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A Walk in Hong Kong

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Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#331

Post by [deleted] »

tombh wrote: post #281
icebraining wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution What is this help, and how is it being prevented? > When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods. How is that relevant?

HK is simultaneously supporting the vilification of China and the continued integration of China into the world. How are we supposed to oppose China and have cheap iPhones? If the citizen's of the world actually understood the situation then they would have more opportunity to exercise their economic and diplomatic powers.

[deleted]

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#332

Post by icebraining »

roboys wrote: post #325
icebraining wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you'll be shocked! shocked! when it turns out the CCP has an interest in running those enterprises, rather than shutting them down.

Quite a claim to make, have extraordinary evidence that this would be the outcome?

No, producing evidence of your future behaviour is beyond my skills.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#333

Post by icebraining »

tombh wrote: post #281
icebraining wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution What is this help, and how is it being prevented? > When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods. How is that relevant?

HK is simultaneously supporting the vilification of China and the continued integration of China into the world. How are we supposed to oppose China and have cheap iPhones? If the citizen's of the world actually understood the situation then they would have more opportunity to exercise their economic and diplomatic powers.

HK is supporting the vilification of the actions of the Chinese government over their treatment of HK, not "China".

This idea that we cannot say one part in the conflict is clearly in the Wrong (or even evil) unless we reject the country as a whole is just silly beyond belief. I'd even say that's been the default position of much of the Europeans regarding the US for decades now.

> If the citizen's of the world actually understood the situation then they would have more opportunity to exercise their economic and diplomatic powers.

That's rather ambiguous. What specific actions are you thinking about?

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#334

Post by dlwdlw »

spyckie2 wrote: post #53
spyckie2 wrote: post #19

This piece is quite accurate - it really makes you feel like you're in Hong Kong during the protests. References aside, as a US citizen in Hong Kong there are some things that I respect immensely and some things that really get on my nerves about HK. I greatly respect the people and the cause. It reminds me of that one poem - > Do not go gentle into that good night. > Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The pe…

I don't want to change my original post, so I'll add to it here: When you're on the streets with the protests, it feels extremely primeval. The micro-scale interactions of the protest movement is like looking into a microscope at microorganisms, blobs of life that just kind of move around and sometimes eat others but most of the time just float there. It's a decentralized, rather polite mob. Angry, yes. Scary, someti…

Regarding the grow and thrive part, some of my Chinese friends mention that they feel China is unjustly cast as the villain as many of the economic issues in HK like the super small living spaces are a result of unchecked and corrupt capitalism. With China rising and HK having lost it’s monopoly as the doorway to China they don’t have anything to really drive the economy anymore. the gist is “Why don’t they go make themselves useful instead of blaming China for everything.”

Not commenting on its validity but thought it was an interesting perspective to share.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#335

Post by lostlogin »

gnulinux wrote: post #288
HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 2000 years, much of human progress came in the form of freedom. In recent times it seems there is a pushback towards less.

This is absolutely not true, only this decade we've been in a momentum for worldwide progress for LGBT rights, many states now have more liberal drug laws. Moreover, I cannot think of one thing that we were free to do a few decades ago and we're restricted to do now. There is an alarmist rhetoric in libertarian community (especially r/libertarian et al) that the West is keep getting more authoritarian, whereas the fa…

Here are some that I think are getting worse.

Tracking of your data and recording of what you have done. It seems many governments have access to this data.

Recording of biometric data by governments

Common methods of communication are less private now than previously and a a record is kept. Obviously communication is now way easier, but that has had a price.

Media is more concentrated in the hands of fewer companies and their independence is questionable. There are dark patterns here with state actors involved.

The perverse way adverts are tracking and recording. This isn’t fitting with a traditional definition of ‘authoritarian’, but it’s somewhere bad on that continuum.

A larger portion of money is held by a very small controlling group.

National firewalls and restriction of access to certain data is becoming increasingly acceptable.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#336

Post by lacampbell »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #171
tombh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else is open to the other point of view, I could use some help. I'm struggling a lot at the moment with how little relevance seems to be given to how significant HK was in defining China's modern identity. How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium t…

> But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war... This is somewhat also the case for Hongkong although I think many in Hongkong migrated there for simple economic reasons.

Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war...

It's 2019, not 1949. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the PRC claims its territory and Taiwan overwhelmingly rejects the notion of being ruled by them. Which is fairly natural, I can't think of many people in developed, democratic countries who want to be ruled by a neighbouring, developing dictatorship.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#337

Post by sdrg822 »

3131s wrote: post #144
Joakal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face is important because it came from a family oriented culture. If you were made to look bad, you'd feel even worse when the rest of your family finds out (Grandparents, relatives would talk negatively about this aka gossip). This morphed into businesses that build on relationships, the Chinese term for that is 'guanxi'. For China, they would 'lose face' if Hong Kong became independent (or Xinjiang or Tibet for tha…

This idea that "saving face" is uniquely central to Asian cultures is complete nonsense. It's a common metaphor in Asian languages, that's it -- the desire to avoid embarrassment is an absolutely universal human trait.

Embarrassment may be universal, but the internalization of guilt and shame varies dependent on the culture both in degree and manner. See, e.g.:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276464615_A_Cultura...

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#338

Post by mytailorisrich »

lacampbell wrote: post #336
mytailorisrich wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war... This is somewhat also the case for Hongkong although I think many in Hongkong migrated there for simple economic reasons.

Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war... It's 2019, not 1949. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the PRC claims its territory and Taiwan overwhelmingly rejects the notion of being ruled by them. Which is fairly natural, I can't think of many people in developed, democratic countries who want to be ruled by a neighbouring, developing…

Taiwan is still the Republic of China. A major party, whose previous President belonged to, is still the KMT.

Taiwan is thus still formally a province of China in the general sense of 'China' and is claimed by the PRC because of the civil war and because the PRC claimed to have superseded the ROC (which obviously the ROC/Taiwan does not agree with)

This is unfinished business since 1949.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#339

Post by lacampbell »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #338
lacampbell wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war... It's 2019, not 1949. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the PRC claims its territory and Taiwan overwhelmingly rejects the notion of being ruled by them. Which is fairly natural, I can't think of many people in developed, democratic countries who want to be ruled by a neighbouring, developing…

Taiwan is still the Republic of China. A major party, whose previous President belonged to, is still the KMT. Taiwan is thus still formally a province of China in the general sense of 'China' and is claimed by the PRC because of the civil war and because the PRC claimed to have superseded the ROC (which obviously the ROC/Taiwan does not agree with) This is unfinished business since 1949.

I don't understand what your point is. The people of Taiwan (or the Free Area of the Republic of China, or whatever you want to call it) today, in 2019, don't use a Civil war from 70 years ago as their main reason for not wanting to be administered by a communist dictatorship.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#340

Post by nihilarian »

tombh wrote: post #227
SECProto wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a disingenuous take on their comment. They said it is culturally and linguistically distinct from the mainland ruling class. I think it's pretty easy to see how that arose from the historical separation. They specifically mention how it came from years of British rule, and skipping the cultural revolution. They didn't even mention Guangdong.

I think you've misunderstood both them and the geography of South China. They're clearly referring to the Cantonese speaking region, which is called Guangdong (which the British never owned), of which HK is a very small part (perhaps 1/30th of the size). It sounds like you think they were just talking about HK or that the British owned GUangdong. And even more confusingly attributing HK's linguistic distinctiveness t…

You say you're a Brit but I'm pretty sure you're a CCP mouthpiece
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