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Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

nationalgeographic.com

111–120 of 288 posts

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#111
post #75

The circumstances of Britain's original forced takeover and colonization of Hong Kong in the Opium Wars are the greater evil to me. Righting that wrong after so long was always going to be painful. By analogy: a violent drug-dealer shoots you, robs you, and then kidnaps your child at gunpoint. Years later, you manage to have the child returned, but in the interim they have been taught by their captor to hate you and…

Regarding your analogy, Hong Kong in this analogy should be a fully grown adult by now, and should have fully autonomy as a result.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#112
post #24
post #5

The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the other way to authoritarian regimes.

In the last decade : - Russia annexed Crimea; - Turkey took control of most of the Syrian land across its borders; - Israel continuously colonised bits of Palestinian land; - China is now taking political control of Hong Kong; - UAE forces tool over the Socotra Islands; The West's reactions so far have been ranging from ineffectual economic sanctions to completely ignoring it. I would expect similar "annexations" by…

Any bigger reaction than that is too hawkish for my tastes. Not sure what you're looking for.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#114
post #24
post #5

The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the other way to authoritarian regimes.

In the last decade : - Russia annexed Crimea; - Turkey took control of most of the Syrian land across its borders; - Israel continuously colonised bits of Palestinian land; - China is now taking political control of Hong Kong; - UAE forces tool over the Socotra Islands; The West's reactions so far have been ranging from ineffectual economic sanctions to completely ignoring it. I would expect similar "annexations" by…

Those annexations were "easy". Take Guam, for instance, I'd love to see someone try to annex it by force.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#115
post #23
post #5

The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the other way to authoritarian regimes.

> wake up and realize that China is not messing around reality is, just a year ago, no one would have believe an outbreak like covid in China can become a worldwide pandemic that hit this HARD and ended all of our way of lives it's too often we are blind and ignorant to incoming dangers

Plenty of us that experienced the original SARS knew about the threat of pandemic from China. That's the reason why places like SK and TW were on high alert from the beginning. It's only the rest of us further afield that didn't heed the warning and continued BAU.

I was on a flight back from Japan to Heathrow in early March and the only thing they did to contain it was announce that if you feel sick, please report it to the crew. Needless to say, nobody self-reported and they didn't do anything at all in immigration after we landed.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#116
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did an MBA in Hong Kong, just finished earlier this year. A lot of my classmates are mainland Chinese. Bunch of them would regularly talk with each other and say that military action was the only way to resolve the situation, China needs to send its military to Taiwan and overrun the Taiwanese defenses quickly. Baffles my mind that they're so ready to default to war. Some other mainland Chinese people are more nuance…

Taiwan is in 'China' in the same way as both North Korea and South Korea are in Korea. The difference is that the People's Republic of China (what 'China' usually refers to) has decided that the Republic of China has ceased to exist in 1949 (Taiwan is the last remaining territory controlled by the Republic of China) and that they are strong enough to largely 'enforce' this policy on the world stage. So, of course for…

Yes, but my point is that most of the world, including the US, has agreed to acknowledge the One China policy as correct in order to access China on a diplomatic and trade basis. Hence why it's not so easy to resolve.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#117
post #68

Does anyone here have an informed opinion on what will happen to Taiwan?

Did an MBA in Hong Kong, just finished earlier this year. A lot of my classmates are mainland Chinese. Bunch of them would regularly talk with each other and say that military action was the only way to resolve the situation, China needs to send its military to Taiwan and overrun the Taiwanese defenses quickly. Baffles my mind that they're so ready to default to war. Some other mainland Chinese people are more nuance…

>Hong Kong is a difficult situation because the entire world agrees that Hong Kong belongs to China.

It's more nuanced than that. The reason for the one country two systems policy was that the rest of the world doesn't agree that the CCP should hold sovereignty over Hong Kong.

China is seen as only temporality under the control of the CCP and that it will transition away from authoritarianism given the chance. The idea is that Mainland China will become more like HK. That didn't happen at all. With the passage of the security law, HK looks more like China.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#118
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

playing the devil's advocate The article prefaces by saying this "One way to cement a claim to a disputed territory — and to anger others who think it belongs to them — is to build on it." Then goes onto describe the disputes almost being exclusive between China and the US Navy, and further reinforces that point by saying, "The U.S., the longtime guarantor of freedom of navigation in Asia’s waters..." I'm sorry, but…

It's not ironic, because the United States is not claiming the area as territorial waters belonging to the U.S. China is clearly the "aggressor" in this situation because they are building military installations in an area that was previously not a militarized zone.

The American navy has been going around there for a long time; that's hardly non-militarized.

I'm not sure there's a big difference between claiming they're territorial US waters vs claiming that the US gets to decide who's waters they are. In both cases the US has sovereignty over those waters

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#119
post #24
post #5

The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the other way to authoritarian regimes.

In the last decade : - Russia annexed Crimea; - Turkey took control of most of the Syrian land across its borders; - Israel continuously colonised bits of Palestinian land; - China is now taking political control of Hong Kong; - UAE forces tool over the Socotra Islands; The West's reactions so far have been ranging from ineffectual economic sanctions to completely ignoring it. I would expect similar "annexations" by…

Israel is not colonising "Palestinian land", they occupy a land which was part of the Ottoman empire and was promised to them in the San Remo convention by the League of Nations, Jordan was part of it too. If anything it is the opposite, Britain did as much as they could not to adhere to this legally binding decision.

In addition the Arabs in this area never agreed to recognise the non disputed part Of Israel and launched wars against it continuously, still do. Comparing it to HK or the invasion of Turkey to Syria which never threatened Turkey, is not honest and not relevant to the discussion, it is a completely different issue.

Re: Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

#120
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last decade : - Russia annexed Crimea; - Turkey took control of most of the Syrian land across its borders; - Israel continuously colonised bits of Palestinian land; - China is now taking political control of Hong Kong; - UAE forces tool over the Socotra Islands; The West's reactions so far have been ranging from ineffectual economic sanctions to completely ignoring it. I would expect similar "annexations" by…

Those annexations were "easy". Take Guam, for instance, I'd love to see someone try to annex it by force.

Didn't America annex it by force?
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