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Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

reuters.com

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Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#331

Post by jariel »

est wrote: post #217
jariel wrote: post #121

We should immediately end any special relation we have and apply PRC rules. China uses HK to access world markets, to launder their money etc. - ending that ability would really hurt them a lot. World nations have no qualms investing in HK entities, for PRC entities it's just a world of confusion. HK is PRC so no more special privileges.

> China uses HK to access world markets, to launder their money etc. - ending that ability would really hurt them a lot. On the contrary. https://imgur.com/gallery/WFl43ZX The world is benefiting from HK more than China.

Trade surpluses are not very relevant.

HK is how PRC accesses the world's financial markets, we need to shut that off and apply the same rules to HK companies as we do PRC.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#332

Post by chloerei »

ailun wrote: post #310
chloerei wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reply to your last point first, you are right, I should quote easy-to-read material. I quote Nathan Rich because I first saw this law in his video. I extracted the link so that others can read it: > 18 U.S. Code § 2385.Advocating overthrow of Government https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385 In fact, China has learned a lot from the United States. Before the Hong Kong National Security Law was released, some…

That's great, you linked something specific to talk about. Interestingly, the actual application of that law demonstrates how rights are protected in the US. You may know that Chairman Xi thinks there should never be an independent judiciary in China. So the vague national security law there ends up as nothing but a tool of the state to arrest those it doesn't like. In the US, the Supreme Court balances that law agai…

We live in different legal systems. Sometimes I also have a lot of questions about the laws of the United States, because Trump has signed a lot of executive orders to ban Huawei and TikTok, without going through the court or Congress, and they are effective.

Back to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong National Security Law is not retroactive:

> Article 39 This Law shall apply to acts committed after its entry into force for the purpose of conviction and imposition of punishment.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AHong_Kong_National_Sec...

The police found evidence that he violated the law after the National Security Act was released, so they arrested him. I wait for the Hong Kong police to release more information.

YouTuber is just one of my information channels, and I also go to the websites or forums of protesters.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#333

Post by Paradigma11 »

ashconnor wrote: post #305
powerapple wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to point out that under British rule, there was no democracy. If they want things exactly like they have before, the central government would send a governor to HK instead of having their own governor. China wanted HK to be special and successful, to use it as a showcase for the 'one country two systems' model. Now China just want to not lose HK. Huge change in thinking.

You can blame Sir Alexander Grantham and successive incompetent Governors such as Chris Patten who failed to implement democratic reforms well ahead of the handover.

Well, they did not really have much choice. China had made their position quite clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_development_in_Hong... "1960s China's leaders explicitly wanted to "preserve the colonial status of Hong Kong".[21] Liao Chengzhi, a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, said in 1960 that China "shall not hesitate to take positive action to have Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories liberated" should the status quo (i.e. colonial administration) be changed. The warning killed any democratic development for the next three decades"

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#334

Post by dragonwriter »

chloerei wrote: post #332
ailun wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, you linked something specific to talk about. Interestingly, the actual application of that law demonstrates how rights are protected in the US. You may know that Chairman Xi thinks there should never be an independent judiciary in China. So the vague national security law there ends up as nothing but a tool of the state to arrest those it doesn't like. In the US, the Supreme Court balances that law agai…

We live in different legal systems. Sometimes I also have a lot of questions about the laws of the United States, because Trump has signed a lot of executive orders to ban Huawei and TikTok, without going through the court or Congress, and they are effective. Back to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong National Security Law is not retroactive: > Article 39 This Law shall apply to acts committed after its entry into force for th…

> Trump has signed a lot of executive orders to ban Huawei and TikTok, without going through the court or Congress, and they are effective.

The President has emergency powers in existing law to regulate foreign trade in this general way, for the purpose of rapidly responding to action by hostile foreign nations executed through trade including through notionally private firms.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#335

Post by spacehunt »

christiansakai wrote: post #322
ardy42 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If not for HK, Taiwan, and Uyghur Muslims, I'd consider Xi's dictatorship a good modern day role dictatorship. In what way is it good? It also does things like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... and this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... (on a related note, here's a video of what the Chinese police could do to you if you talk smack about them on WeCh…

I was thinking as long as there is peace and prosperity for its citizens, then surveillance state is a smaller price to pay for most people. Xi was praised by majority of mainlanders because he lifted the country out of poverty. The thing with China is, it is insanely big. How to govern this big country effectively if not dictatorship? I previously tried to compare Japan and SK to China. But I realized that their cul…

> Xi was praised by majority of mainlanders because he lifted the country out of poverty.

No, CCP is the entity people often attribute China's economic rise to. And even that is not completely correct; Deng opened up the market a bit, and the Chinese people themselves took the opportunity to rebuild the economy from the ruins of central planning.

> How to govern this big country effectively if not dictatorship?

You can say that about groups of any size. It is often said a benevolent dictator is the most efficient and effective way to run a group: see Linux for an example.

But this only works if everyone has shared goals and shared values. What if people have different opinions? Hint: look at how much China spends on "stability maintenance" (维稳) each year: it's bigger than their military budget.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#336

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bzb4 wrote: post #196
mtnGoat wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should treat those students as agents of a foreign government in that case.

Because there’s no chance they are just people with an opinion, right?

If they are just people with an opinion, they can state that opinion, no problem. If they want to harass, threaten, and beat up those with a different opinion, well, you can't do that here. The next question is why they do such things. Because they're so enraged because someone criticizes China? Because they don't know the rules here, and don't bother to learn? Or because they actually are agents? The last seems the most likely. (You don't see, say, French students in the US brawling with French expats who criticizes France.)

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#337

Post by knzhou »

zozin wrote: post #297
knzhou wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of comment that makes me know there's no hope for HN. The color of your skin has bought you a lot. When you were a kid, my parents were making a dollar a day. When your parents were kids, my grandparents were facing famine. Now, finally, for the first time in all of modern history, a large group of non-white people has escaped crushing poverty. They're not rich by any means. You'd still be richer tha…

I am an immigrant. Yes I am white, but my grandparents faced famine at the hands of Communism and my parents were poor, just like yours. If you go further back in my family history I'm sure you'd find generation after generation of serfs. If it wasn't for America I probably wouldn't be posting on HN. If it wasn't for America I probably wouldn't be as educated and as wealthy as I am. My comment was directed at the pri…

I'm glad we agree that development and opportunity are good things.

The average per capita income in China is lower than countries like Costa Rica or Venezuela. It's less than half of what a minimum wage worker gets in the US. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people still die in China due to preventable diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis. About half the children in the countryside are malnourished, to a degree that would not be conceivable for anybody in the US. This is the actual situation China is facing, and it's still dramatically better than many countries that were similarly poor decades ago.

In response to this, you and HN in general immediately react with fears of imminent Chinese world domination. Once again I ask you: why does the prospect of a few non-white people not starving to death make you so afraid? Why is this so alarming, so abnormal? I encourage you to spend at least a moment thinking about it.

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#338

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tedhuang wrote: post #289
pirocks wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how you've changed the OPs concern about free speech to a concern about "misinformation".

'pro-democracy' people are strongly associated with misinformation in China. That's why they have very few support and never accomplish anything all these years.

Misinformation? As defined by the CCP, or actual, objectively verifiable falsehoods?

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#339

Post by AnimalMuppet »

akiselev wrote: post #193
throwaway77643 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1920s, I don’t think any person could have imagined the progress in Civil Rights that would occur in America. And yet it happened. From racist Jim Crow laws to Gay Rights, the progress made in 100 years is astonishing. Give the PRC 100 years and who knows how it might change.

> In the 1920s, I don’t think any person could have imagined the progress in Civil Rights that would occur in America. No one imagined it in the 1920s because they had already imagined it in the 1860s but got Jim Crow instead. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And yet, those who didn't imagine it in the 1920's still got civil rights in the 1960s.

So in your view, what were we supposed to learn from history?

Re: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

#340

Post by mcphage »

erfgh wrote: post #238
strogonoff wrote: post #132

If we are collectively incapable of making any difference in this terrible transformation, then we could do the next thing CCP will hate: do a proper study of how population’s behavior changes as it transitions from a free mentality to the oppressed state mainland’s had been in for years. This is the chance. I'm not aware of any precedents to date, but a rigorous scientific record of this kind would be extremely valu…

To do a "proper study" you should be impartial, and you're not being impartial when right out of the bat you call this "a terrible transformation".

> To do a "proper study" you should be impartial

Why do you believe this? It is very much not true. If you wanted to study, for instance, how societies collapse, you don't need to be impartial about the notion of societal collapse. If you wanted to study war, you don't need to be impartial to war.

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