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HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

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Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#61

Post by Seirdy »

ILMostro7 wrote: post #52
npunt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually sure if you polled westerns that they would assume protests alone are the impetus for change, this may be a straw man. A more generous line of thinking would be 'do peaceful protests help bring about change?', which many in the west would probably agree to, and many in HK probably not. And they'd both be right - peaceful protest likely works better in certain contexts (democracies) than others (autho…

How and why do authoritarian regimes get toppled? Ultimately, capturing hearts and minds of people throigh peaceful protests is beneficial. The question is not whether protests always work directly and timely even. Wheteher or not special interests play a role, the result is easier reached when there's at least a larger audience that may become allied or organized better. To me, it's a fallacy to say that on the one…

> How and why do authoritarian regimes topple?

Multiple overlapping reasons, some of which include:

- the military overthrows the rest of the executive/legislative powers

- Gross incompetence resulting in the government's self-destruction

- Financial collapse

- Secession

- Very strong external pressures (invasion, economic destruction, etc).

- Multiple violent insurrections straining executive resources and undermining the rule of law, allowing other groups to fill the role of the government.

Note that those necessary to take power are not always the same as those necessary to keep it; people often end up with something different than what they bargained for.

An excellent read: "The Dictator's Handbook". To say that politics is a dirty business is an understatement.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#62

Post by 2xpress »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #30
someperson wrote: post #7

The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. This means buying Western, Korean and Japanese brands that aren't manufactured in China. Eg, a Samsung phone over Apple (made in Vietnam than Made in China), a Western Digital hard drive (made in Thailand) etc. There are an incre…

I don't buy the argument that economic sanctions/boycotts lead to overthrown governments, but I'll assume it does. The result of that strategy would be crippling poverty for hundreds of millions of people, with results likely to last for decades.

Economic sanctions and boycotts lead to overthrow of governments all the time, that's how USSR collapsed.

And when hundreds of millions of people are living in what is effectively just a very large concentration camp that can harvest anybody's organs at anytime then that's the worst kind of "crippling poverty" there is.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#63

Post by TeeMassive »

naniwaduni wrote: post #48
TeeMassive wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. It's not fallacious. It has worked in the past and continue to work even to this day. Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; when they are allowed in the first place. Violet uprisings rarely lead to positive cha…

> Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; Are they? Remember, a successful violent "protest" is often just retroactively called by a different name, like "revolution" or "coup d'état", it's not as if they're fundamentally different things. How do you compare those to successful peaceful protests?

There are many fundamental difference between standing armies and/or organized militias and violent mobs in terms of scale, martial effectiveness, negotiations, treaties and post-conflict continuation.

Mobs don't win wars, they merely destroy and the rest is left to fate, often with disastrous results(see Libya as an example).

Mobs can't sit at the negotiation table

Mobs can't agree to treaties and enforce them

Mobs can't form proper functioning and recognized government.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#65

Post by tdeck »

ILMostro7 wrote: post #52
npunt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually sure if you polled westerns that they would assume protests alone are the impetus for change, this may be a straw man. A more generous line of thinking would be 'do peaceful protests help bring about change?', which many in the west would probably agree to, and many in HK probably not. And they'd both be right - peaceful protest likely works better in certain contexts (democracies) than others (autho…

How and why do authoritarian regimes get toppled? Ultimately, capturing hearts and minds of people throigh peaceful protests is beneficial. The question is not whether protests always work directly and timely even. Wheteher or not special interests play a role, the result is easier reached when there's at least a larger audience that may become allied or organized better. To me, it's a fallacy to say that on the one…

I recently read the book The Dictator's Handbook, which discussed this topic among others. It makes the argument that for such a movement to succeed, the existing regime must be destabilized in a way that makes its key supporters lose confidence in the regime's ability to continue to reward them. Often this is because a leader is sick, or the economy collapses and the leadership runs out of money. When that happens, those key supporters hedge their bets. Army generals refuse to fire on protesters, or local officials refuse to disperse them, etc...

In the case of Hong Kong, clearly Carrie Lam never lost confidence in the PRC's ability to keep her in power, so she and the other loyalists in the HK government never put up meaningful opposition.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#66

Post by 2xpress »

tablespoon wrote: post #18
someperson wrote: post #7

The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. This means buying Western, Korean and Japanese brands that aren't manufactured in China. Eg, a Samsung phone over Apple (made in Vietnam than Made in China), a Western Digital hard drive (made in Thailand) etc. There are an incre…

> The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. Decoupling could be helpful on several fronts, but it's not going to happen via individualist boycotts. Those are useless, and just too many things are made in China without realistic alternatives. If it's going to happen, it'l…

Individual boycotts go together with individual voting for better politicians who will build better policies regarding PRC.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#67

Post by vmception »

dillondoyle wrote: post #41
vmception wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Cambridge University Press / APSA study about the United States that shows populist swelling or the popular vote rarely results in any legislative change that matches the sentiment, and legislative changes come from well funded special interests that were already there. It is either purely coincidence when those changes match what the protesters want because special interests became interests, or were alre…

cool article. really long I skimmed it so far. seems focused on comparing economic elite/interest groups to common population, which would skew the policy measured to tangible economic/business outcomes? My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong…

> remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first

It is worth remembering that at that time period, which was just 2008, California literally voted to change its constitution to ban gay marriage, which was purely a popular vote which was successful. If you want 55 electoral college votes, you aren't going to be saying things that ensure the opposite outcome.

I don't think it is useful to have actual opinions if you are playing that game.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#68

Post by koonsolo »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #30
someperson wrote: post #7

The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. This means buying Western, Korean and Japanese brands that aren't manufactured in China. Eg, a Samsung phone over Apple (made in Vietnam than Made in China), a Western Digital hard drive (made in Thailand) etc. There are an incre…

I don't buy the argument that economic sanctions/boycotts lead to overthrown governments, but I'll assume it does. The result of that strategy would be crippling poverty for hundreds of millions of people, with results likely to last for decades.

I agree, just look at North Korea.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#69

Post by guerrilla »

bawolff wrote: post #46
xxpor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, I mean we're talking about the same government on the bad side of the Tank Man photo. I think that's kind of obvious. The difference is in HK I don't think people were anticipating China to completely break the Basic Law and the handover agreement. They were protesting the elected HK government, no…

But its also not nothing, otherwise they wouldn't be so sensitive on the subject.

"If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be unnecessary"

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#70

Post by dismantlethesun »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #30
someperson wrote: post #7

The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. This means buying Western, Korean and Japanese brands that aren't manufactured in China. Eg, a Samsung phone over Apple (made in Vietnam than Made in China), a Western Digital hard drive (made in Thailand) etc. There are an incre…

I don't buy the argument that economic sanctions/boycotts lead to overthrown governments, but I'll assume it does. The result of that strategy would be crippling poverty for hundreds of millions of people, with results likely to last for decades.

This policy would simply shift the economic gains of China to India and Africa.

Hundreds of millions of people living under more palatable governments are currently being denied the chance to lift themselves out of poverty because the default choice for investment is China.

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