What we've seen in Hong Kong over the past couple of days has been coming for some months. It's been inevitable, and now it's happening. I don't envy the student activists who are now trapped in the university there. They're either going to disappear into Chinese detention camps, or they're going to die there. They have no other options left.
Hong Kong police have fought running battles with protesters trying to break through a security cordon around a university in the city, firing teargas at anyone trying to leave.
Polytechnic University, a sprawling campus that has been occupied by demonstrators since last week, has become the scene of the most prolonged and tense confrontation between police and protesters in more than five months of political unrest.
Hundreds were still trapped inside on Monday, after overnight clashes during which protesters launched petrol bombs and shot arrows at police who threatened to use live rounds.
. . .
The People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, published an editorial on its front page saying there was no room for compromise: “What we are facing today is a struggle between safeguarding ‘one country, two systems’ and destroying it.
“On an issue involving national sovereignty and the future of Hong Kong, there is no middle ground and absolutely no room for compromise.”
Hong Kong is experiencing its most serious political crisis in decades after the government attempted to push through a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China, seen by many as another move to extend Beijing’s control over the city.
Protests over the now withdrawn bill pose a direct challenge to China, which governs Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” framework.
There's more at the link.
I find the relative lack of coverage of this crisis in the US news media to be damning in its deafening silence. They're all kowtowing to Beijing's financial influence. The Washington Post's slogan, since the election of President Trump, is "Democracy dies in darkness". That's precisely what's happening to democracy in Hong Kong right now, as you read these words . . . and the Washington Post and its competitors are aiding the darkness to kill it (even if only passively, through their deliberately understated reporting), because they've been bought off by the allure of Chinese money.
I've seen this in several nations before (and when I say "seen it", I mean I've been there and watched protestors killed). I saw it in South Africa in 1976 and subsequent years. I've seen it in Zimbabwe. I've seen it in Congo. I've seen it in West Africa. It may have differed in detail from what's going on in Hong Kong right now, but the essentials of the conflict remain the same. Those in power are determined to hold onto it at any cost, no matter how great. Those who are shut out of power are protesting, demanding a greater say in their own future. They won't be allowed to get it, because any crumbling of the facade of power will only encourage others who want the same thing in different areas.
China cannot - dare not - risk rebellion breaking out in other provinces. It'll gladly perpetrate another Tiananmen Square massacre rather than submit to the protestor's demands.
When Britain gave Hong Kong back to China, due to the expiration of the 99-year lease it held over the New Territories (making the remaining tiny scrap of land it held there untenable, because it would have lost almost all its workforce and economic activity across the newly extended Chinese border), it concluded a treaty with China guaranteeing "one country, two systems". The democratic nature of government in Hong Kong was supposedly guaranteed, with the rights of its citizens (far more extensive than those in the communist mainland) protected. Well, that's lasted about two decades . . . but now it's over. China cannot and will not tolerate two systems if that poses a threat to the dominance and control of the Communist Party over the people.
We are watching the death of democracy in Hong Kong. What's left, when all this is over, will be nothing more than a hollow shell, a public relations sham that they call "democracy" but which is, in fact, totalitarian.
We should learn from Hong Kong's death throes, and be on the watch against the efforts of the radical and progressive left in the United States to control our thoughts, words and deeds. That, in essence, is exactly what Communism is all about. If we tolerate its methods here, they will inevitably lead to the same fate for our constitutional republic, unless we are constantly vigilant and prepared to defend it.
Peter
The Hong Kongese never really had a chance. There is nothing we could possibly do here to change that. Even if there were live feeds 24/7, which there basically are, but on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteI blame Soros and the Open Society project for the current unpleasantness there. The protesters got 90% of what they wanted, but the brainwashed kids at the university just had to keep attacking the police. As you said, the Chinese government cannot just let that pass.
It all started because a murderer, OK, a man suspected of murdering his girlfriend, in Taiwan, chopping her up and burying her.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of videos of the so-called protesters attacking people who disagree with the protests: using pipes, stabbing, setting on fire.
They stopped being protesters many weeks ago and have shown themselves to be Asian antifa types.
Democracy - to the extent that it ever existed in Hong Kong at all - died on the first coif July 1997.
ReplyDeleteWhat new have been watching lately has been the Mainland Chinese government screwing their economy into the ground. investment money is going to do a salmon spawning run away from Hong Kong and not come back (I read elsewhere that this is, in fact, already happening).
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the Chinese economy is in serious trouble, and that the government is also. China has historically has cycles of breaking into pieces controlled by competing warlords, and my (largely uneducated) gut tells me this may be on the brink of happening now.
The various governments of China's history have mostly treated the common people like farm animals, the resent bunch being to exception. Chinese people have usually lived their lives in spite of whatever bunch of authoritarian swine were nominally running the country.
That democracy will truly die in the darkness of no media coverage and Chinese control of the Intarwebz over there...
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'm surprised that it's taken so long. I really figured about 5 years, top, before this started.
ReplyDeleteIt will be a while yet, but I suspect there are going to be a lot of suddenly empty apartments in Hong Kong. And we'll never hear about that in the US media, either.
I’m not sure what the HK protesters were trying to do after the bill was withdrawn.
ReplyDeleteChina does have provocateurs in HK.
The lack of coverage in the US Press amazes me. Uguirs Coverage, I can understand, it’s in the middle of no where. But basically no HK coverage? Shows how corrupted the us media is.
Just like the Epstein coverage.
Not to mention the yellow vest coverage.
I am surprised I can get even more cynical / not trusting of the msm, but they keep rubbing their biases in my face.
The smart Chinese, on both sides of that border, have been desperately funneling money into the US, and a few other countries, for some years.
ReplyDeleteIt's apparent that the Chinese economy is a house of cards, and when it falls, their government may go with it. Those currently in power are also hiding money overseas, in case they lose control. The outbound flow of funds by so many is also adding stress to the situation. Any significant downturn in the US economy will trigger a collapse there, which seems not to occur to them, judging by their efforts to harm us in various manners.
Any US business with investments there are foolish.
Just one more reason for citizens to buy rifles and pistols and shotguns, and pallets of ammunition.
ReplyDeleteI keep hearing people say that the US ought to "do something" about Hong Kong, but I've yet to hear anyone say what the US could possibly do that would not make things ten thousand times worse for far more people.
ReplyDeleteRoot issue is that the Chinese people in general have the sort of government that they deserve; they tolerated Mao, they participated in the things like the Cultural Revolution that Mao perpetrated, and they've always acted to keep the Communist thugs in power. You never hear of the Chinese people ever so much as criticizing their government or themselves for the things going on in Tibet or with the Uighur situation. The Han are all for it, and the other minority populations just look the other way and whistle, grateful that someone else is getting the attention.
Biggest mistake the US ever made was engaging with the Chinese. We should have left them to themselves to figure out their own problems. All we've done is make the criminal class in China wealthy, and enabled tyranny. As such, we're going to pay the price, probably with a huge war that's going to do to us what WWI and WWII did to the British Empire. At this point, I am not sure what other outcome is out there, because the Chinese are certainly not going to go away quietly the way the Soviets did. Their nomenklatura knows damn good and well they're going to die like dogs, because that's how they've trained the populace, and that's how it all works, in China: Lose the Mandate of Heaven, lose your life.
Can't say that the greedy bastards of the world don't deserve it, though... It's going to be interesting to watch, assuming we don't wind up going up in nuclear flame because of it all.
Peter Zeihan’s books and YouTube videos show that China may collapse soon. Hong Kong will just speed it up.
ReplyDeleteThe result wasa foregone conclusion. It's an object lesson to the rest of the world that China is an iron hand in a velvet glove and the firm action strengthen's Xi's position. You don't mess with the Chinese state.
ReplyDelete