Hong Kong Leader Backs Down on China Law But More Protests Planned

Let's look at this logically.

"We shall not hesitate to take positive action to have Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories liberated..."

liberated - freed from enemy occupation.

OK What could China do to achieve that? Break diplomatic ties? Economic sanctions as a huge importer of HK goods and services whilst 50s China's economy was a broken mess? Close the already mostly closed border? Write an angry letter?

What's left?

Invasion. What possible alternative interpretation can you suggest? Military blockade and starve them out? That's effectively war too, but with a much greater chance of escalating if you militarily prevent other nation's shipping...

"However, the present status of Hong Kong is to our benefit" ... "Through Hong Kong we can trade..."

Clearly the Chinese benefited from the huge economic success of Hong Kong so preferred not to invade or bomb the place to oblivion. They'd already backed off destabilising the Hang Seng as they got far more benefit from that decadent Western capitalism. The whole Chinese propaganda around the democracy of Hong Kong is exposed as blatant lie.

"is the West stronger than China or not? I am confused. If it is, then this threat means nothing."

Having had two of them nations generally seem to prefer avoiding a third world war. That one can doesn't always mean one wants to, even if one is as strong as the USA. Allies may not want to join to protect a territory being handed back in 50 years. Taiwan has no such time limit.

"Chinese government doesn't want HK do declare independence instead of returning to China"

Democratic elections are not declaring independence. The people of Hong Kong could have elected their own government whilst still being a British territory until 1997. The elected body would give local powers and the state would retain others. Just as California elects a government whilst remaining part of the USA. The fact that California and other US states have a state government does not make them independent nations. There is no Californian foreign policy, diplomatic service or military, that's for the nation - the USA.

Hong Kong would still have returned to China as agreed in the treaty, whilst retaining a local, democratic government. I imagine even cities in China have some form of city government - just they are entirely non-democratic. Of course it should be noted Hong Kong itself was granted in perpetuity.

As it turned out, China threw out many of the limited democratic changes Chris Patten made in 1994, as last Governor and put in place a much less democratic regime. Giving HKers the absurd "show elections" of the Chief Executive. Patten, who was hugely unpopular with Beijing for the reforms he did put through, did so in the hope that some might stick after handover.

> For example, the anniversary of the Tiananmen square incident made it to the front page of HN, but I have never seen anything on HN when it's the anniversary of the Nanjing massacre. These two are comparable because the Japanese leaders are still visiting the Yasukuni Shrine.

On the other hand, Japan and its leaders have made lots of war apology statements, or at least statements of remorse [1], including on the Nanking Massacre. One could argue that some Japanese leaders are still visiting the Yasukuni Shrine because they think both the South East Asians (including Chinese) and the Japanese soldiers were victims to the Japanese wartime Militarism craze, which they are avoiding: note that they visit the Yasukuni Shrine not to promote Militarism or expansion, but for remembrance. And their actions elsewhere speak the same.

Chinese leaders have not made comparable statements (on the Tiananmen square crackdown), or acted in similar way (towards universal values of independent jurisdiction or respecting the constitution, etc).

If you wish the anniversary of the Nanking massacre on the front page of HN, make the leaders of China make comparable statements regarding the Tiananmen square crackdown--this will show that they share the same value as the HN crowd.

Note also that ethnic/national difference (we Chinese vs them Japanese or them United States) is not the same as value difference (we believe in rule by law vs they believe in rule of law). The HN focuses on the latter.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements...

> Listing several individuals arrested for their political actions doesn't justify this baseless conjecture about the future of HK.

Some Hong Kong people are abducted into China for publishing books that some members of CCP do not like [2], and lost their freedom. Political actions or not, such freedom of speech is protected by Hong Kong's Basic Law, while the abduction is lawless (unless you say the party is the law, and they are above the constitution in China etc).

Chinese officials repeatedly stated that they do not respect an independent jurisdiction.

This is not a baseless conjecture, and is not due to lack of trust in CCP, because they admitted it themselves and acted in the same way.

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearan...

> Besides, based on the actions of the US after WWII, we have every reason to believe that the US doesn't want other parts of the world to stay in peace, or at least, does not have the ability to resolve the problem it created.

Japan and US coexist peacefully.

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> Japan and its leaders have made lots of war apology statements

In the link you provided: As of 2010, 24% of South Koreans still believe that Japan has never apologized for its colonial rule, while another 58% believe Japan has not apologized sufficiently. So apparently I am not alone.

Until the names of the "1,068 convicted war criminals" are removed from the Shrine, visiting it hurts people's feelings, period. This has nothing to do with what they visited it for. Even if you ignore other parts of Asia, those people did great harm to their own country, leaving their names in the Shrine makes people question whether the Japanese government realize how much tragedies were caused by them.

> This is not a baseless conjecture

True, I apologize. Putting myself in your perspective, I can see how scary the bookstore incident is, and the CCP really fucked up its (already bad) reputation with this one.

> Japan and US coexist peacefully.

US-Japan relationship really is the best the US can do and I still don't think they are independent from each other enough so that their relationship can be described as "peaceful". Would you say you and your shoes have a peaceful relationship? Your shoes really have no choice but to stay with you. BTW, I was thinking about the Middle East when I talk about how the the mess created by the US.

Even if you don't agree with me about how Japan is a "client state", you should at least acknowledge that their relationship is far from peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Japan#Uni...

Imagine if the PLA in HK did something similar.

This comment broke the site guidelines badly. Please see my reply to you downthread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20195638, and please don't do this again.