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HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

jeromecohen.net

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Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#101

Post by codedokode »

Bakary wrote: post #63
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong still has a huge advantage compared to mainland cities with respect to its liberties and legal framework, making it often the better place to do business than say Shanghai or Shenzhen. However, the CPC is quickly eroding these advantages.

These help a lot to be sure, but the city has gone from having an economy that was almost a third of the mainland's in 1993, to a fifth at the handover, to less than 3% today.[0] It is still important but no longer crucial to China. In a generation or so, it will be just another city among dozens. The idea that rights and liberties are absolutely essential is a nice bedtime story we can tell ourselves, but if there w…

Well, China of course can make Hong Kong "a city among dozens" if it tries hard, but today a citizen of Hong Kong has an average income of $46 000, while a Chinese citizen only $8 960 [1]. For comparison, in Korea an average income is $28 000 and in Japan it is $38 000. But I agree that Chinese government definitely is able to lower the income of the citizens to Chinese average within 20 years.

> The idea that rights and liberties are absolutely essential

First, they are absolutely essential for higher quality of life. You cannot measure it with just GDP per capita or income per capita. For example, Middle Asian oil-selling countries might have high income, but life is not very pleasant there, especially if you are a woman, a gay, a journalist or part of any other minority.

Also, it is more difficult to make business in authoritarian countries because of excess control over any activities which creates opportunities for corruption. For example, in China to release a mere smartphone game, the developer first has to approve the scenario and characters in the government (yes, they really have such requirements). Of course, officials have no motivation to hurry because it is you who is losing profits, not them. And you have to repeat the procedure when releasing an update.

Also, in authoritarian countries the government typically tries to gain control over any large enterprise, and after that the profits are going to nobody knows where (but the friends and relatives of officials supervising the enterpsie suddenly become successful eneterpreneurs) and the losses are compensated from the budget.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nomi...

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#102

Post by codedokode »

egao1980 wrote: post #23

How this is worse than US extraditions / kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad? Never mind Assange there are plenty of people arrested outside of US and moved to US prison.

What do you mean? If America is abusing its power for evil purposes then its fine if China does the same?

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#103

Post by codedokode »

gamblor956 wrote: post #67
egao1980 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the guys in Gitmo. Though they might be not nice and totally guilty nobody bothered to formally charge them.

The guys in Gitmo were captured on the battlefield so the alternative is that they could be dead. But let's focus on the lack of process in taking them captive instead of just killing then.

There are international treaties about handling prisoners of war. The thing is that US found a loophole not to admit that they are prisoners of war. What US did is similar to what their enemies like Taliban do.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#104

Post by codedokode »

contempt wrote: post #97
egao1980 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the guys in Gitmo. Though they might be not nice and totally guilty nobody bothered to formally charge them.

it is my understanding that those who ended up in gitmo are typically associated with, and placed there under the understanding that they are suspected to be associated with actively violent "terrorist" organizations (the actively violent rogue groups is the point here, not the terrorist label, whatever that means lmao). It's not just people expressing dissenting opinions disappearing. This seems very very very diffe…

They were threated worse than the prisoners of war are exepected to be treated. This is a weak excuse. An army is a violent group too, do the soldiers deserve such treatment when captured?

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#105

Post by _ki7l »

iamdelirium wrote: post #26
egao1980 wrote: post #23

How this is worse than US extraditions / kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad? Never mind Assange there are plenty of people arrested outside of US and moved to US prison.

The article doesn't talk about the US or Assange at all. Why are you even bringing it up?

[flagged]

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#107

Post by dang »

yellowapple wrote: post #99
dang wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this tired trope on HN. The threads are bad enough without it. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I appreciate that you're trying to maintain HN as a place for civil intellectual discourse, but I'd argue that people in these threads constantly implying China to be beyond criticism because "well the US does bad things too" is the actual "tired trope" here, not the people rightly calling out that fallacious logic and labeling it as what it is.

They both are. There's no law of conservation of tired tropes.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#108

Post by yellowapple »

dang wrote: post #107
yellowapple wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that you're trying to maintain HN as a place for civil intellectual discourse, but I'd argue that people in these threads constantly implying China to be beyond criticism because "well the US does bad things too" is the actual "tired trope" here, not the people rightly calling out that fallacious logic and labeling it as what it is.

They both are. There's no law of conservation of tired tropes.

Fair enough, but at the very least both should then be called out as such, no?

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#109

Post by dang »

yellowapple wrote: post #108
dang wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They both are. There's no law of conservation of tired tropes.

Fair enough, but at the very least both should then be called out as such, no?

Sure, but we can't come close to moderating everything, or even seeing everything. I've certainly replied to many such comments on HN. If you see a particularly bad one that didn't get scolded, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it.

Re: HK's extradition law: Not just HK people have reason to fear Chinese “justice”

#110

Post by dang »

egao1980 wrote: post #39
naringas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the USA ("Western") system has to at least fabricate some charges or destroy the target's reputation. the PRC doesn't seem to have such 'cumbersome' restrictions.

Tell that to the guys in Gitmo. Though they might be not nice and totally guilty nobody bothered to formally charge them.

Could you please stop using HN primarily for political and ideological battle? It's not what this site is for, and it looks like you've been doing it exclusively. We ban accounts that do that, because HN exists for intellectual curiosity, which is destroyed by this sort of thing.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You might also find these links helpful for getting the intended idea:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

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