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Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#71

Post by whoevercares »

intrasight wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their only hope is collapse of PRC Not necessarily. A respectful and long-term oriented Beijing would be fine. (The CPC would need to change, to prevent a dictator-for-life like Xi from re-emerging.) There are a lot of win-win outcomes between the subjugation of Hong Kong and collapse of China.

Perhaps true in theory, but the practice of history says otherwise. Any anyway, it's not China that going to collapse, but the dictatorial regime.

Oh so China can survive a regime rotation without collapsing...sorry never happened once in China’s history

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#72

Post by my_username_is_ »

biggio wrote: post #25

Why can't Hong Kong vote for independence?

There are quite a few reasons, but they all boil down to the fact that Beijing wants Hong Kong to be part of China.

Culture: From what I understand, China sees itself not as a nation-state, but as a civilization-state. The government has a desire to unite all Chinese people together in a single nation. This is why they still claim Taiwan as part of China. Letting Hong Kong be independent is a step back from that goal.

History: During British colonial rule, China opposed all attempts at introducing full democracy to Hong Kong. It doesn't have strong democratic institutions in the way that you might expect. Yes it has a legislature, but half of the seats are essentially reserved for businesses (called 'functional constituencies'). The head of state is chosen from a pre-selected group of people who are loyal to Beijing. So even if the people all agreed on independence being the best path (and that isn't something that people agree on, as best I can tell)

Geography: Hong Kong is a relatively small geographic area with a very large population. It doesn't have the means to support itself. For example, most (all?) of its fresh water comes from mainland China. A lot of food comes from the mainland too. If Beijing doesn't want Hong Kong to be independent, they could simply stop supporting it with it's infrastructure.

Economic: Hong Kong has a thriving economy, and it's history has left it with a special economic status in several countries (including the USA). This makes it very useful to Beijing. They can skirt trade laws and funnel money through Hong Kong as needed. An independent Hong Kong could make this more difficult.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#73

Post by brobinson »

wybiral wrote: post #62
lawrenceyan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common would you say it is for someone living in China to be able to have access to outside information / sites like you? Does everyone mostly understand that the government censors things to such an extreme but because of a fear of being targeted choose to not say anything, or would you say that most people are actually genuinely ignorant?

It's usually viewed as a protective measure more than a mechanism of oppression. And it is protective. If you believe that widespread dissidence could lead to the collapse of your government then preventing that is a necessary evil to ensure your own well being. So, yeah, most mainlanders are aware of the censorship but it's not always viewed as inherently bad. And not just out of fear of being targeted or something.…

>We allow similar censorship in the US (of things like extremist propaganda or hate speech) with a similar justification.

The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand. The US government can't do anything about you hosting a website and posting extremist propaganda/hate speech on it. (the exception being speech which is _likely_ to cause _imminent lawless action... see: Brandenberg v. Ohio)

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#74

Post by nroets »

coupdejarnac wrote: post #63
yibg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the information flows to certain populations. I work for an US based company with an office in mainland China. Pretty much everyone in the office knows about the stuff happening in Hong Kong.

Is the internet at your office filtered? I've heard of offices for foreign companies being unfiltered, but I haven't seen it firsthand.

I was in mainland China recently. Many tech and manufacturing companies realise they need Facebook and Google to communicate with their customers. So their employees routinely use VPN, even though it's technically illegal.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#75

Post by aiyodev »

rayiner wrote: post #37
alliao wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas can't??

It cannot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Union . Texas in fact voted to secede during the civil war, in a public referendum where secession got 75% of the vote. (Or course, it should be noted that the 30% of the population that was enslaved could not vote.) After Texas was defeated in the civil war, it was governed by a governor appointed by the union president for five years until it was readmitted to th…

The Texas secession movement doesn't claim a right to secede. Texas retains the right to split into five states. They plan to use the threat of adding 8 right-leaning senators to the US senate to convince democrats to let them leave.

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#76

Post by whoevercares »

catpack wrote: post #70
whoevercares wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shuhhhhhhhh you break the social norm

It should be a norm to take articles from authoritarian state-owned outlets with many grains of salt. The common trope is to give the basic outline of the facts while ignoring the real issues: namely the fact that communist China is undemocratic, violates basic human rights and that it is a tarnish to anyone's reputation and character to turn a blind eye to this.

Hey can you read Chinese? How did you know that those articles actually didn’t mention there’s a protest going on?

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#77

Post by my_username_is_ »

catpack wrote: post #64
dis-sys wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is your motivation to use a throwaway account to publicly lie on this... Don't get hurt too much for seeing the reports below that can be publicly verified by everyone. Coverage from sohu.com, one of the largest news sites - https://www.sohu.com/a/320190989_114731 http://www.sohu.com/a/320742090_223357 http://www.sohu.com/a/320247941_419342 Coverage by tencent's QQ News: https://new.qq.com/cmsn/TWF2…

[flagged]

On that note, the Hong Kong Free Press--a nonprofit, English-language, digital newspaper in HK--is doing its annual fundraising drive right now. If you want to support a free press in the region, this is a good place to start. Their coverage of the protests has been quite good, and they definitely hit above their weight class with the amount of resources that they have.

https://www.hongkongfp.com

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#78

Post by catpack »

whoevercares wrote: post #76
catpack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be a norm to take articles from authoritarian state-owned outlets with many grains of salt. The common trope is to give the basic outline of the facts while ignoring the real issues: namely the fact that communist China is undemocratic, violates basic human rights and that it is a tarnish to anyone's reputation and character to turn a blind eye to this.

Hey can you read Chinese? How did you know that those articles actually didn’t mention there’s a protest going on?

I don't need to read the article to know it's propaganda

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#79

Post by thedudeabides5 »

Leary wrote: post #10
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #8

Does anyone know the mechanism by which she could be forced to withdraw? Impeachment is usually for breaking the law, not putting forth a bad one...

She can be impeached by the Legislative Council, which is unlikely given the Pro-Beijing faction holds a majority.

ok, thanks, and how are the members of the legislative council appointed?

Re: Why Hong Kong Is Still Marching

#80

Post by hker »

lostmsu wrote: post #2

Considering, that HK leader did not immediately withdrew the bill after the first protest, it is only natural to assume, that that person does not represent the will of the people. So it makes sense to impeach.

Whether and when the current Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, will be removed, is decided by CCP.

Let me explain.

Excluding the current (4th) Chief Executive Carrie Lam, there have been three other Chief Executives [1], and the upshot is that two of them experienced large protests--in 2003 for 1st CE Tung Chee-hwa, in 2014 for 3rd CE Leung Chun-ying--and both could not complete their second terms due to protests.

It is common knowledge in Hong Kong that they were pressured by higher-ups for not completing their second terms as Chief Executives, in exchange for seats as vice-chairmen of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in China: both gave ridiculous reasons to not complete their second terms to serve Hong Kong, but then went on to become vice-chairmen serving China. They were not immediately removed after the protests only to save grace for them and for CCP.

The 1st CE Tung Chee-hwa resigned in 2005, less than 2 years after the protest in 2003 and 2 years into his second term, for a ridiculous medical reason [2]; the 3rd CE Leung Chun-ying was about to run for his second term in 2017, 3 years after the Umbrella protest, only to announce in a sudden that he did not intend to run to take care of his family [3].

Now in 2019 the 4th CE Carrie Lam faces the anti-extradition protest. And we wonder what the outcome will be.

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

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tung_Chee-hwa

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leung_Chun-ying

(Arguably, the 2nd CE Donald Tsang, the only CE not facing large protests but who is serving prison time, also has his fate decided by the CCP, with the speculation that he refused some orders from China, but I digress.)

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