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Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

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Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#191

Post by throwaway1997 »

ackbar03 wrote: post #89
loyukfai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xi is very much a dictator, but he also needs money to maintain his dictatorship. HK for all its faults and bads is still quite important to the Chinese economy. That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.

I think hks importance is extremely arguable. Hks gdp is barely 3 percent of china's with a stalling growth rate. I've worked in both Shanghai and Hong Kong and I can say a lot of the large cities are much much nicer in China now. You also have a lot things like hackathons and events where you see lots of young creative people who really want to make things. In Hong Kong the culture is more towards looking good in a…

The very people who are in charge of the mainland have a lot of money that they want to either park in the west or hedge against the house of cards that they are building. There is currently only one route for this money to go and rolling in the tanks will inconvenience way too many powerful people.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#192

Post by loyukfai »

rruieews wrote: post #170
inflatableDodo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pick a single data point, I'd assume that someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country after comparisons are made with themselves, has very probably gone insane and become utterly drunk on power. Do not expect Xi to do something sane, especially if he feels insulted. I think HK's best hope is for something else big to distract him. Unfortunately, I think it is very likely right now that he will i…

> assume that someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country I'm not sure if this will change your opinion, but this isn't true. I asked my friends that are in China now to search for Winne The Pooh on Baidu and Bing, and they were able to find pictures of the character. The are also Winnie the Pooh cartoons and movies and dolls readily available in China. Along with various merchandise for sale. So n…

Such things change by the day, you have to understand that. The PRC government does not publish a exhaustive list of what's being banned at the moment.

It wouldn't surprise me either, that the decision was made not by Xi, but by someone who wanted to appease him or the part or whatever.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#193

Post by selimthegrim »

levosmetalo wrote: post #167
adventured wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all the reasons you give for treading carefully against China all apply to the US and the west just as much. That's not true. The US is susceptible to humiliation and reputation erosion when it comes to human rights. China, largely, is not. The Muslim prisoners - Abu Ghraib - being tortured wearing black bags, the infamous photos that were leaked (and sparked large protests across the Middle East), was an emb…

> The US went to war, in Europe's backyard, to stop a genocide of Muslims with the Kosovo War. Bullshit. The US went to Kosovo war to show Europe they are bunch of incompetents, and to show others it doesn’t pay of to be Russian ally, like Serbia. There was no genocide on muslims, there was only a fight of regular troops against separatist terrorists, which were supported by various international Islam terrorist grou…

Somehow I doubt the KLA was on Iran and Saudi's top friends list

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#194

Post by tialaramex »

sschueller wrote: post #79
gadders wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK got in a bit of a row with China about it: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/03/foreign-offi...

I find this quite interesting: "In the Joint Declaration, the PRC Government stated that it had decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories) with effect from 1 July 1997, and the UK Government declared that it would hand over Hong Kong to the PRC with effect from 1 July 1997. The PRC Government also declared its basic policies regarding Ho…

It suited both sides for the transition to be gradual.

For the UK there was concern that if the PLA arrived in force in Hong Kong overnight to make it part of China in practice as well as in law many, perhaps millions, would try to defy them and demand sanctuary from the British. The international community, looking on, would certainly prefer the story "This is Britain's responsibility" over "We all need to take some of these people". So then either the UK has to find somewhere to put a LOT of people or it is seen to have failed badly as the Chinese put down the resistance.

For China it was recognition that their notional sovereignty over all of "China" must be temporarily shadowed by the consideration that Hong Kong is not just some nice waterfront property (which they could have seized at any time by military force) it's a people, a culture, lots of successful businesses. If you roll in with tanks overnight that probably goes away and you might not get it back.

But gradual is the thing. "Unchanged for a period of 50 years" is merely the ambition on paper. Nobody in Hong Kong thought they'd wake up in 2046 still under the same democracy they'd had under the British. Things get chipped away, they shade over, decisions are made that might once have been different, this year's protests are about some of the less subtle changes.

Gradual change suited both parties. Not the people of Hong Kong themselves of course, but they weren't signatories.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#195

Post by vageli »

krageon wrote: post #151
gurkendoktor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has nukes. Absolutely nothing will happen China has shown (again) in their treatment of Hong Kong that they don't care about past agreements. The least that anyone can do, even in the presence of nukes, is to get their business out of China, and that is already happening to some degree. And of course be welcoming to people who choose to emigrate from Hong Kong.

China was always going to annex Hong Kong eventually, this is something almost everyone with any interest in this particular situation has known for many years. Spinning that particular situation in a reason to boycott a country (and replace it with what? India isn't exactly a paragon of virtue and neither is the US, and let us never speak of the stain that is Russia) is a strange mental place to go to.

> China was always going to annex Hong Kong eventually, this is something almost everyone with any interest in this particular situation has known for many years.

So if I told you you would be maimed in 10 years, does that make the maiming less painful when it happens? I'm not sure what you're getting at by stating that this was preordained to occur.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#196

Post by chosenbreed37 »

cm2187 wrote: post #68
Tharkun wrote: post #4

Sigh. Hopefully we won't get a repeat of the Tiananmen square massacre. I've not seen any nations speak out about the HK protests. Unlike, say, when many expressed support for the Arab Spring.

The Arab spring is probably a bad example. The west got a bit over-enthusiastic about the Arab Spring which turns out to be more of an Islamist Spring. I don't think many people think it was a good idea to destabilize Libya and Syria in hindsight.

It was a terrible idea. I think Libya was better with the dictator they got rid off with the aid of the airstrikes. Same thing with Syria. The warring parties should have been left to sort it out among themselves. Naive interventions tend to have lots of unintended (harmful) consequences.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#197

Post by jbay808 »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #67
A2017U1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money did private enterprise make from the Arab Spring? Hundred billion or so? To pretend like it was a moral issue is insane. Most people don't care in the slightest in democratic countries. Virtually every country involved in sending troops couldn't point to it on a map nor talk about the region with any sort of knowledge. We walked in and replaced Hussein with ISIS. It will go down as 21st century Vietnam…

Your timeline is a bit muddled here: the invasion of Iraq (involving a great many Western countries) was in 2003, the Arab Spring (where Western countries by and large steered well clear) was in 2010.

Other than the US and Britain and a token force from Australia, which western countries invaded Iraq?

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#198

Post by selimthegrim »

simonh wrote: post #71
adventured wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China only got stronger since the Tinanmen situation It's a rather remarkable difference at this point. The US economy was 16 times larger than China at the end of 1989. Japan was nine times larger. China was only about 45% larger than South Korea back then. China's military spending today is equal to at least a third the size of its economy in 1989 inflation adjusted. There's a reason why there are no major protes…

I can understand Middle Eastern and muslim majority governments taking that view. I don't understand the ordinary Muslim believer that is prepared to go out and protest against America or Europe thinking that way. Why should they care? After all the reasons you give for treading carefully against China all apply to the US and the west just as much. Take Pakistan. It gets billions in military and economic aid from the…

They (Pak) feel humiliated. It's obvious. It's humiliating that they have to go back to the IMF over $6 billion, rinse and repeat and take alms from Saudi Arabia and UAE (the latter of who just burned them on Kashmir as revenge for Pakistan declining to send troops to Yemen)

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#199

Post by majia »

girvo wrote: post #152
majia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please follow HN guidelines and refrain from personal attack. Assume good faith and be substantive.

Honest question: what should communities do with the rise of nationalist “shill” accounts? The hard part is, it’s impossible to tell the difference between someone who’s merely a nationalist and someone who’s bought and paid for to post what amounts to propaganda, muddying the waters of discussion online. Extremely difficult problem to solve. Assuming good faith gets harder and harder as more information comes out ab…

We have to assume good faith precisely because it's impossible to tell the difference you mentioned. If a real propagandist tells a lie, we can refute it with facts and flag the comment. But if a honest user is labelled as 'paid troll', it's almost impossible for the honest user to prove himself. And that severely poisons the discussion.

Re: Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

#200

Post by loyukfai »

yyhhsj0521 wrote: post #180
wtdata wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very biased take on what happened in France. The protesters were burning cars and destroying public and private property to vast extents, besides throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. The yellow vests went way, way beyond their right to protest. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/-yellow-vest-protests-grow-v... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/yellow-ve... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-eu…

Isn't this happening in Hong Kong as well? Destroying properties, and especially Molotov cocktails.

Just curious, where did you get these ideas?
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