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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

#131

Post by Bayart »

strogonoff wrote: post #114
nine_k wrote: post #83

The most interesting idea I heard about the hand-over of HK is that UK should have offered a UK permanent resident (or even a citizen) status to all HK residents, once China started the pressure. Of course, HK's population is 11% of UK, not a small deal, likely such a bill won't pass anyway. But I also see it as a missed opportunity to bring in some world-class human capital.

I like the idea floated by an acquaintance of mine, which sounds more or less like “the British could just give us some island they don’t need, and we’d build another city there”.

HK is wealthy because of where it is. Good luck trying to replicate that in the Falklands or on some rock in the Caribbeans.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#132

Post by lucian1900 »

bhawks wrote: post #125

Empty words and token sanctions are not going to stop the CCP's blatant takeover of HK and trashing of the '1 country 2 systems' agreement. Real action - offer US citizenship to Hong Kong era that want it. Then go recognize the Republic of Taiwan as an independent country. Unfortunately the CCP is probably right in their assumption that our politicians are to greedy and spineless to make anything beyond a soundbite g…

The local government in Taiwan still claims all of China as its territory, why would they want to be an independent country with only one island?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#133

Post by tjpnz »

akomtu wrote: post #121
robjan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government of Taiwan does not report into the Chinese Central Government like in Hong Kong. It's controlled by an independent government on disputed land.

What matters is CCP wants it. The disputed land status will be used as a pretense. The US won't dare to start a war and will write off the loss. Other countries won't even dare to comment on the situation.

The US starts wars all the time. The CCP would have made a grave error in judgement if it thought this would be any different. If the US walked away from Taiwan that puts South Korea, Japan and other allies in SE Asia at risk. Not going to happen.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#134

Post by eloisius »

DistressedDrone wrote: post #55
dillondoyle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand opening up economically to China didn't bring the Democracy we envisioned either.

It's almost like we can't force them to do things our way.

Or prevent them from forcing other people to do it their way.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#135

Post by strogonoff »

sumedh wrote: post #123
strogonoff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea floated by an acquaintance of mine, which sounds more or less like “the British could just give us some island they don’t need, and we’d build another city there”.

> the British could just give us some island they don’t need What about the people who are already living on that island, what if they dont want foreigners?

This isn’t exactly a realistic proposal for many other reasons as well, but it’s interesting to contemplate.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#136

Post by GordonS »

wyager wrote: post #5

I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. 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. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerabl…

> fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective.

Haha, as a westerner, I believe peaceful protest is invariably futile.

Take the 2003 protests against the Iraq war for example - 3 million protested in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid, 1 million in London, and millions more across the west. What happened? They went to war based on lies anyway. It's always the same.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#137

Post by iheartlife »

Bayart wrote: post #131
strogonoff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea floated by an acquaintance of mine, which sounds more or less like “the British could just give us some island they don’t need, and we’d build another city there”.

HK is wealthy because of where it is. Good luck trying to replicate that in the Falklands or on some rock in the Caribbeans.

Historically that might have been the case, today HK is rich because of its (financial) regulations that was mainly inherited from the british. HK is still one of the incorporation centers of the the world (akin to Delaware in US) as well as a major financial hub.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#138

Post by akomtu »

sumedh wrote: post #124
akomtu wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is CCP wants it. The disputed land status will be used as a pretense. The US won't dare to start a war and will write off the loss. Other countries won't even dare to comment on the situation.

> The US won't dare to start a war and will write off the loss. Isnt Taiwan too valuable right now for the US specially TSMC. US will need to step in to protect Taiwan to protect US interests.

The US can't do much about this today and in ten years it will be too busy with internal squabbles about which admiral is more politically correct. CCP has personal reasons to axe Taiwan. When the CCP fought the original "feudal" government, leaders of the latter fled to Taiwan. The island reminds CCP about its past. The capitalist nature of Taiwan is another reason: it's undermining the CCP ideology. TSMC is a distant third economic reason.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#139

Post by GordonS »

bhawks wrote: post #23
an_opabinia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. I understand you are making a stylized appeal for liberal political change via violence. China's leadership has peaks and troughs of liberalism, and violence there, in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and in many other places around the world was followed more often by a hardening, not a softeni…

> Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize. What leads you to think this will be the case? The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. There doesn't seem to be magic formula, and as technology disrupts human interactions…

> The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others.

I think success largely depends on how democracy arrives - we've seen time and time again that forcing it upon a country (whether by military force or the more skullduggerous, CIA kind of force) is doomed to failure. I believe it needs to come naturally, slowly, over time.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#140

Post by smcl »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #108
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #78

If you are in HK and you're able, I'd recommend leaving and bring as much family with you as you can. It's not going to get better there, at this point.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that a foreigner would say this? Surely someone else living there would understand their own situation better.

Yeah I mean they're not wrong but I cannot picture who this is aimed at. Every resident of Hong Kong will already be acutely aware of the situation and will likely be weighing up the options at their disposal.
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