General News Regarding China & Hong Kong

[Birdjaguar]

So you approve of breaking the law to achieve political ends but think differently about illegals living and working here alongside citizens as they contribute to the economy. Ok.

Way to ascribe a position to me that I haven't expressed.

It like you are arguing against your own idea of what I believe rather than what I actually say.

Ok then, do you subscribe to the first part of my post?

 

[Commodore]

My roommate, who did a stint in the Army and fought in Afghanistan, says we're likely screwed in any future war because we had mercenaries (Blackwater is the company he mentioned) go out and teach our tactics all around the world, including, he specifically mentioned, to the Chinese.

Yeah, I'll admit that is one of the downsides of essentially being a superpower for hire.

 

[Takhisis]

OK, back to Hong Kong…

As an American, I do feel we should be compelled to do something to help them in their struggle against a large, powerful tyrannical government. Not only because it's the right thing to do, but because of our own history. France answered our call for aid when we were fighting our freedom, so it only seems right that we do the same for Hong Kong.

The political chaos and rising inequality in the US and especially in the UK are being used as textbook examples in China for ‘why democracy is bad™’. Said countries engaging in direct aggression against the Chinese autocracy would only legitimise and energise opposition to democracy.
Also, about the French call for aid… didn't the newly-born US claim that it was free of its massive debts to France because the French had abolished the monarchy?

I don't know what more you'd expect the UK to do, unless you're talking about pre-1997 actions.

Yeah, they never should have given it up to China. They should have either maintained control of it, or granted Hong Kong independence. What was China going to do in 1997? Invade? Not likely. The Chinese military in 1997 was large, but also poorly equipped, supplied and trained and had no significant blue water navy. They were in no shape to risk starting a major war over Hong Kong.

The problem is that this wasn't agreed to in 1997 but over a decade earlier with Margaret Thatcher's corrupt government. Corrupt meaning, for example, that her son was receiving bribes by the million (in early 1980s money!) to help arrange arms deal to extremist regimes such as the Saudi Arabian monarchy.
In 1976 an Argentine military junta took power and one of its lesser-known acts of grandstanding was to send some troops to occupy some British-claimed uninhabited islands in the South Atlantic. The British government's reaction was to privately offer to return the Falkland Islands to Argentina; meanwhile, Argentina's Junta had been replaced by another, one that was turned desperate by two internal factors: one was its lack of legitimacy stemming mostly from economic mismanagement of nearly Maduro-Venezuelan proportions, and the other was their own paranoia deriving from heavy alcoholism. This resulted in the Junta deciding to go for an effectist blow and seizing the Falkland Islands by force. The Falklands war ensued, the British still pretend to this day that they'd never acknowledged Argentine sovereignty claims as legitimate, but they realised the fact that, had they not counted with an ally on Argentina's literal border (Chile) and incompetence even greater than Custer's among Argentina's officers they'd never have recovered the islands. A year or two later the UK government decided to ‘return’ Hong Kong to China.

Why do I put brackets around the word return? China had ceded Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity, leased Kowloon to them in perpetuity during the Opium Wars and then leased the New Territories as well (rent-free) for 99 years in 1898, right when China had been humuliated in the first Sino-Japanese War (1895) and was granting concessions under duress to any foreign power that cared to. The Communist Party denied any claims of legitimacy to the Qing (Traitorfish knows the details better than I do), so the legal claim by the PRC to Hong Kong was dubious. The British decided to sell off the entire colony to the Chinese and I'd seriously like to see it investigated… I mean, it's not as if the PRC hadn't bribed Donald Trump himself while he was in office, eh?

 

[abradley]

What more fitting time to see this film.

The revolution is continuing in Hong Kong.

I watched the movie on KissAsia, it's the full 2 Plus hours, the above link is edited.

 

[Kaitzilla]

1.7 million protestors in the rain yesterday.
Largest protest in history?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Peaceful enough to to be scary to government.

 

[red_elk]

It's China, a million of people is just a local townsfolk meeting by their standards

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's China, a million of people is just a local townsfolk meeting by their standards

Yes, but it is a huge slice of HK's 7 million population. A 25% turnout for street demonstration is significant.

 

[Takhisis]

1.7 million protestors in the rain yesterday.
Largest protest in history?

You mean ‘display of unpatriotism and subordination to foreign interests deserving of re-education and/or in vivo organ harvesting’.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes, but it is a huge slice of HK's 7 million population. A 25% turnout for street demonstration is significant.

And they've sustained it for weeks now.

 

[Commodore]

And they've sustained it for weeks now.

And making my life at work hell.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

How so?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The political chaos and rising inequality in the US and especially in the UK are being used as textbook examples in China for ‘why democracy is bad™’. Said countries engaging in direct aggression against the Chinese autocracy would only legitimise and energise opposition to democracy.

I get that killing/disappearing anybody who doesn't tow the 1-party line has some inherent stability, but I'm not convinced it's desirable.

Is China *actually better* in terms of inequality? It'd be hard to claim that any action would "legitimize" opposition to democracy when the ruling part in question is worse about the thing it claims other forms are bad at. First two pages of results give mostly junk news/opinion pieces, with some claims that either the US or China is worse because reasons. At least on the face of it, this isn't something that the Chinese government could "legitimately" claim its model is consistently better at preventing than democracies as a whole.

That said, I'm tired of US poking at sovereignty of other countries. The track record of intervention has been dismal, and every time we do this in areas with strategic resources or meaningful world competitors and ignore Africa the "humanitarian angle" remains doubtful...rather any benefit of the doubt in that regard must have been gone decades ago.

 

[Commodore]

How so?

I run our company's global security operations center and we have facilities in Hong Kong, so I have to constantly monitor the situation and give reports every four hours to the executives on the situation. That's on top of the million other things I have to get done.

 

[Takhisis]

I get that killing/disappearing anybody who doesn't tow the 1-party line has some inherent stability, but I'm not convinced it's desirable.

Is China *actually better* in terms of inequality? It'd be hard to claim that any action would "legitimize" opposition to democracy when the ruling part in question is worse about the thing it claims other forms are bad at. First two pages of results give mostly junk news/opinion pieces, with some claims that either the US or China is worse because reasons. At least on the face of it, this isn't something that the Chinese government could "legitimately" claim its model is consistently better at preventing than democracies as a whole.

It would legitimise opposition to democracy if correctly woven into the official narrative; remember that China already has an extremely coercitive social surveillance system and is getting away, internally, with the occupation and genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet, using a combination of disinformation and doublethink.

As for inequality, given Chinese tampering with their official statistics and announcements, I honestly cannot say, but I very, very strongly suspect that their numbers are nowhere near as good as they claim.

That said, I'm tired of US poking at sovereignty of other countries. The track record of intervention has been dismal, and every time we do this in areas with strategic resources or meaningful world competitors and ignore Africa the "humanitarian angle" remains doubtful...rather any benefit of the doubt in that regard must have been gone decades ago.

I think that Africa's not being ignored; China's been making inroads in Africa and the Americas (financing dictators and other corrupt government structures, helping them oppress their citizenry, exploiting their natural resources) and the US wants to do all those things uncontested, so some of the right-thinking minds™ want a confrontation. :/

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think that Africa's not being ignored; China's been making inroads in Africa and the Americas (financing dictators and other corrupt government structures, helping them oppress their citizenry, exploiting their natural resources) and the US wants to do all those things uncontested, so some of the right-thinking minds™ want a confrontation. :/

Obviously Africa in totality isn't ignored, but HUMANITARIAN arguments/justifications for US military involvement seem to get sucked into some kind of alternate dimension as the dictatorships in question get further away from areas of strategic interest.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh come on, people have stopped pretending that humanitarian issues are an issue. Decades ago.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh come on, people have stopped pretending that humanitarian issues are an issue. Decades ago.

I don't know. I've yet to hear any US president, even the current one, outright claim that we're drilling for oil in the middle east with bullets, or that the purpose of a particular military intervention is to maintain the strength of the dollar, etc. Even if nobody believes it, there's still an attempted pretense of motives that aren't self-serving.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't know. I've yet to hear any US president, even the current one, outright claim that we're drilling for oil in the middle east with bullets

The current president has lamented our lack of access to Iraqi oil post-invasion. I'm sure if either of us went googling we could find more direct quotes of him claiming we're there for the oil as it's not outside the realm of the many stupid things he's said. And the paraphrase is close enough as is.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The current president has lamented our lack of access to Iraqi oil post-invasion. I'm sure if either of us went googling we could find more direct quotes of him claiming we're there for the oil as it's not outside the realm of the many stupid things he's said. And the paraphrase is close enough as is.

I see. I take it back if he dropped the pretense.

But pretense is all it ever was.