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Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#341

Post by TimTheTinker »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #313
GordonS wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is of course terrible, and I'm sorry your family went through any of it. I though think it's worth mentioning that the China of today is absolutely not the China of the 50's. I've personally spent quite a bit of time in China, and it's never seemed particularly "communist" - the middle class has long since been established and continues to grow, and capatalism is very much thriving. On a personal note, I've alwa…

There's a lot of truth in your response. My own personal feeling, from my visits to the country from the 90s to the present, is that in some ways the day-to-day life on the streets of Shanghai seem more free than America. It seems like the government has been mostly laissez-faire toward the individual people, so long as those people leave the oligarchy alone. The thing is, it's very much a pendulum. The Cultural Revo…

The CCP has not at all let up on its persecution of people, groups, and ideas that are deemed "enemies of the state": Christians who do not meet in a State-registered/3-self (= state-controlled) church (persecution of those Christians has worsened significantly), Falon Gong practitioners, and minority group members, among others.

In addition to religious and ideological persecution, we see grave human rights abuses continue unabated: forced abortions, arbitrary (non-rule-of-law) treatment of citizens, lack of habeas corpus, ruling officials and legislators who are unelected (or who are only eligible for election if they are CCP members), a secret police, massive slave labor camps, long prison sentences for journalists and human rights activists, etc.

Perhaps the only difference we're seeing since the 1950's is that capital and property ownership in themselves are not seen as anti-state.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#342

Post by grey-area »

nailer wrote: post #252
grey-area wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be disappointed when they discover the rules aren't made in Brussels because the UK joined the EU, but because it's the UK's largest trading partner and the largest trade bloc in the world. Brexit will simply make their position worse.

No. As anyone with an interest in politics in the UK will tell you, free movement literally ended yesterday.

The problem with trying to threaten the EU with a no deal exit is it's like a bank robber threatening to blow his own head off - messy, undesirable, but ultimately not very persuasive.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#343

Post by koheripbal »

Veen wrote: post #321
dragonwriter wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK is not weighting Asians higher than other non-white races. I didn't say it was. I said that the upthread commenter’s use of “differential racism” to describe their explanation in which Britain was doing that was, contrary to the claim that it was redefining “racism”, a perfectly valid use of the term “racism”. I've also said in every post in which I've argued that point that I think that what is actually hap…

The explanation is the obvious one. The UK has a treaty with China intended to prevent what is happening from happening. China is in breach of the treaty and, in light of that, the UK is acting to protect people to whom it believes it has an obligation. It has nothing to do with either racism or nationalism.

No one is arguing that point. What is being debated is why very conservative racists in the UK culture are overwhelmingly supportive of Asians over Syrians and North Africans. ...and differential racism is my belief as to why.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#344

Post by koheripbal »

mellosouls wrote: post #232
koheripbal wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - because these are RICH Asian migrants, not POOR North African and Syrian migrants. It's a combination of differential racism and elitism.

It's a combination of differential racism and elitism. Is it possibly more representative of your own prejudices that you see only negative motivation here?

This is the "he who smelt it, dealt it" form of logical argument.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#345

Post by throw51319 »

baybal2 wrote: post #300
albertsondev wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not brainwashed, but socialized. In East Asian countries and China especially, collectivism and Confucianism are pervasive, with deep cultural roots. The CCP is, of course, supporting and reinforcing those ideals, but it's just as much simply taking advantage of the pre-existing culture. Just like how the US is strongly culturally capitalist and individualistic -- as we value bootstraps capitalism and the "American D…

> In East Asian countries and China especially, collectivism and Confucianism are pervasive, with deep cultural roots. In East Asian countries and China especially, nobody gives a flying .... about collectivism and Confucianism, and cultural roots. It's by far the most egoistic, conflict driven, cut throat society I've ever been.

So you are basically saying that the cohesion of China is because they are doing better economically these past few decades... and thus people's egos are at an all-time high. Thus they support the regime.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#346

Post by throw51319 »

vertex-four wrote: post #283
throw51319 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "current situation" is not as clear-cut as many would make it out to be. Watching an emotional video is not the smoking gun that shows one side to be completely right, but that's what's happening now. I would think a good write up/analysis using high quality statistics would be the way to decide what is happening in the "current situation". But a graphic and emotional video is going to pull the strings much harde…

A lot of people have been trying "good write-ups" and "high quality statistics" for a long time, it turns out they don't actually change people's minds - people make up their mind before reading the article. The production of "high quality statistics" hasn't been the turning point in any civil rights movement I'm aware of.

Yeah - and i'm just saying that it should be, instead of an emotional response etc.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#347

Post by koheripbal »

FabHK wrote: post #261
tomp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "differential racism" So basically the existing word "racism" didn't fit (because racist Brits would hate Asian HKers just as much as brown Syrians and black Africans) so you invented a new completely concept but conveniently attached the word "racism" to it for maximal emotional impact? Despicable.

Eh? Racism judges people by their race, and judges different races differently. The word fits just fine. Adding "differential" was unnecessary, but maybe added to highlight the uneven extent of the negative judgement. Having said that, the GP does not provide any evidence that racism was the motivating factor here.

> but maybe added to highlight the uneven extent of the negative judgement.

That was exactly the point.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#348

Post by baybal2 »

throw51319 wrote: post #345
baybal2 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In East Asian countries and China especially, collectivism and Confucianism are pervasive, with deep cultural roots. In East Asian countries and China especially, nobody gives a flying .... about collectivism and Confucianism, and cultural roots. It's by far the most egoistic, conflict driven, cut throat society I've ever been.

So you are basically saying that the cohesion of China is because they are doing better economically these past few decades... and thus people's egos are at an all-time high. Thus they support the regime.

> Thus they support the regime.

Ahem... most Chinese can't get more curses for it. Even unranked CPC members, and civil servants quietly hate them.

One needs to read a lot of People's Daily to drink this koolaid

The few who do almost all are the poor, underachieving, and angry "little pink" flag waving youth, or are the actual accessories to the system.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#349

Post by daemin »

sasum wrote: post #148
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting HK in gaining independence wouldn't have been an act of Colonialism. It would have been enabling self determination of a population. Colonialism is "the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically." Giving the HK people independence is literally the opposite of colonialism. In contrast, the new law by by…

The CPC cannot be colonialist against Hong Kong. HK has been part of China for thousands of years and is ethnically Chinese. Hong Kong exists today because Britain used military power to force the Chinese government to import opium. In the process they annexed Hong Kong. Not to mention, HKers DO NOT want independence. In a recent poll only 20% of HKers desire independence.

China has existed for thousands of years as a rough idea and not as a continuous country for all that time. For many hundreds of years it was a set of countries like Europe and for others it was a single entity. So to say that China has always been a single continuous entity for thousands of years is kind of pure propaganda.

Also when the British took Hong Kong it was only an island with some small fishing and charcoal making villages. Not the same as the huge metropolis it is today. So it exists today because of people going there and building the place up. My guess is because it wasn't part of communist China proper so you could do and say things that you couldn't on the mainland.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#350

Post by mistermann »

foogazi wrote: post #328
mistermann wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation that has any kind of a racial (or perceived to be racial) aspect to it cannot really be discussed freely. Even though closing such loopholes may be perfectly legitimate, if exploitation of the loophole happens to correlate to a racially identifiable group, in the current age of social media based hyper propaganda it is a very dangerous political move for a career politician (or their party) to touch.

Is that why they have not closed the loophole or are you speculating? Weren’t they talking about taxing vacant properties in Vancouver recently? Was there social media backlash?

There were significant quantities of racism accusations in social and mainstream media, as there also had been for years during the money laundering in casinos debacle, that most politicians and right thinking news reporters also wouldn't touch.

Who knows what's really true, but there sure seem to be a lot of correlative coincidences, with similar stories in many different countries.

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