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Comment by pimmen | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't China being the second largest economy in the world make it more interesting to make a second Tiananmen Square costly? Because democracy is very important for the stability of the West and having a powerful dictatorship steamroll a democratic movement while we just watch looks really bad for us and the credibility of our governments.

And, it also gives the West less credibility internationally. The US has been very clear that it was behind "one China, two systems" since the 80s a dramatic policy change would make every other country think "ok, so why should we expect that any treaty we or alliance we form with the US will hold?". If countries don't trust the West they stop working with the West and that reduces its power by orders of magnitude.

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"One country, two systems" is a domestic policy of China. It's not any other country's business.

People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover. Violating a treaty with another country makes it an international affair.

> ”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover.

That agreement was predicated on a belief that over time, China would open up and become more democratic and Hong Kong would smoothly merge cultures.

Unfortunately, that assumption was entirely false. It's been 20 years since the handover, and China has not at all moved towards freedoms generally considered a pre-requisite to social society in the west.

Hong Kong has completely different values than mainland China. Even if the current events fade away, they are on an unavoidable collision course.

Absolutely, I would say they’ve already collided, and I’m arguing it’s time for the West to acknowledge that fact and act, such as making Tiananmen Square 2.0 more costly in order to protect our core values such as rule of the people and fair trials. I think that would be well within our interests.

I’m Swedish, a person with the same passport as me was kidnapped from Thailand and imprisoned in China probably after hours of torture because of something he published and his democracy activism in Hong Kong. The sentiment in Sweden is that it would’ve been nice for China to not say that Hong Kong would be under ”one China, two systems” if that’s not how things would turn out. Kidnapping Swedish citizens in Thailand for something they are legally allowed to do in Hong Kong doesn’t look like a domestic issue to me.

The British handed back HK to China and China said they would keep it largely autonomous for 50 years.

That's what happening and I don't remember that the Chinese government tried to renege on this.

But again, ultimately this is a domestic issue. Britain is out of the picture.

When people can be extradited to the unfair, Chinese domestic courts or failing that kidnapped by the Chinese government I would say that’s not ”largely autonomous” anymore. There’s no way for the kidnapped Causeway books employees to use the HK courts to get them out of Chinese courts, even though they committed their ”crime” in HK.

The respect of ”one country, two systems” was something China promised the UK. The international community is absolutely remaining in the picture.

HK courts would have decided whether to extradite to the mainland in the same way they do now when deciding whether to extradite to the US or any other country HK has an extradition treaty with.

China has also extradition treaties with some western countries. Does that mean that e.g. France is no longer 'autonomous'?

This extradition bill does not impact HK's autonomy at all. This is very transparently a pretext.

One has to wonder who's behind all of this because this is really getting more farcical by the day.

It is also very interesting that western media tend to use the terms 'China' for the mainland in their reports on these events. Clearly this is not neutral and makes Western opinion believe that HK is not China.

> People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

If your core values are freedom, democracy, and the right of the people to choose who governs them, then it does not seem hypocritical at all.

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