This is yet another violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the treaty between China and the U.K. defining how Hong Kong will be handed over to China[1]:
> Hong Kong would maintain its existing governing and economic systems separate from that of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".
The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties.
The big loophole is the provision for China's intervention in matters of "National Security".
This is exactly what has been used to craft very vague language that basically allows authorities to treat anything that goes counter to China's official line as a "threat to National Security".
It's so vague that self-censorship is now omnipresent in what was, just a few years ago, a bastion of freedom of speech in Asia. Newspaper and political figures are afraid of being targetted for their perceived dissent, and there is no real recourse, with pressure on judges to fall in line.
It is a farce of course, but there will be no international action. The British have no recourse to enforce the treaty. China will invade HK with tanks before they release their tightening grip on it, and the world will watch and do nothing of course.
It's not just democracy that is under threat in HK. There never was any to start with. It's plain freedom of speech that is under threat.
Direct military action isn't the only recourse. It would be a pretty dangerous course of action.
There are a lot of Chinese investments in the UK that could be seized, as well as information warfare, travel restrictions, trade restrictions and Cold War style proxy wars.
Also things like giving HK BBO holders a route to British citizenship, which has high levels of support across the political spectrum and could probably be expanded further.
UK has all means to successfully use force, and secure its gains - that's the military reality on the ground.
It has an amphibious force to land a division, more with requisitioned civilian vessels, and it has thermonuclear weapons to threaten chokepoints — more than enough to get the peninsula.
UK is not a small military. With mobilised territorials, and first line conscripts, it will be as much as 10-12 divisions ready on short order.
During the Yugoslavian war there was a stand-off between the Russians and some American troops around the Pristina airfield.
"The following morning, Sunday 13 June, Clark arrived at Jackson's HQ in Skopje. It was pointed out to Clark that the Russians were isolated and could not be reinforced by air and that Russian support had been a vital part of getting a peace agreement; antagonising them would only be counterproductive. Clark refused to accept this and continued to order that the runway be blocked, claiming to be supported by the NATO Secretary-General.[2] Jackson refused to enforce Clark's orders, reportedly telling him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you."[5] When again directly ordered to block the runway, Jackson suggested that British tanks and armoured cars would be more suitable, in the knowledge that this would almost certainly be vetoed by the British government. Clark agreed."
What you are suggesting here is that the British would start World War III of their own accord and that Nato would follow them if they did so.
It is an interesting question on how to deprogram the pro-communist party populous. All the brainwashed types I’ve ever spoken to believe the most insane things despite otherwise being intelligent people. E.g. Covid was made by the US to frame China. They also seem to conflate criticism of the CCP with Chinese people in general. I suspect many of the people behind the troll pro-China accounts commenting here are doing this (or they’re just paid). (Guys, CCP is anti-Chinese people. If you love China, don’t support this oppressive regime because one day they’ll come for you and your family.) How do we overdone this?
> All the brainwashed types I’ve ever spoken to believe the most insane things despite otherwise being intelligent people.
This is a general problem, not limited to China. A good percentage of the world population is ready to believe just about anything, no matter how outrageous. Witness the whole COVID denial movement as one example.
Why do people think that Chinese nationalism is a result of communist propaganda?
Why would it be wrong or unexpected for people to go to war if their country was attacked?
The Chinese have seen their country invaded and sold piecemeal and have been striving to 'fight back' and to stand on their own two feet. That reaction started before the communist party was even created and the party is just an expression of it.
You can check with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Philipines and other SA countries. I don't see Chile being hostile towards Spanish or Americans. A lot of these countries have in common though. They have different form of government. Perhaps, trying to be peaceful and forgiving would go a long way than trying to be mecha-ultra-vibranium-wolf-eagle?
A land invasion by the Britain into China would be suicide in modern times lol. I have no doubt they are brave and talented soldiers and they would do some damage but in the end quantity has a quality all its own. NATO would not follow them into that madness.
I am all for it as long as you are in a front line. As far as I remember by your posts you are always itching for action. Do the world a favor. Put your money where your mouth is and sign up for active duty.
The Sino-British declaration was a way for the UK to save face and to sell the handing over of HK. It's naive or disingenuous to claim that China would do anything but whatever they wished to within a Chinese territory.
Ultimately HK will be fully reabsorbed back into the rest of China. That was always the plan and that was always going to happen. That said, HK is still separate so China is still broadly abiding by the declaration.
What the West needs to realize is that China is no longer a pushover that can be bullied at will. There is still a whiff of colonialism when Western media discuss HK.
Exactly how is this a breach of the agreement? Formally this is done by the HK government/police. Is a breach of the general principle of two systems, or is there a more specific clause that is breached?
> a country thousands of miles away had a temporary foothold on Chinese territory
To effectively argue that "Hong Kong is of course part of China because it's right next to it on the map" opens the gates to all kinds of jingoism. Just for the record, to me the Falkland war was a war between two imperialist countries. Contrary to what was popular belief among my peers back in the day, I did not and do not think Argentina has more rights to the Falklands than the UK just because it's "right next to it" and not "thousands of miles away" like the UK.
China is always adamant that this or that region is "a natural part of China". For some reason people have to come to accept the state of affairs regarding Xinjiang, Tibet, the Spratly Islands. If they don't change their minds then there will be no stopping the fascist juggernaut. Mongolia, parts of northern India, Taiwan and Vietnam are to China what Belgium, Poland and so on were to the Germans in 1939.
Your intentional aversion to the full context doesn't help anyone understand the situation.
When people do not understand any context, they are lead to believe the situation is absurd and is occurring for no reason at all.
Full context allows the public to have a sense of things.
Here is an honest attempt building a storey via several separate but related facts:
(1) In the 1800s, Europe had essentially lost a tradewar with China. The Chinese economy was somewhat of a marvel of the 1700s-1800s, studied by US presidents and founding fathers like Ben Franklin even.
(2) The UK couldn't produce anything the Chinese wanted to buy (a goal to help the UK economy), but ultimately hatched a plan to smuggle a well-known deadly and addictive drug into Chinese ports: Opium, which has been known to grow well in the India colony / Afghanistan and is also related to heroine / morphine / opioids.
(3) The UK's drug smuggling cartel via the British East India Company and backed by their navy eventually causes huge problems for Chinese citizens and their every day life. People are dieing. The Chinese government then organizes special anti-drug smuggling operations to end the illegal drug cartel's drug smuggling.
(4) War starts. The Opium Wars. Plural. The UK navy steps in, the Chinese military was defeated, and this was all to force the Chinese to permit the UK drug cartels to continue operating. Part of the treaty ending one of these Opium wars allows Hong Kong to be leased to the UK for them to set up an offensive post on Chinese territory from which to continue poisoning the Chinese public.
(5) HKs economic miracle was propped up by drug smuggling and money laundering and tax haven status. It wasn't much of a miracle. Drug smuggling and tax dodging are universally condemned both in the West and China.
(6) The public in HK is losing features of Western civilization (like a free press and anti-beijing school programs) as they transition back to governance by the broader Chinese civilization.
(7) There IS a small degree of turmoil as HK society is re-organized, but it should be understood in context. Transition from Civ A to Civ B, who both have completely different systems of law.
I wouldn't say that. I would argue this is a lot more like the WW1 relationship to WW2. The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries.
In short, China's leadership today has pressure to right historical wrongs. We, as Westerners, should work to understand them so that we can make sense of their behavior as a nation state.
China has two major historical enemies with wrongs that the leadership can stand up to:
(1) The UK for the opium wars (and the 100 year fallout).
(2) Japan for WW2 (and, you know, the whole genocide / killing babies for sport thing).
When the CCP does anything involving these two nations, you can always assume the history and the pressure on the leadership is a factor.
I know that taking things in context in this way is unpopular among folks who are looking to just sling mud at China. I aim only to provide further context to the intellectually curious who may be wondering how or why.
My posts do not justify or take a side, they merely aim to provide a more expert understanding of the motives and reality.
They actually do, and consistently so. You are from where I'm sitting consistently arguing China's case without a word of consideration for the people of Hong Kong.
I am more and more convinced that all this historical and revanchist arguments are just convenient post hoc justifications for existing autocratic and imperialistic tendencies. The case of HK fits perfectly with the general development in china but it is supposed to be because of the opium wars?
With a country like china which claims thousands of years of history you can always find historical pretext for anything and everything.
Except this is about nation state behavior, context, and geopolitics spanning decades rather than some series of small unrelated events.
See my other reply. I am not excusing the behavior of treaty breaking so much as I am saying their leadership has pressure to behave in this way due to the mandate to "right historical wrongs" versus their enemies who killed and attacked them.
I am not the world's leading expert on China, history, or political science -- but I would guess that the fentanyl smuggling operations they are doing are directly related to points (1) through (5) and are some form of revenge in the eyes of their leadership. It probably isn't a coincidence that fentanyl is an opioid, is killing countless Americans, is being laced onto random pills and foods sold, and is all being done by China's intelligence agencies. You know, maybe these events are related!
You are suggesting that leadership decisions in China follow public opinion? Surely it is the other way around. The whole point of this story is that the CCP retains an iron grip on what the public does or doesn't learn.
Precisely. First feed the public a bunch of baloney for the last 50 years, then turn around and say that you need to satisfy public opinion and that just so happens to align with your plans. Who would have expected that?
Regardless of one's feelings towards China, this statement from the US state department, themselves a part of the conflict, more or less describes the events in almost exactly the same way.
15-20 years ago I naively thought that many of the Big Tech companies would stand against this type of censorship. Sadly I was wrong and didn’t understand how important it was to have access to the Chinese market and the importance of China’s low-cost manufacturing for these companies as well.
Today, the Big Tech companies might not actively support this kind of censorship, but they aren’t aggressively working against it as I thought they would 15 years ago.
As time goes by it’s going to become clearer and clearer that selling out western manufacturing to exploit cheap Chinese labour - a project endorsed and embraced by both major parties in Washington - was the single worst decision in the history of liberal democracy. It’s hollowed out both middle America and the American middle class, and instead of bringing democracy to China as Neo-liberals predicted, it’s instead enabled and is leading to the hegemony of the largest and most powerful totalitarian regime mankind’s ever known.
Fifteen years ago big tech's bottom line depended on a lack of censorship. Now it depends on censoring in some areas. Treating companies as anything other than barely-restrained sociopaths is always a mistake.
Hong Kong is over. It is quickly becoming a real-estate grab for mainland Chinese. It won't be long before this incredibly rich and deeply unique culture will die off. It really is quite sad. I don't think there is anything that can be done. These people can fight for their rights, but they won't get any help and it will only ruin their lives. Western media will praise these fighters of justice, but will not do anything to help.
In Judo one uses the momentum of the aggressor against them, and I wonder if the west could do something analogous in this situation.
E.g. quietly accept the new oppression, but actively seek out and assist anyone in HK who wants to leave to gain access to high quality human capital and good will.
The resulting collapse of HK as it empties could be shown to everyone interacting with China that this could be their future.
In the book “A blue print for revolution” they described how you can use a regimes paranoia against them.
The best way is through humor. A great example is the Winnie the Pooh meme. The meme wasn’t even that funny but the CCP’s reaction to it is absolutely hilarious. It made Winnie the Pooh an anti CCP symbol and it raised global awareness of the CCP’s authoritarianism.
Winnie the Pooh won’t overthrow the CCP by itself, but the process of revolution is slow and you have to play the long game.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".
Democracy is one of the few things to be an absolute good thing.
It have many flaws, but still I would't live in a dictatorship like the one established by URSS or Chinese Communist Party, where you could easily disappear if you say something troublesome for people in power. This is not just power organization, it's plain survival.
To the bigger question, since world border defining wars have become an historic unacceptable concept, how much power should be given to smaller subgroups into shaping their own, and the larger group, policy and borders
What you say applies to the Kowloon New Territories north of Boundary Street and the outlying islands (and it wasn't 100 but 99 years but I digress).[1] It does not apply to Kowloon south of Boundary Street and Victoria / Hong Kong Island.
>"The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties"
"The West" had long realized that the might makes right. Once country has achieve certain level of power the only thing that makes those to adhere to some treaty is their mutual willingness. If country does not see any it can and will ignore it. There is no abstract enforcer up above that can make parties of that level stick to the agreement.
What is propaganda about this story? Not once have I read a noticeably biased piece from Reuters.
That's because they are a wire service and sell to both sides of the political spectrum (including chinese state media by the way, you'll find reuters cited as source or they use the pre-made articles from reuters' news wire)
> Hong Kong would maintain its existing governing and economic systems separate from that of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".
The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration