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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> their only hope is collapse of PRC

Not necessarily. A respectful and long-term oriented Beijing would be fine. (The CPC would need to change, to prevent a dictator-for-life like Xi from re-emerging.)

There are a lot of win-win outcomes between the subjugation of Hong Kong and collapse of China.

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Perhaps true in theory, but the practice of history says otherwise. Any anyway, it's not China that going to collapse, but the dictatorial regime.

Oh so China can survive a regime rotation without collapsing...sorry never happened once in China’s history

Depends on how you define a regime. If we can be a bit wishy-washy, Deng rewrote the constitution from scratch and was essentially running it like a new regime, but still paid lip service to Mao to prevent mutiny. A similar change is not unthinkable if Hu/Wen/Li's liberal faction gets in power.

this is an interesting criticism. I would have characterized the Chinese leadership of having a much more long-term outlook than the vast majority of other countries.

They are long term on many things, but not things that concern national pride. It is unclear what threat a semiautonomous HK actually presents to them, beyond just being a bunch of people near Shenzhen who can say mean things about you. It’s not like a rebellion could start there, they would be perfectly happy being left alone.

The threat of HK is that the mainlanders might start wanting some democracy for themselves.

In a way China made a mistake asking for HK back. While it was British they had a convenient boogeyman to point to, now it is part of China, Beijing has nowhere to hide, and the only option they have is to destroy it. This will be a painful process for both Beijing and HK.

There is a genuine fear of social disintegration if democracy were implemented in the mainland. Unfortunately, since Tian'anmen Square, the CPC has lacked leaders with the wisdom and guts to experiment with political reform and so now, HK's 1C2S is a threat that needs to be fire-walled off instead of an opportunity.

In terms of political culture, I don't think either side really understands the other.

He's not dictator-for-life, they simply don't have term limits.

In theory yes, but in reality he faces no opposition and so will always be "re-elected".

Don't they have elections? Maybe the people want him there, then.

Only high up party members vote in China. And the party controls the count.

I'm not 100% across Chinese politics, but from what I understand the Politburo[1] (where the top leaders sit, including Xi) are voted in by the Central Committee [1].

But the Central Committee isn't really an independent body, and the people who sit there are selected by the Politburo - effectively the Politburo members just vote themselves in.

(P.s. as mentioned I'm not 100% across the politics in China so happy to be corrected)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_o...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Commu...

Is there not some sort of democratic structure that allows people to have a say in their government? If you took a survey of random Chinese people would they say Xi Xinping is some dictator that they don't want there?

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