violently in favor of reunification at the time. The scale of the present protests are not nearly as great as the ones in '67.
> So you agree that t...
edit: Either I was blind earlier or you edited your post.
> Even if we take your claims about language for granted, The city that Cantonese is named after is on the Mainland, and mainlander Cantonese far outnumber those in Hong Kong. By your logic an independent Hong Kong is as natural as Brooklyn being independent from the rest of New York.
My first point is that Hong Kongers of course should have had the right to vote on the handover back to China. They were not offered that and we can't go back.
My second point is that we shouldn't just assume Chinese are some sort of hivemind of people of a single culture. Native Hong Kongers are not somehow culturally pre-ordained to be part of China. Even ignoring that the PRC is breaking its treaty agreement, their voices should not be ignored due to some idea of inevitable PRC rule.
You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.
You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate. If that's your point, okay I understand your thinking. I don't agree with it (by that reasoning the British have a claim on a lot of the world's territory), but okay then that is your thinking.
> In the 60s the Hong Kongese held mass riots against the British in support of reunification.[0] Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland. Most of its residents are only a couple generations removed from the Mainland. This tactic of constantly trying to make some arbitrary strategic region of China seem like it's some cultural enclave is as ridiculous as claiming that maybe "San Francisco isn't preordained to be American". If you think there's some drastic cultural difference the burden of proof lies on you.
“Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland.”
Linguistically they are maybe no different from mainland Cantonese, but culturally they certainly are. I’ve never heard someone claim otherwise. They were a British colony for generations after all. That obviously left an imprint.
Secondly I’m not sure why you’re bringing Canton in. To say that’s Hong Kong should be part of China because of the Cantonese connection could simply be met with the response that maybe Canton just shouldn’t be a part of China.
Really it’s Hong Kongers that should have decided their fate. Not allowing them to vote was an injustice.
Btw I find it ironic that you bring up Hong Kong protests in support of unification. Well in the last couple years there have been huge Hong Kong protests against further integration. Can I take this to mean you support them in their protests there as well?
> I am making the point that the linguistic differences between Romance language speakers are exaggerated and nonexistent in practice, not agreeing with you that the linguistic differences in China are significant.
>> You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate.
> You acted as if China was some newly formed entity, and used it to imply that it isn't natural for it to be unified. The amount of times China has been unified far outstrips the amount of times when a single city that's not even self sufficient infrastructurally has been independent.
So you agree that there is no natural cultural-linguestic reason for China to be unified in its current form? You argue that the reason to support unification is because of China's past successes in militaristic imperialism support current unification? I mean if that's your point, then I hope more people read this so they understand the facts on the ground. You're basically saying that Hong Kong should be part of China because it can take it. Okay that's at least a consistent argument. I find it extremely immoral, but well I guess the only thing other countries can do is try to stand against China in that case.
So basically you're just stating opinions as facts and then claiming it's my job to disprove these "facts". Okay fine like I said in my last post we've made our positions clear and I don't see any point in going back and forth. Believe what you wish.
> And I can't reply to your comments because of rate limiting on HackerNews. No need to be extremely passive aggressive about it.
There's nothing "extremely passive aggressive" about pointing out that your posting style is extremely hard to follow. Maybe you should consider posting less frequently so that you're not rate-limited? Anyway I'll stop this discussion here so that you can focus on all the other posts you're apparently making. Maybe the extra bandwidth will allow you to post normally in the other conversations at least.
So then you're lying about being rate-limited?
Well it’s not 2040, they broke the treaty, that fully is a justifiable offence.
If we are sure that dictatorship brings misery and eventual failure, we should be happy about what's going on. They will be worse off and we, better.
And again, the whole world watches, this all brings me to the realization that the slogan "Never Again", is just that, a slogan, politicians and people in general throw around to signal. It really disgusts me.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9328314-on-china
Here's the author's obituary, it does a nice job summarizing his expertise on the subject https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-richard-baum-...
I will wholeheartedly not recommend anybody to read Kissinger.
The man has completely imaginary idea of what China is, and even more so about its leadership.
I can only lament at the fact that now multiple generations of Western politicians, and diplomats were grown upon his coolaid.