81–90 of 323 posts
I agree completely. In European/Anglo countries, the ruling elite give back. Check out Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, the large parks and gardens throughout the great countries of the world. The ruling elite in Asia don't care about others.
I love both these comments. China doesn't have private ownership. it's still communist, right?
I really think HK is over, as in it will never return to its peak glorious days. Much of the prosperity of HK came from being a middleman between China and the rest of the world. That position is eroding because China is slowly opening up. For example, of the top 5 container ports, 3 are in mainland China and HK is #5 [1]. HK was the busiest as recently as 2004. Why ship to/from HK when you can ship directly to/from China?
Much of the ruling elites (many of whom are/were businessmen or have business ties) understand this, and realize China has a lot more soft power over HK than what the Basic Law guarantees. The end game is clear, HK will become just another Chinese city, the Establishment is hoping that by pandering to mainland, they can slow down the process and maintain their self-interest. The more positive way to think about it is, if China allows, HK can become the Shanghai of the south instead of a little brother to Shenzhen.
Meanwhile, the poor. I grew up quite poor in HK and a family of 4 shared one studio. The kitchen and bathroom were shared with another 4-5 families. 4 of us slept in ONE bunkbed. Life got much better after I was 7, because we moved to public housing in the suburb. You see, there's always a big divide between the rich and the poor, but all the public subsidies made life bearable.
A big part of HK's government revenue come from land sale [2]. And land is more valuable when it's not used for public housing. That and immigration means the wait to get public housing is getting longer and longer [3]. Immigration is supposed to increase revenue too, but as mentioned because a big part of revenue come from land sale and immigration doesn't increase the amount of developable land, the overall effect is smaller.
Normally one way to deal with this is impose immigration quota, but I looked into this a few years back and apparently for family reunion, HK government does not control the quota and have to accept however many the mainland sends over. For obvious reasons many in HK have family-ties in China so politically having a smaller quota would not be popular either. I don't have numbers to prove this, but there's a general sentiment that infrastructure is not growing fast enough to accommodate population increase.
I don't know what HK can do honestly. Politically it's in an impossible situation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port... [2]: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp110.jsp?tableID=193&... [3]: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/artic...
Britain is the genesis of freedom. Go read the Magna Carta. Other Western European countries also spread fantastic ideals. Non-Western countries have ZERO freedoms, and people are crawling over themselves to move to the West. DESPITE, these "colonial powers" leaving 40-50 years ago, those populations want to move to Europe, the US, Australia/NZ, and Canada.
No: - Britain's own level of freedom doesn't reflect how they've treated colonies in the past. See: all of history. - The UK isn't as free as many other Western nations. See: their track record on surveillance (although everyone is catching up there), or even Theresa May literally saying "I’ll rip up human rights laws that impede new terror legislation" quite recently. - Founding documents rarely mean anything when i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say that the biggest difference in terms of the political situation is that the people in Hong Kong are Chinese, and Hong Kong is part of China. Palestinians aren't Israeli (and Israel even talks about population transfers to remove Arab citizens), and Palestine isn't considered part of Israel (Israel's stance seems to be "we control this land and maybe some of it is part of Israel but maybe part of it isn't"). W…
I don't know about that. 1.7 million (20%) Israeli citizens are Israeli Arabs, many of whom are close relatives of people in the West Bank.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that their degree of extreme nationlism is inversely related to the amount of time and # of family members who are here. That's why a few other members say their anecdotal evidence hasn't seen that much extreme pride - I suspect the people they are talking about have spent 5-10 years here at least, and arrived here in the late 90's-early 2000's when China was still weak and not as rich. Try talking to new g…
I highly doubt there could ever be any coherent "US strategy", but let's say there is/will be one. So you are suggesting the way to "deal with the Chinese" is to let more of them move/live in the west? Looks like the US has been doing that for quite a while, so nothing seems in need of any change...
An example of the first to adopt such ideals, would be Japan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was trying to compare the political situation, not quality of life, which as you mention is vastly different. My comparison is more that: -China controls Hong Kong with only limited local say in the government. Israel also controls the West Bank, with limited Palestinian Authority control of certain matters. -Hong Kong can't have a military or conduct foreign affairs and isn't internationally recognized (same as We…
You've made me think about this ! I recently had to pass between Canada and the US and I, too, was forced to enter a checkpoint where I was held by someone carrying a gun, who asked invasive questions about why I wanted to cross into a different territory and I had to satisfy the guard that I was not going to present any threat and that my purpose for travel was legitimate. Like a fool, I previously believed this was…
1) Many people. Look at Brexit. You can argue until your face turns blue that it's bad for Britain, it most likely is, but at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules. It's pro-self-determination no matter how you look at it. 2) Why should Britain stand up for Hong Kong? They're imperialists while they hold on to it, and then cowards when they give it back to China and say? 3) Almost invariable yes.…
> at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules I have some bad news for you about the House of Lords.
Compared to the reputation for far-seeing technocratic excellence that it acquired in the foreign business press, the CCP leadership has always been astonishingly short-sighted when it comes to foreign policy. The Taiwanese are taking note of what 'one country two systems' means in practice - absolute submission to the ruthless, brutal oligarchy in Beijing. The CCP will crush Hong Kong, destroying everything that mad…
That's not their plan anyway. The parallel tracks for dealing with Taiwan are
1) building ever-closer economic dependency, and then punishing Taiwan every time it elects pro-independence leaders, so that Taiwan has no choice but to elect pro-reunification candidates for the sake of economic security and
2) gradually muscling the US out of the region and building naval capabilities so that if 1) doesn't work out, they can take it back by force.
How Taiwan feels about "one country two systems" doesn't really matter to China.
1) Many people. Look at Brexit. You can argue until your face turns blue that it's bad for Britain, it most likely is, but at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules. It's pro-self-determination no matter how you look at it. 2) Why should Britain stand up for Hong Kong? They're imperialists while they hold on to it, and then cowards when they give it back to China and say? 3) Almost invariable yes.…
> but at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules I guess you are referring to the European Commission that is an executive branch of the EU institutions i.e. a government. Guess what - in most cases people have no control over who becomes a member of the government - in best case they can vote for a person who becomes a leader of the government (say president in US). In that regard the selection of…
The difference is that the European Commission can create binding law that preempts national law, in the form of regulations.