Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

Little does it help you if they block it completely...

I want to make it clear that I am not an apologist for China, but when we levy criticism and express our fears, it needs to be precise, sharp, accurate. They should not be attempts to fearmonger. This comment does NOT have the purpose to approve or disapprove of Chinese conduct on the international stage.

The only thing I want to do is point out that Russia has a nearly undeniable record of assassinating dissenters such as Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei/Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom. China does not yet share this record with Russia, so I feel that your statement coaxes people to interpret China as a murderer on the same level as Russia ("Similar to how Russia murders defectors, it's not a good idea to be an expat and criticize China"). This is an unfair equivalency and I want to point it out.

Look up Anna Politkovskaya (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anna_Politkov...): She was a known critic of Putin and shot/murdered mysteriously. You can search on Google for Russian critics outside of Russia being killed, but as far as I publicly discern, this is not true for Chinese critics. I'm not saying that people haven't been killed for criticizing China overseas, but I will say that publicly you and I do not know of people who have been killed, unlike the obvious case for Russia. My strongest plausible interpretation is that you are saying that it could be the next step for China, and I would agree that it is a possibility.

In fact, if we really want to be exhaustive about overseas assassination of critics, there is Henry Liu who was assassinated in California for criticizing Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liu#Confession_of_Chen_C...). If I want to start being concerned about China murdering people, it's not a massive leap of the imagination to believe that they are capable of doing it, but so far, many similar nation-states have done more than China in this regard, such as Taiwan. However, obviously I understand that Taiwan is a fairly different place now compared to 1984 when Henry was assassinated.

In order to be charitable to your comment, I can ask, "Can you explain more about what you mean?" We can argue that China might be murdering critics, but that would be in the case of stuff that happens within its borders, not outside of it. We can also arguably say that China is imposing measures on critics overseas such as economic punishments, but they do not appear to be murdering people. Therefore, I do not think your anecdote about Hong Kong immigrants being killed in the USA adds value to the discussion because it is unsubstantiated to believe that it will happen. I would say that it's believable that HK immigrants could feel threatened or be afraid of retaliation from China through other means, such as online harassment or attacks from the 50 Cent Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

Having said all that, I do not want to wait until it reaches the point where China can shamelessly kill people in cities across the globe. My reply to the parent comment is more to point out that our criticisms need to be healthy and balanced, lest the discussion devolves into massive leaps of unsubstantiated thought.

> However, I have no fear of speaking publicly about Guantanamo Bay and then traveling to the US.

I think you're too optimistic. If you'd made similar comments during the Red Scare, you would have ended up like Qian Xuesen, the Chinese-American who devoted the best years of his life to developing American technology, but who ended up fired and placed under house arrest for years for his ethnicity. This process of arbitrary arrest of Chinese people has never stopped -- and in recent years it has dramatically accelerated. Obviously, it doesn't make the HN front page. Nobody cares.

Before I joined HN I was quite naive, but now I understand that many Americans are anticipating a second Red Scare with glee, and some even long for World War III. Representation in films and politics and so on is a nice wish, but it will obviously be impossible under those conditions. As will many other things.

Thanks for replying, if my comment can bring thinking, it will be enough.

Because of the Chinese culture of "national unity", intervention in Hong Kong is like intervention in China.

I don’t think the analogy of Guam is appropriate. As a strategic priority, Guam is occupied by many countries. Now as a US military base, residents have no right to vote.

Hong Kong belonged to China a long time ago. The British captured him through war in 1842 and returned it to China in 1997. Hong Kong currently retains its own administrative system and will fully integrate into China in the future.

I am not very familiar with the history of the United States, and I cannot offer a better analogy. If the Guam helps to understand the situation, I have no objection. After all, what I want to say is what Jimmy Lai did.

China was the dominant power in East Asia for the best part of 2 millennia. It expanded aggressively during periods when it was strong, absorbing many native cultures in the periphery, and had many neighbouring states paying tribute and aligning with its values (e.g. Confucianism). It was an Empire, but the difference (compared with European Empires) being it was not a naval power that established colonies across oceans.