Americans are the most isolated, ahistorical and heavily propagandized humans on earth. Post-imperial Brits can't feed themselves. So says Brit philosopher John Gray, one of the architects of Thatcherism. I personally helped destroy the Apartheid govt South African govt, from Harvard, working for/with Unitarians, and met Desmond Tutu in the process. I fully expect horrifying and unspeakable Karmic retributions to befall the spawn of post-Imperial racist Brits and their pretenders. The Chinese enjoy a post-colonial unity we colonial peoples (who are not a people) cannot imagine, with more historical neighbors than any other country and a longer continuous written history than any other peoples. Americans suffer Stockholm Syndrome and widespread infantilism. Anticipate their exponential sufferings.
Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
121–130 of 243 posts
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#122It's worth noting that this article is 11 days old. A more recent dispatch would be more meaningful since things have happened since then.
It's here for the daily HN China circlejerk, being dated doesn't matter in the slightest.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This was shortly after the end of the cold war, after all, which demonstrated that such change is possible, if not inevitable. In 1997 most people wouldn't have thought it would be possible (or at least likely) for China to both be such a powerful country and be such an authoritarian country.
China also wouldn’t have taken this step if a certain other world power hadn’t gone AWOL the last few years. There’s a reason they decided to ratchet up the pressure on HK the last few years. They figured that in the worst case slapping a specific brand on a few hotels in a few major Chinese cities is a cheap price to pay.
> They figured that in the worst case slapping a specific brand on a few hotels in a few major Chinese cities is a cheap price to pay.
Did they do that?
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we should let the UK pay for its sins for a change. Setting up anything "autonomous" with its own laws and customs is a terrible idea. Assimilation should be a requirement for immigration.
Really, are Puerto Rico and Guam really that bad of a concept? I don't think so. Most of the western US was simply U.S. territory for decades.
Puerto Rico doesn't make much sense to me - they should either be a state and have the full rights and federal oversight that every other state does, or be their own thing entirely. Living in this limbo world where you're a citizen but sometimes in name only if you're on the island seems wrong.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was no alternative really, China would have just seized HK by force. Jolly good show by the Brits to standby the people of Hong Kong though with this immigration offer. Politicians rarely do the right thing instead of the self-interested thing, but you have to hand it to Johnson's government on this one.
> Jolly good show by the Brits to standby the people of Hong Kong Having a new source of immigration when you have just screwed yourself over in attracting European immigrantes due to Brexit is common sense rather than altruism.
> Having a new source of immigration when you have just screwed yourself over in attracting European immigrantes due to Brexit is common sense rather than altruism.
Immigration is not actually something you need to have.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
we (US) should just give them all path to citizenship. No, special territory is a horrible idea.
Nah I think in HK's case it would be awesome. They'd have the autonomy to set up their own laws and regulations similar to what they currently have. I know this is a pie in the sky proposal but in my ideal world this would be a thing.
It would be flatly illegal per the fourteenth amendment. We don't have special classes of citizens in the USA, period. Doing this constitutionally would require something like ceding the territory to a new government or something.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems unlikely at the moment; the US seems very focused on doing the opposite.
While it's true the trump administration is very anti immigrant at, it is also very anti ccp.
I don’t understand where people get that idea from.
In practice nothing the US has done has hurt the CCP. If anything, it has strengthened them domestically.
The major actions the Trump administration has taken against China are: 1) Tariffs which only served to hurt American farmers, considering there was hardly any drop off in Chinese exports to the US (and that’s on paper, since a lot of Chinese exports are now hidden as Vietnamese exports, etc) but significant drop offs in American exports to China. 2) A long sustained battle against 1 Chinese company. While Huawei is suffering, the likes of Xiaomi, etc are still doing just fine. 3) Whining about the nomenclature around SARS-COV-2.
On the flip side, the administration dismantled TPP, which was a decade+ long effort spanning multiple US administrations, and nearly every non Chinese country on the Pacific, that would have actually dealt a huge blow to Chinese bullying by providing companies doing manufacturing in China much more attractive alternatives in the countries surrounding China.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#128The UK stands to benefit tremendously from this olive branch to the HK people. It could rival Operation Paperclip (but without the war crimes coverups)
The "happy coincidence" to a genuinely welcome offer is a huge boost to a collapsing real estate market.
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#129Does anyone follow British domestic politics? They can't stand Polish (et al) immigrants amongst their numbers, much less browner skinned Indians and muslims. Brits are an increasingly irrelevant, racist, and post-Imperial bitter and reckless island nation (the size of Morocco) that can't feed itself. As an American citizen, I advocate a 2nd 1776, whereupon we set their miserable Brit "ship of state" adrift forever. Our future is better secured by a fully reciprocal "nationalism" that does not sanction racist jingoism. Consult John Mearsheimer for broader exposition of a fruitful and respectful reciprocal nationalism without pretenses to "universalism."
Re: Britain to give millions of HKers a path to citizenship
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to compare these two scenarios. Look, I’m not arguing that US officials throughout the course of history have been perfect. Kent State was an atrocity, no question. But anyone with a gun can pull the trigger. It takes an enormous amount of coordination to uniformly run over people with tanks, burn their bodies, and flush them down drains. The incidents you’ve linked are undoubtedly dark chapters, but they are no…
I would never say that the US is an authoritarian state on par with the vileness of the PRC. But your specific claim was that we’ve never done to our own citizens what happened to the protesters at Tiananmen, which I now guess hinges on how coordinated the killings were. I think this is historically inaccurate, absent engaging in this kind of special pleading.
Think about it. You had troops in China that were ready and willing to not only kill their countrymen, but also desecrate their dead bodies and discard them in an unimaginably cold manner.
Contrast that with Kent State, Jackson State, and other places where troops were deployed and the situation escalated.
The ultimate difference here is that it’s perfectly legal and acceptable for us to talk about what happened at Kent state. The events are not in dispute.
China, on the other hand, jails people for talking about Tiananmen Square. To acknowledge the existence of such heinous acts is itself a crime in that country.
The fact that we can sit here and argue about this without fear of going to prison is itself proof that these situations, and countries, are incomparable.