Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests
latimes.com
latimes.com
Really made an impression on me. I bet most of my beliefs are baloney too, but I have no idea which ones they are.
As far as she was concerned, Tibetans were Chinese, not a distinct group.
It was eye opening.
I have been living in the West long enough to not argue those stuffs. The Chinese government has its bad and its good, but so far it's doing OK, and I can't imagine any other government could do better, or even on par.
Ever heard of the phrase "better to die on your feet, than live on your knees?"
Not everyone shares the ethos that a full belly is happiness and goodness. There is more to life than mere material goods. What makes a life worth living even? I guess if you have a job all is good, at least as per your line of argumentation.
Sure I don't like the censorship and change narratives, but most governments do the same thing. Let me know if you find one government that is both competent and honest.
When you don't have either, what can you do about it?
I don't fully agree with censorship (they do serve some good I must say that), but it's not black and white. I'm also very pessimistic about "better-informed" people. Receiving news from different sources doesn't make you just. You can't receive A and B and just average them.
... you don't average them. You use critical thinking to evaluate the information with regards to its sources, their agendas and integrate those sources. When there are contradictions you try to understand why.
So did the Soviet Union. They lifted hundreds of millions of people from the ruinous World World 2 to a modern industrial society. It's what happened after _that_ that warrants concern.
Another argument is that, yes, CCP did lift most of the population out of subsistence poverty, but can another Party do better? Can the Taiwanese Republic of China government do better (probably not)? can another party modernize China in less time than CCP's 50 years (1949-2000)?
As for censorship and change narratives. I can swear at the leader of my country without fear. Can you do the same to Xi in China?
Assaulting someone by hitting them however is not a freedom, you're violating someone else's freedom of not being harmed. Which is not what the post you're responding to was mentioning.
It looks like you want to steer the discussion away from free speech, because you know the West has that and China doesn't, towards an argument that if you can't do anything you want in the West it's not really free. Which has nothing to do with China.
Not to mention that most of that was enabled by IP theft, abuse of workers, lack of safety and quality standards, and other dishonest means.
It's easy to imagine something better.
If you hate the one-party idea, just think one more layer -- there are factions inside the party, probably more than 2 actually.
They are all really nice countries to live in too
I think most westerners don't realize the magnitude of China and that managing/ruling/governing a country of 1.3B diverse citizens with thousands of a years of history is a larger challenge than managing a small country.
It is easy to see all the good things that happened in China in the last decades, and see the things that work. But I can very easily imagine a better government in China, much like I can do so for the US and in EU countries.
The CCP is running literal concentration camps, is suppressing free speech, using (possibly) questionable economic measures, strongarming other independent countries, censoring and even harvesting organs of prisoners for profit (probably for political elites). And most of those things on a scale previously unimaginable. Furthermore, one might argue (and I am not saying this is black and white) that the process of raising people out of poverty has as much to do with technical progress, foreign trade and China's geographical and demographic makeup, as it has to do with actual policy (and one could therefore imagine even better outcomes!)
I think it is indeed very easy to imagine things going better in China!
That's the entire point, I think. Citizens should be willing and able to be unhappy with their governments, and be able to express this without disappearing. That you can not imagine anyone doing better in China is what the OP was talking about.
Edit: Just to make this clear, I do not want a discussion on the merits of the CCPs policies - everyone can have their own opinion on that - much like for any other country. But the worry is the well rehearsed narrative that China is somehow unique and requires, basically, an iron fist rule. This I have seen many times in discussions with Chinese - saying that all these criticisms may be good and well for other countries, but not for China. And this in the end amounts to unwillingness to question the CCP in any way. And that, I think, is not good.
Like I said, it has its good and bad, but generally I think it's OK. I didn't say it's all good.
Now let's look at the list: 1) Concentration camps and organ harvesting: I'm not going to argue about these as I'll say you don't have true proofs and you will say I'm brainwashed, we will never agree to each other. Organ harvesting actually does happen, I can say for that, because I just read a report (in Chinese btw) a few days ago, but it was not large scale and definitely not in the ideology.
2) Suppressing free speech: Yes that's one of the bad, but TBH you can blame the government online as much as you want because so many other people are doing the same...people seldom got caught JUST because of that. For example. the protesters in HK was not even put into prison for some of their violent actions, and if that's not enough I really can't say more.
3) Questionable economic measures: Not a new thing, pretty much every government of the world is doing the same thing since like...beginning of civilization?
4) Strongarming other independent countries: Not a new thing, pretty much every government of the world is doing the same thing since like...beginning of civilization? Just the real world, more the reason that people should work hard instead of dreaming about vacations to fight off these strongarmings. TBH with the economic strength of China it is quite peaceful...
In short, citizens are indeed able to express their unhappy with the government, and a lot of people (in the mainland) protest, too. The weird thing about my western friends is that they seem to be pretty scared about China, and I honestly can't tell why...
But the concentration camps for Uyghers are well-documented, and they really can't be grouped with the organ donation claims. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps .
I would also argue that China has been strongarming other countries in excess to any other nation except for the USA in recent decades. China is the only country that uses face and "people's feelings" as distinct political instruments. But this is also not my main point and also not the point of the OP.
For the other things, let me make two points. First, your assertion that this also happens in other countries does not make it okay. This is a fallacy often used. What I am saying is that the rate and fashion to how these things are reporting on, protested against, and dealt with in other countries, is much different than in China. It is a fact that many bad things happen in Western countries right this moment. But the people arrested or disappearing for pointing these things out is pretty much zero. I was just on business in the US, and watching MSNBC and Fox News at the same time, it's clear that there is a huge range for opinions on literally all political and economic actions and actors - and they are strongly voiced. Indeed the US has a strong culture of government distrust and conspiracy theorists that simply would not exist in China. In (most of) the EU, measures done by the CCP could never even be implemented at all, as neither the political force. executive capabilities, nor the acceptance in the population exists in such a way. But even if these things would be implemented, you could always find a country that does things better, treats people better and is more humane. So I think this framing is really useless, whether we argue about China, the USA or Sweden.
Second, why are people afraid of China? We are afraid because we do not want the Chinese model to succeed. As much as it helped pull people from poverty, it has created and cemented an incredibly wealthy and powerful upper class, and we are rightfully worried that our own elites take some hints. We are not scared of Chinese soldiers marching into our country, but if China would develop similar cultural hegemony as the US has currently, our world would be be much worse (at least for me, as I am a minority). China violates very basic tenets of human rights that we believe enable us to live freely. China also implements the mechanisms necessary to push strongly the will of the majority on the minority - or to be more precise, the will of someone on anyone. Again, I only need to mention the very real plight of Muslims in China - "uniformize or perish" - for you to hopefully see this point. This very same thing could happen easily elsewhere, and indeed we have seen it happen in the past. You may, for example, want to google the term "Stasi" if you have the time.
Its a tiresome trope, but people valuing a free society will always be deadly afraid that living with a boot on their necks is an actual viable political and economic model, because if it is, what's keeping history from swinging exactly that way? Free and tolerant societies are the exception in history and we - especially minorities in any sense - would like that to change! Is it a pipe dream? Maybe - but that's exactly where this fear comes from. It is probably difficult to understand this point if you belong to both a local and (eventually) globally dominant grouping.
Finally, as to your first sentence: I think it is ALSO easy to propose many actionable and easy measures to make things better in China, for example, stop doing the things we agree are "bad". And many countries or governments are not doing these things. So I ask again, why can you not imagine anything better? And furthermore, where would we be if we can not imagine anything better?
I'm neither educated nor motivated enough to argue with most of this. But preventing China from punishing HK people according to China's laws is the _entire point_ of the protests, is it not?
Are people really just ok with concentration camps in 2019?
You are referring to effective situation.
The Chinese student is talking about his perceived mental recognition.
You need first get straight to the point that your notion of independent nation is such and such.
The Chinese student needs to say regardless the Taiwan situation, we believe it's part of China.
That's why I believe Taiwan likely will never be part of China formally: I.e. the separation is so long and so deep that remedy it would be economical and politically too costly.
On the other hand, when China finally become the an order of magnitude more powerful nation than, presumably the second in rank. I predict Taiwan will be effectively part of China's paper sphere, but never formally to integrate.
The only thing it "is", for sure, is complicated.
The ROC's official policy is that Taiwan is just another province of China, which the ROC administers (along with part of Fujian province); the ROC, furthermore, is the legitimate government of all of China, including the island, current mainland, many of the PRC's disputed territorial claims, and even Mongolia. This is more or less identical to the PRC position. There are many Taiwanese who do see it as a totally separate country, but that's controversial even within Taiwan.
If you had asked her the more concrete question about whether Taiwan is currently administered by an entity calling itself the ROC, I guarantee there wouldn't have been such a manifest gap in understanding.
To be fair, part of the reason that is the official policy is because the PRC is perceived to be (because it's pretty openly said this) more willing to be tolerant of dispute over which one governs all of China (which the PRC can't reasonably lose barring some radical inversion of power) than Taiwan declaring independence, such that the latter would be more likely to lead to war to settle the dispute.
But the concrete disagreement mentioned in the comment I was responding to seemed to imply that the writer thought that his coworker might literally think that the ROC did not currently administer Taiwan, while she certainly does know that; it's a gap in understanding because the comment writer didn't realize that whether Taiwan a province of China is not how mainlanders conceptualize the dispute.
I would be curious to know if the average mainlander recognizes that most Taiwanese see themselves as having a separate identity and would ideally have a separate country, which is a real on-the-ground fact that I can imagine being glossed over in education and media.
I think everyone has different definitions of freedom, some might think it only means to be physically free but lack of free speech and lack of proper human rights are a-ok because they don't know any better.
If you don't like the leadership, there are plenty of other ways to improve that, but talking is the cheapest.
Gee, the authoritarian brainwashing really is strong with you.
Quoting you:
> Actually discussing the leaders doesn't do anyone any good.
So: No, I didn't.
> Changes cannot be achieved by simple talking.
Yes, they can. And are. Constantly.
> You have to complain and do things if it doesn't work.
No. For one, many things can be changed by talking, and talking only. But also, there is absolutely nothing wrong if someone only talks about things being bad where action besides talking is required to change things. It's neither morally wrong, nor is it useless, if your talking is what enables others to implement the changes.
What actually is completely useless is complaining about people only talking about a problem. Absolutely nothing useful can possibly come from that. But it's a common fallacy used by authoritarians and parroted by their followers, nothing particularly special to China. Which is the general impression I get from a lot of your arguments in this discussion: Tons of typical authoritarian fallacies the likes of which you would also hear from right-wing nationalists in "western countries".
This is waaay off thread-topic, but this is very very important to recognize and learn to internalize at deeper levels that you probably recognize. I just wanted you to know that I know that you just made a very important first step (and it never stops).
Unfortunately a lot of people fall through into some conspiracy black hole.
The proper way to look at this is of course the rationalist/epistemological framework of belief updates (which is better called model fitting).
Skepticism is not just doubting everything, it's trying to find the model of the world that consistently maximally fits the data/observations/experiences.
China doing brainwashing is consistent, but the moon landing was a hoax is not. (Because that model in which everything is a hoax and the deep state is controlling everything is too simple, so it's useless, kind of like Pascal's wager without the afterlife part.)
Is as if propaganda works. Who would have thought.
Once I was discussing with a Chinese colleague and the Tiananmen subject came up (it was in the news, I didn't bring it up), and he told me that the students were not that innocent either, that they killed 150 soldiers the night before. I asked him, how could some students with rocks kill 150 soldiers with machine guns, but he said it was true. As suspected, I couldn't find any reputable sources for this later when I did extensive googling.
So your colleague wasn’t completely lying, but the truth belies a lot more intrigue. I think this is all in the wiki article.
The biggest problem (at least from the CPC’s point of view) is that the PRC completely lacked non lethal riot suppression capabilities. They literally had nothing in between just standing there unarmed and full on military assault. Afterwards, they built up the PAP (people’s armed police) very quickly, and you can see them often practicing in Beijing.
Tiananmen is often brought up, but did you know that the US experienced a parallel event? I didn't learn about this in US history class, but apparently soldiers fired upon unarmed student protesters in the Kent State shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
and also compare "Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds" with this, which itself is just a tip of the iceberg: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cth1c0/reposting_...
My point is just that, I feel like the Western dialogue is often "Look at these horrible things that happen in China. Isn't propaganda sad?" My point is that propaganda is happening everywhere. Yes, it's happening in China blatantly and fragrantly. But everyone needs to be wary and alert that it might be happening even in seemingly "safe" countries.
For instance, I enjoyed your vimeo link and it compellingly documented the obvious censorship of the issue. The video made clear that some people clearly know what happened on 6/4 but it's not socially okay to talk about.
Interestingly, there is a small and consistent mistranslation in the subtitles. What the video translates as "don't record it", is "don't record me". Aka, some of the subjects take issue with the videographer recording people without permission. In addition to the sensitive topic, (I imagine) some part of their discomfort on screen is due to being randomly interviewed and recorded. But this was seemingly mistranslated in the videographer's favor? I point this out, not to argue with the message of the video, but to show that there is nuance/spin happening everywhere.
Thank you for taking the time to share these very interesting links. I'm grateful that I live in a place where it's possible to have this open and reasonable dialogue.
Yes, I totally agree. To scapegoat the CCP as "the" evil power center would not only be unfair and hypocritical, it would be dangerous.
For me as a German, I a lot of beef with "my" country, "the West" etc. But that doesn't make me like Putin or the CCP, etc. If anything, the more corruption or tyranny there already is, the worse any additional "amount" of it becomes, if you know what I mean.
Of course that also means I cannot excuse "our" crimes with that of the CCP. For me that'd be like using the misdeeds of others to excuse one's own, which is actually worse than just doing the misdeed. And criticizing elsewhere is easy.
But so is looking the other way, and I also must not do that, I can't. If I want to secure and deserve what freedom I have, I have to support that of others, at least in principle, always.
> But this was seemingly mistranslated in the videographer's favor? I point this out, not to argue with the message of the video, but to show that there is nuance/spin happening everywhere.
No disagreement here either. And it really disheartens me when causes with legitimate grievances "give it a little extra". I wish people were more strict about that, it's a real problem. And making such small corrections, no matter how benign or factual, gets people labeled as "being in the other camp" so quickly, which is the worst part, apart from people thinking in terms of "sides" alll the time in the first place. So thanks for pointing this out.
And thank you for taking the time as well :)
It's also a totally different scale - 4 vs. a number in the hundreds to thousands.
We don't even know the numbers for sure because it's been clamped down so massively, vs. Kent State, where we know exactly what happened.
I dug up my AP US History textbook and found that it was covered in half a sentence. So I guess this was how I missed it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6x8Zfgh8HSuCbRdB8
I never said we shouldn't care about Kent State, nor have I said that it was unimportant.
What I said is that Tiananmen was several orders of magnitude worse, and while anyone in the US can look up Kent State and other horrible occurrences in their history books, many of them found in schools, or in any other place they'd like, people in China cannot look up the Tiananmen Square massacre.
I am replying to someone claiming that the US has done the same with Kent State as China has done with Tiananmen Square and that the events were equal to begin with. So if you can show me where the US has tried to cover up the fact that Kent State happened at even 1/1000th of the effort that China has gone through to cover up Tiananmen Square, or that the loss of human life between the two is similar, this might be a productive conversation.
In the mean time, you're responding to a point I never made and words I never said.
That's the difference.
A reasonable comparison might be Black Wall Street, but even then discussion about the event isn’t suppressed, just at the time the event was covered up by the local government of the area. But the CCP doesn’t remember the Siege of Changchun either.
First off, I think China is a corrupt superpower and a huge threat to the USA, and there is no comparison or ambiguity about who the good guys are (the USA).
But the Tiananmen Square thing was severely fucked up. Originally the soldiers were not allowed to fire on civilians, and they were lynched and burned alive. There are lots of photos of the corpses of the soldiers being displayed or placed in conspicuous places by the civilians.
The civilians could kill the soldiers because the soldiers were under orders not to hurt civs.
As the article says, I don't expect them to change their views overnight, but I would like to plant some seeds of doubt. Any suggestions for links to suitable content? (Ideally accessible from behind the GFW, although most can VPN outside it.) For example, the mainland Chinese government has been painting the HK protests as the work of a tiny terrorist minority, so solidly commented footage of 1M+ peaceful protesters should jar their world view a little.
Careful with asking this as you are risking their life and their family/friends: Ask them when they started hearing about the HongKong protests (China initially censored HongKong protests)? Are they aware that HongKong had been seeking democracy and/or independence for a long time even under UK rule? Have they read about Wukan Democracy experiment and Tiananmen Square (Both asked for democracy as a peaceful resolution)? If they do for either, are they aware of the list of demands from protestors (China has been trying to portray the events as destructive people and censor the demands).
All of this is on Wikipedia and many news websites. Which are censored in China for a good reason.
From my understanding, most protesters do not seek independence from China. Do you have evidence to back your sentence up?
It's a common misunderstanding in mainland and rest of the world outside of Hong Kong to assume that the (majority of) people of Hong Kong wants independence when they are protecting about a very specific extradition bill.
Disclaimer: I'm mainland Chinese.
Unless the government changes in China, China = CCP. If CCP wasn't in power any more, a lot of protestors wouldn't mind HongKong being part of China.
The protestors know if they specifically ask for independence, they will get shot.
That said, I guess it's equally difficult for people to imagine that Chinese government has been very, very generous to the Hong Kong people. But that's generally true from a Chinese' pov. Generous to the point that a lot of mainlanders are actively complaining on online forums.
That is considered a fairly low bar by Western standards.
I don't think the reason for people not mentioning independence is because they worry about their personal safety.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Leung
edit: full -> fully
That you cannot see that... well... who is more likely to be wrong here?
Perhaps you have been incentivized not to learn how to think critically about social and governmental affairs, second and third order effects and consequences?
Look at Youtube channels like CGTN and Nathan Rich to see what they hear and you'll know what they don't hear.
And who are "most of the world"? Has the world reached a unified conclusion on what the people of Hong Kong want?
How do you think autocratic governments handle corruption compared to democracies?
The extradition bill is just the latest one.
Many protestors have explicitly called for independence. Most are simply demanding things that are not possible with HK as a mainland managed province with the current powers that be in Beijing, and I can't imagine that they don't know this - it's a de facto desire for independence.
If the ROC was magically in charge, then HK probably wouldn't care about being independent.
I think it's interesting to ask people who are educated in China what they think about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For instance, what do they think about this photo? https://i.imgur.com/0zAQqAO.png
Though, this line of questioning may be met with hostility. So I suppose you could ask them why they're angry about evidence of a massacre of their own people.
That is why the late night comedian brigade and the bombastic news reader class (don't call them journalists) have never managed to change anyone's minds, irrespective of how many years of likes, laughs and claps they get from their own fan clubs. It's true of the left and the right.
Jaring (blaming/shaming/guilt triping) or shaking people up is not a teaching technique that works.
And you have to think of it as Teaching. Good teachers don't just shake people up. They know Learning takes Time, A LOT OF TIME. And different subjects require a deep understanding of how much time. Without a sense of that it easy to screw up the learning process and produce outcomes that don't make sense.
You can throw a baby into water, and some have an anti-drowning reflex, that can trigger some learning (about swimming). But many don't and you end up with dead babies. The tragic Story of misguided teaching practices, doesn't usually end there. Those who don't end up with dead babies, easily fool themselves into thinking that they have some great insight into teaching. And they apply it to other subjects, like throwing babies into metaphorical Tiger cages.
In this particular case involving China, you don't attack/blame/judge your friends or hold them accountable or guilt trip them or shame them. That won't produce any learning. Guaranteed. Expect only defensiveness and counter attacks.
It you really truly want to spark learning you just point at the articles and STOP. No blaming/shaming/guilt tripping/judgement passing/sarcasm/correcting/fact checking/finding logical holes etc. And then give it time. Learning how to handle Tigers takes time. Reset that expectation and watch the seeds planted grow.
Perhaps that's the key then: send everybody in mainland China to watch an actual protest in Hong Kong...
I suspect you are likely to answer something like “because it’s for their own good”, or “because they have a right to the Truth”.
Have you considered that what is good/true for people is heavily dependent on their personal circumstances?
If, after planting those seeds of doubt, your friend or one of their family members suddenly disappears and you never hear from them ever again, what part of the burden will you choose to bear?
This is not what the West is criticizing and calling "brain washing". Rather it's locking up critical book publishers and journalists, lying through state sponsored media and doing actual brain washing to millions of muslims. These are all things the West has done too, and we realized that was all bad and not in the least necessary for economic growth, so we created strong constitutions founded in human rights to try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation
It's a memo that warns of the 7 deadly "Western Values."
Some of the key points in the memo is that the Communist Party is above the law, and that party members should not encourage any form of constitutional governance or separation of power. You as an individual have no right to due process, and so that means if there are powerful party members that do not like you, they have every power to not follow any rules, and so they can kidnap you and torture you and seize assets from you without any form of judicial independence, and because independent media isn't allowed you cannot just reach out toward the public for help. In fact, the Chief Justice of China has said:
"[China's courts] must firmly resist the western idea of “constitutional democracy”, “separation of powers” and “judicial independence”. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party and defame the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law. We have to raise our flag and show our sword to struggle against such thoughts. We must not fall into the trap of western thoughts and judicial independence. We must stay firm on the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Qiang]
You see , this is one reason for the Hong Kong protests, in that they do not trust the Communist Party since the party doesn't have to play by the rules.
Explain to your friends that there is a limit to what you can trust in any media, even in the West. You always have to look at who owns in the media, and the majority of the media in Mainland China is controlled by the Communist Party. Hence, you cannot really trust the Mainland Chinese Media would be critical of the party actions/mistakes . In fact from the memo, it says any "historical reassessing" of past party mistakes isn't allowed as it threatens the face of the party. The "Fourth Estate" or "Free flow of information" also threatens the party's position in power. I suggest showing your friend this video on how the party has been constricting the free flow information about the Hong Kong protests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFE49oo__8 to build this alternate reality of what is happening on the ground.
Lastly, make the point to separate China as a country from the Communist Party itself. Criticizing the party dosen't mean criticizing him/her as a Chinese person.
Positive reinforcement works best. Find something that will make them feel good, that also breaks their bad habits. In this case, specially the habit of taking in news sources that lie. This is far more difficult than it sounds.
Negative reinforcement / negative emotions, seems to only work when they agree with it. You can steer someone's thinking this way towards a positive path, but usually negative feelings are to be avoided at all costs. This includes talking about conflicting information.
So, for example, if I was in your situation, it may not be an ideal answer, but I might talk about the fairness doctrine and how much propaganda we have in the US. If they already believe we are biased, this will have a positive emotional response, because the facts are in agreement. The trick with this is talking about how in our news it used to be illegal to lie to people. By talking about the fairness doctrine you plant a seed of how things could be done -- a better way.
This will not change their views, but that seed will slowly grow into something much more months to years from now, because they'll start questioning their own news sources. This happens in part because explaining the fairness doctrine explains one way to guarantee the news is not biased. This is done by giving equal time to opposing views. The seed then becomes, "This news source isn't giving an opposing view along side it." and then it becomes, "Maybe I should look at multiple news sources to get an honest take." Though, usually it will be an acknowledgement of how fucked up it is, without the effort taken to learn the real truth. Either way, that imho is one of the few seeds you can plant that will open people's eyes.
When asked to put their money where their mouth is, the actions of people speak far, far louder than their words.
Therefore it is somewhat naive to think that bringing uncensored information to the Chinese will somehow change their mind. Just look at the inability of people to change pro-China posters in this and many such posts on HN, who presumably have access to uncensored information, and who are often suspected of being "shills" or robots that are part of a Chinese disinformation campaign.
PRC Chinese have been conditioned into a certain mindset about news that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yves_Zenou/publication/...
I've seen repeatedly both from people in mainland and "westerners" to assume the people of Hong Kong want independence from mainland China but this is not true.
The majority of people (protesters) didn't even mention this in their 5 demands[0].
[0]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/14/five-demands-must-fulf...
Which of those things would make you worry, and why?
Because if #2 and #3 come to be, then #4 will surely severely censure the police for firing tear gas, bean bag bullets and rubber bullets, which will demoralize the police, greatly damage their ability to maintain law and order and incentivize rioting as the proper form of making demands going forward. Supposedly Hong Kong's laws/ordinances governing the conduct of independent inquiries contain provisions against self-incrimination, which is possibly another means for rioters and their organizers to safeguard themselves against prosecution by presenting at the independent inquiry. I say "supposedly" because while chapter and verse were quoted, I haven't looked them up myself and IANAL anyway.
The "protestors" are demanding non-negotiable acceptance of all 5 demands.
These would make next protest cost down to zero, and demoralized police hands will be tied to response. This is destroying HK's justice system and legislation system by encouraging solving the interest conflict in the street, because protests could solve the problem can't be solved in the court/Legco, and taking no or minor responsibility. This mobocracy.
Even the gov made compromises under the table, they wouldn't claim they accepted them.
And there is no leader of protesters, which means even 5 demands are accepted, there could be another group demands for next 5. And asking them in the air instead of asking negotiating on the table, non-negotiable acceptance with no trade-off, all these don't look like protester are truly seeking for talk or solution, or they were designed not to do so.
2 days ago a video surfaced of two hong kong police officers torturing a 62 year old man: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/cstj3u/hong...
Do you not think it is fair for protesters to want to launch an inquiry into this behavior?
> incentivize rioting as the proper form of making demands going forward
what evidence of rioting is there? afaik these protests have been peaceful.
For the torture case, it is reported that the policemen involved have been arrested. In my view, the case should be dealt with under existing laws. An independent inquiry should be launched if/when there is systemic police abuse.
> Evidence of rioting
Many videos on Youtube. Here's one on last week's airport assault of two mainland Chinese. The two were trapped and tortured for hours and rioters prevented medical/police personnel from getting to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz4-Ld1l7iI
Another video of the airport riot. According to reports, the policeman who drew his pistol had had his testicles smashed when he was being beaten up and he is now in hospital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpQpwQijRzg
Attacking the Legislature building in July.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO16RnQNZmU
Attacking the Legislature, view from outside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPU86QO8pUw
In June.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG23TIb-pUo
Randomly attacking a policeman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuCgEAxwevI
Randomly attacking civilian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15gprNFvBiY
It has been like this for weeks.
It's funny (in a sad way) reading in this thread posters confidently labeling others brainwashed when they are the ones being fed a controlled narrative.
> Another video of the airport riot. According to reports, the policeman who drew his pistol had had his testicles smashed when he was being beaten up and he is now in hospital.
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/cputoi/policeman_sta...
See how it was started by the policeman bodyslamming a innocent girl?
I could also cherry pick a bunch of videos showing chinese violence against protesters.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/clbof6/in_a...
https://amp.news.com.au/national/queensland/hong-kong-protes...
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/coy60g/a_young_femal...
You asked for evidence of riots. Are you claiming that these scenes don't constitute rioting?
As for context, some of the links I provided are news reports in Cantonese or Mandarin. I suppose you don't understand what the newscasters or the people in the videos are saying?
> bodyslamming a (sic) innocent girl
And there was a bunch of armed people on standby all ready to retaliate? Yup, not the scene of a riot.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/clbof6/in_a...
You know that the guy punching is Chinese how?
All of them were speaking Cantonese. I speak Cantonese and I understand what they were saying.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/coy60g/a_young_femal...
The woman was shot at a _siege_ of a police station and she was in rioters' typical battle gear. The police have not ruled out that they could have shot her, but they are still investigating. The woman has so far refused to come public. If she was indeed shot by the police, you'd imagine that the protest movement would've called press conferences, published hospital reports and all that. So far, nothing.
> https://amp.news.com.au/national/queensland/hong-kong-protes...
I condemn all violence. This subthread is on evidence of rioting in Hong Kong. Yes you can cherry pick videos showing violence carried out by Chinese-looking people. And that's what you have done.
Edit: Wording
I'm sorry if this sounds naive - I guess I have no idea what's going on in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_conflict#/media/File:K...
Yellow: controlled by India, green: controlled by Pakistan, red: controlled by China.
In reality, control of Kashmir is split between India, Pakistan, and China.
I now understand how it spurs nationalism and cause misunderstandings.
Update: I guess another thing to think about would be what if someone in at one depth of the cave tried to take someone out from within what seems to them a deeper level of the cave? And the opposite, what if someone from the cave tried to reach out of the cave and bring someone they think is in what appears to be a cave to them to their own cave.
Another update: The last link in the posted article is an interesting read in terms of the actions people take when they start thinking that they were inside a cave [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
[1] https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf
[2] https://supchina.com/2019/05/01/truth-hidden-in-the-dark-chi...
For starters, does any of you even know how it all started? The extradition bill? To do what? To extradite a Hong Kong teen that killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan so he can be prosecuted there, at the request of Taiwan! I don't ever see that mentioned anywhere.
Let me say, this video absolutely riled me (even more so than the ones I’ve seen of the rioters getting violent):
https://videos-a.jwpsrv.com/content/conversions/KWwwg9Oc/vid...
Sure, these guys are “peaceful” as in they didn’t hurt anyone, but watch and observe their actions:
1. The guys postures are incredibly aggressive for starters, for me, I would not call that peaceful at all.
2. Once someone took action to stop them, they held their hands up to make it look like they didn’t do anything wrong
3. They have friends specifically to capture the moment when they look like they were provoked
Now taking all of these points into consideration, this is an intentional provocation to have someone take action against them and make themselves look like the good guys. Here is my question to you all, what would you have done in those situations? Forcefully make them stop? Then that makes you the bad guy, and could potentially have you beaten up (let’s look at the number of thugs they have behind them). Call the police? Then the police will look like the bad guys, which is probably their intention anyways. So personally, I do not buy the “protests” being peaceful at all, maybe it was at the start, but there are a lot more violence from these “protesters” that are not being reported.
Personally, I am more convinced that the "protesters" are the agitators of all of these, you are more than welcome to show me otherwise.
As for violent police, the UK deals with protests are even worse, but I've not seen escalation to this sort of level.
From what I've seen though, I don't think China really wants to fully integrate Hong Kong (probably not even in 2047) as it doesn't make to much sense to do so, but would rather create an offshore haven like what Jersey is to the UK. But here lies the problem, while Jersey is seen as really well off due to the number of high networth bank accounts kept there, there is a real sense of poverty in Jersey and I think that's the issue HK is facing right now. If that is the case, calling for democracy is not going to solve their problems, so instead of rioting, maybe they should have sat down to work out a better solution.
You're being disingenuous. The extradition bill is ostensibly about that case but here's the reality: the bill would allow Hongkongers to be extradited to mainland China, where the legal system is a joke.
The prospect of being arrested in HK and shipped to authoritarian China is completely untenable.
Chinese agents have already being kidnapping and 'disappearing' Hong Kong dissidents. This would legalise and streamline the process.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Barrister-Stories-Law-Broken...
Onto the topic of the extradition bill though, it specifically excludes extraditing politial dissidents, so it would not streamline the process. What I hear some people say that China will just make some excuses in other areas, which then I don't see the point, since kidnapping and disappearing people would surely be easier right, and since they can already do that, then why would they need the bill? But you know what the bill does allow HK to do, is to extradite a baby murderer to face charges of the crime he commited.
Secondly, it could easily be argued that a legal extradition route would be a lot easier than secretly kidnapping and disappearing people over the border. Why do you think it would be easier to kidnap?
As for what's easier, let's look at it this way. For me to kidnap someone, I can just find where they are staying, break into said place and then take them away; if I am super careful, I will do it when there is no one around. For me to create a legal extradition route, then I would need to look into your history, financial dealings etc, find out somewhere that looks dodgy, and try to use that as evidence; sometimes I cannot even use that as evidence given it may not even be committed in China. Remember, Al Capone was sentenced not due to the other crimes he committed (due to lack of evidence) but rather due to his tax evasions, so proving something legally when you haven't done it is very hard. If given that you can just go around "kidnapping and disappearing people" as you have stated, why would you want to bother create the legal route right?
The view in The Mainland Chinese is HK ppls are racist and snobbish towards Mainland Chinese . Which is If you spoken to HK peoples. That is not far from reality. Here a couple of links to illustrate https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-16828134 https://qz.com/442887/how-hong-kong-is-different-from-china-...
At the same time Mainland Chinese look at hk problems is an economic problem. Due to insecurity of the rising china and inequality created since the British policy.
Most Indians never met and probably will never meet any Kashmiri but they think they know what’s good for Kashmiris.
p.s. the country I live (Japan) is rather wishy-washy about this. The law in theory respects individual freedom, but in reality people don't really appreciate the idea that much. And I see a plenty of people who believe that the government will never do anything wrong.
The larger problem is generations of people who have been socialized and brought up to accept lies told by people with power and positional authority. At that level it is country/culturally independent and manifests in what the content and scale of the lies are.
Everything has become so partisan, nobody wants to cede even a millimeter of ground to the other side, so taking the most extreme position has become the norm in debate. It is strategic, (if you want to prevent government regulation on global warming, spending years debating on whether or not it even exists rather than on what the solutions will be is rather effective), but very disingenuous.
In a number of measures, the effects of partisan bias are much stronger than the effects of racial bias. [0]
[0] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/october/dems-gop-polariz...
The phenomenon that young HKers, regardless of economic status even young kids of post-97 mainland immigrants, almost unanimously support liberal democratic ideas should probably thanks to pro-democratic narration in their k-12 education.
That's said, I agree with this LA Times piece, narration in education (or call it propaganda or brainwash) really matters. Unless there are properly crafted counter message in western education, majority of oversea Chinese students will continue to live in their WeChat walled garden of post truth[1].
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-post-trut...
Communicating incorrect opinions about China allowed the author’s friends to correct him. And now he can share a unique perspective that they cannot because they were never on the wrong side of the issue.
China uses both carrots and sticks to enforce the views of the CCP. The Chinese government will arrest your entire extended family if you undertake "political" actions, that is, try and use the normal Chinese laws to ensure your rights.
Yeah, true. I grew up in the US version of that. It's all different now ... of course.
Now, they've gotten the extradition rescinded, what else are they protesting for? That's the real question that the protesters are not answering. It's almost as if they're protesting for the sake of it. I think there's foreign influence involved because a pain for China is good for others, like a orange-tanned person I don't have to name.
All-in-all, with the world watching, China won't commit another Tiananmen. What they will do is to squeeze Hong Kong dry of business and money and leave it as just another backwater city.
The protests continue with the demands of
1. Withdraw the bill
2. Carrie Lam steps down
3. An independent inquiry into police brutality
4. Release of protesters arrested
5. Universal Suffrage
There's plenty of reasons for them to protest without blaming foreign influence
Many of these Chinese students think the government filtering the Internet in China is beneficial because it prevents the spread of "harmful information"
hypothesis 1, they were silenced. Chinese students were in great disadvantage no matter in population or in capital compare with groups holding different ideas. The students from hong kong, taiwan are more exposed to the western world because there were more chance they could get into the social groups financially - think if there are person in your social group paid 10x less than yours, and emotionally - you might have visited there because it's easier to get in and out and enjoy as foreigner. Media tend to report things you might interest with, either it might show up in your day to day life, or those odds could catch your eyes - people pays more attention to stories from those escaped from mid-east than those actually living in mid-east. This factor changed in recent years, because both number and wealth have been increased a lot for Chinese students. hypothesis 2, they silenced themselves. The culture difference, language disadvantage and huge gap on life quality, the 1st generation migrants are tend to stay low profile - the mexico migrants also had that in history. This factor also changed a lot in recent years.
These two factors exist in all minority groups.
Back to this topic itself, Chinese students are heard now(and ironically thanks to their HK peers), and why they hold different opinions?
The Chinese students' background could be vary, but one thing is in common - they were from China, and the CPC ruled China helped their family gained wealth so they could stand in the same street with you. Due to the same reason, they are naturally more vigilant when the medias are reporting news completely fell into one side, and when they are trying to find different view, there is state media - the same thing happens in US, the media are pushing people either towards right or left, especially when the a situation can't be simply marked as "good" or "bad", being labeled negatively make them join the group protecting their identities. Not even mention for this generation, HK has been part of China since they start understanding the world, they would try to look at the similarity between them and hker, meanwhile hker were still showing off their superiority (like girlfriend who keep showing gift from her ex)
Everyone has their rights to express their opinions. But the role media playing that divides us, is more dangerous
I expect China is in the same place, things are so much better for the average Chinese citizen and the propaganda machine is running full tilt.
Chinese people today have lived through an economic miracle. If I lived there I doubt I'd criticize their system, especially considering people still can remember worse times. For young Hong Kongers however, they didn't live during British rule. They were born into wealth, and now their own career prospects (like many millenials around the world) aren't great. So they protest.
The unfortunate thing is that they'll fail. The finance industry is already planning to exit HK (too volatile), and China can kill the rest of their economy. Rich HKers will leave. In the end, the protests will only hurt HK.
Occupy Wall Street didn't do anything, successive Ukrainian revolutions never lasted either. Ukraine is often cited: after the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych eventually came back to power. Poroshenko had his time, but lost in the biggest landslide in Ukraine's short history. Now Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, they're not in the EU, they're not in Nato, they lost Crimea, Donbass is at war, and while Zelensky can't possibly be any worse, there's no clear sign things will get better.
Update: added my origin to narrow the scope of my comment.
If Hong Kong protestors just followed the path of non violence without attacking China's sovereignty or accepting that they are first Chinese citizen and showing their discontent, it would have been different.
Why Hong Kong is protesting is another reason, which still has roots in economic dissatisfaction.
I don't think it's clear that the protestors started the violence. Most reports seem to indicate otherwise.
I also don't know that it's reasonable to expect people who were born and raised in HK when the governance was different and without mainland influence to accept that they should just allow the PRC to change their way of life and rule of law.
And of course there is an economic aspect to it. But much of that is due to industries such as finance beginning to withdraw from HK - there is too much uncertainty there. Beijing has begun exerting influence long before they agreed to with the handover treaty, and there is a general fear that they will continue to accelerate this.
I don't see any way that the PRC loses this, however. International observers aren't going to step in, and the rich in powerful in HK will simply leave, as they have been.
Its clear from the videos of protest supporters and media outlet without China's influence like BBC, CNN, The Guardian that there was violence in the protest (not small enough to be ignored). This is just deflecting the reality to create confusion.
Hong Kong is China according to handover and follows "Chinese Nationality Law" except for the provisions defined in "Basic Law" which differentiate part of two systems for 50 years. So people who accepted it stayed back and those who couldn't went to either Canada, UK or some other destination. The funny part is many returned back [1][2][3], when it didn't work out for them economically or culturally in those places.
Now the situation is very different, the long term prospect of cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou looked better than Hong Kong which largely moved to worse especially in housing. This discontent when there is no visible better future prospects descended into protests conflating many issues. If protests only targeting the real primary reason of economics and future prospects, it might not have divided society.
Hong Kong has always been about trade, economics and money. British kept it the same without granting freedom or democracy, China to fulfill the provisions of Basic Law granted autonomy (indeed more autonomy in policy making compared to when it was a British colony), but not outright democracy which is not part of the Basic Law or Handover.
[1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1...
[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/hk.returnees...
[3] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19438776/ns/world_news-asia_pacifi...
That's not a fair characterization at all. The distrust for police goes deeper[1] and even just looking at this year's protest it's not clear cut.
> British kept it the same without granting freedom or democracy
That's again wrong. British did give HK some democracy and definitely more freedom than what's currently given (at least in reality if not on paper)
> China to fulfill the provisions of Basic Law granted autonomy (indeed more autonomy in policy making compared to when it was a British colony), but not outright democracy which is not part of the Basic Law or Handover.
The recent protest started because China is not fulfilling the provisions of Basic Law
[1] https://qz.com/281108/is-hong-kongs-famed-rule-of-law-breaki...
British were in Hong Kong for 150 years and only granted enough freedom to Hong Kong to align with their own interest of generating profits and economic dividends for Britain. This is how they treated all their colony including Hong Kong. This is not freedom, its like instead of a caged zoo, they gave an open zoo with a bit larger area and decides what freedoms to give.
Hong Kong never had democracy including during British time. If you have any written evidence in law or regulation on the contrary let me know. So far I couldn't find any evidence except the "Basic Law" which guarantees certain freedom.
In civil societies we have institution of marriage with regulations and laws. It exists on paper, although many will say love doesn't need a certificate. If there is a commitment it's not a problem to put it on paper, not granting Hong Kong freedom and democracy on paper shows Britain's treatment of Hong Kong as a colony.
> The recent protest started because China is not fulfilling the provisions of Basic Law
If China broke any provisions of Basic Law a case can be filed in courts of Hong Kong.
Indeed Hong Kong asked China to re-interpret Basic Law which contravenes basic human rights in 1999. No one protested at that time because although it was against basic human rights, it benefits Hong Kong people economically.
"On 26 June 1999, in line with the request of the HKSAR Government, the NPCSC issued its interpretation which makes it clear that children born outside Hong Kong will be eligible for the right of abode only if at least one of their parents has already acquired permanent residence status at the time of their birth. Also, those eligible for ROA need to comply with Article 22 of the Basic Law, i.e. they need to apply for the necessary approval from the relevant Mainland authorities before entry into Hong Kong.
The Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa, announced measures to be taken by the Government. Later rulings of the Court of Final Appeal confirmed that the Government had acted entirely constitutionally and legally.
Differences in opinion remain as to whether Hong Kong's judicial independence and the rule of law have been undermined. Criticism of the interpretation has originated largely from the legal sector."
I don't want to speculate why the British did what they did, and that's not the point
> Hong Kong never had democracy including during British time. If you have any written evidence in law or regulation on the contrary let me know. So far I couldn't find any evidence except the "Basic Law" which guarantees certain freedom.
There's a difference between freedom and democracy and I will answer separately. On democracy, HK had long had some sort of election for the legislature (sure not the entire 150 years). I was there and my parents voted. It's dishonest to say you can't find any evidence of it.
On freedom. Basic Law may well (I am not sure) be the first local constitution, but the HK court system followed British precedence and people in HK generally enjoyed the same freedom guarantees that British living in UK do. Also, in practice there's increasing levels of self-censorship so having the Basic Law doesn't mean much.
> If China broke any provisions of Basic Law a case can be filed in courts of Hong Kong. Indeed Hong Kong asked China to re-interpret Basic Law... No one protested at that time
Actually plenty of people protested, but I see you cherrypicked examples. More recently China re-interpreted Basic Law to disqualified democratically elected legislature members. China also sent agents to HK and kidnapped an HK resident into China for political crime. You said British only granted freedom to HK base on self-interest, and you are very eager to be very generous towards China's motivations and skipped over examples that are very easy to find. Either you are not able to find them because they are blocked by the GFW, or that's something are more intentional on your part.
Independence movements are as old as the concepts colonialism and empire.
Why not expand the right of self-determinism to Hong Kong?
Because no one outside of Hong Kong is going to fight a war with China over it, and that's what defending that right in any substantive way means.
Well they tried. Shortly after the Chinese revolution, HK was receiving an influx of refugees from China. Mostly well educated and skilled people. Britain was moving to bring in democratic reforms in the 1950s. China threatened to invade to "liberate" the territory if such reforms continued.
https://qz.com/279013/the-secret-history-of-hong-kongs-still...
They didn't try but abandoned any efforts due to self interest of profits and economic extraction from a colony. The article put this in a better context, I just put excerpts from the link you shared:
Brits wanted to make sure they’d protected their economic interests before they departed, much the way they did in Singapore and Malaysia.
Another one:
In fact, in 1982, when negotiations began, the Hang Seng Index was already shaky due to fears that if China took over, the Communist Party would gut Hong Kong’s rule of law or nationalize wealth, causing the market to crash and capital to flee. The Brits needed to calm markets and ensure financial stability. That meant making sure the handover agreement protected British financial interests.
In the post-war decolonisation period GB had a policy of no independence before majority rule. They were putting in place democratic reforms elsewhere, and ensuring minority rule (ie South Africa) didn't continue after independence.
Only if you ignore the fact that government encouraged (and rewarded) counter-protestors were attacking them in the subways on the way to and from the initial peaceful protests.
I think it's important to remember that the protesters began protesting in reaction to China's actions. Protesters are just ordinary people, and it's wrong to hold every protestor accountable to the actions of a tiny minority. China however is a single united and sovereign government; it's actions can't be so easily excused or dismissed.
If a government behaves in a way that breaks faith with it's people, are the people to blame?
I'll tell you this, if I was a CEO and a bunch of people in one of my departments walked out and protested because they felt the company wasn't keeping faith with them, I would place blame on whoever was running that department, not on the people protesting.
A government which is effectively a mouthpiece for the CCP (and has increasingly become so since '97). People aren't protesting China out of nowhere. It's because China has been closing its grip on HK's political process for years now. Are you really trying to say with a straight face that the extradition bill to China has nothing to do with China and its influence on the HK government?
In my understanding, China central government favors Hong Kong stability over anything else. It's quite likely that it's Hong Kong government but China central government that proposed the bill.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/05/18/beijings-office-hong-k...
Had it not been the case, there would have been no government capable of stopping the rebellion: if one solider can control a 100 citizens (via say bullets) then in order to control 1.3 billion, China would need to give bullets to 130 million people so if 10% of them switch sides the other side gets 13 million people with bullets who aren't friendly to the party line.
That's exactly how the USSR fell. Population stopped supporting the government.
Plus Soviet was actually brought down by many of the high officials themselves.
When you think about it, even the current CCP regime started as a rebel army.
In feudal times ther were many instances of folks from higher classes abusing the folks from the lower ones. Nothing really happened, some isolated instances of retribution happened, and that was it.
Scandals/abuses worked the same way in the USSR. The very worst offenders eventually got shifted around the system. (source: https://www.libri.hu/konyv/majtenyi_gyorgy.kommunista-kiskir... alas no English translation, but there are probably similar surveys of historically documented real stories about how the men of the ruling party were somehow always more powerful than the official propaganda stated how equal everyone is)
But you will find that CCP insists on having the last say. Imagine electing Trump and Walmart CEO says we won't support the plan to build USA-Mexico wall. Trump says ok.
Like installing an internet connected Windows XP on your network with no updates, it introduces tremendous attack vectors that established actors/economies (UK, France, US, Germany) will be all to happy to exploit.
As an American, I sometimes wonder if it is too dogmatic to treat democracy as the end all be all of governments.
As I understand it, democracy refers to a heuristic for solving the problem of reaching consensus in a decision making scenario in a system of multiple agents each having a differing opinion. In this heuristic, every agent has the right to vote on an issue in order to influence the consensus. (America is a republic so we vote on other agents to do the voting on our behalf rather than the issues themselves.)
Computer scientists can come up with all sorts of different ways of tackling the consensus problem. For example, one strategy is to choose the agents with the most information about the system (most educated) and treat their opinions as more important when reaching consensus. (As society advances and modeling societal problems become more sophisticated, solutions may require people with increasingly more domain knowledge.)
Although variations of such strategies are probably not democracies, I don't think they are necessarily inferior, if as a heuristic when tried out, are actually effective.
If there's a formal proof that democracy is, in fact, the best government, I'm open to hearing it though.
When people say they want democracy, don't they often mean more specifically that they want rule of law / due process? Is it not possible to have both a government that have characteristics that make it authoritarian / not democratic but also have rule of law?
If some new party comes and aims at the weak spots of CCP like censorship etc...etc... And promises that we'll keep economy as fast as CCP does minus the personal freedom restrictions. People will vote for them.
And new party might even attempt this and take economy several years back.
Democracy will include lots of selling hopes and setbacks...it takes time to learn new lessons for public
Plus, we could maybe see a fairer distribution of wealth and prosperity. Wealth disparity is a very big problem in China.
I simply posted why they might not want democracy. As they might fear about losing power.
If we assume democracy does good, but it still makes CCP lose power then it's not good for CCP and they'll not want it.
If democracy will actually be good or bad, that's open discussion. But that's not point of my comment.
When the young ruling elite encounters a crisis, a real problem, often they see that doing it in a transparent and equitable way would only serve as gunpowder for their detractors. Hence the very fast descent into totalitarianism.
And it's no wonder the real crisis of every regime is not some natural disaster, or economic collapse... no, in large nation states the game is entirely about the meta level, the power, and how to keep it, how to distribute it. Naturally this leads to the aforementioned populism/nationalism/etc.
Edit: And regarding Occupy, it is often considered the most successful protest in modern Western history. Countless leaders and young people have seen it as a blueprint and guide to how to continue their struggle. I have seen dozens if not hundreds of videos on youtube that cite the enormous progress Occupy made on how to run a successful protest in the current era, and movements such as Extinction Rebellion are going to take those tactics to another level.
And if HK and China do eventually become liberal democracies, it'll be because of gradual change within the Chinese government.
I'm personally very optimistic about their long term prospects, I just think history has taught us that violent revolution or sudden change usually leads to negative consequences in the short to mid term. There's more than enough examples in our lifetime.
On the other hand, most of the economic gains, the reduction of poverty around the world, the economic development of Europe, Asia and Africa have all been done thanks to the rule of law, relative peace, investment, etc... Not due to revolution.
This is why I get up in the morning, goals
I did not state any position on the matter at hand.
What about TW? I'm not seeing the connection to the PRC there.
Money wouldn't have flown into PRC (and it would have collapsed with the rest of the communism) if the US hadn't opened up investment.
They did complain a lot about how the CCP plunged the country into the largest famine in history because of their incompetence. It was this incompetence that led to the rise of Deng Xiaoping. Mao then launched the Cultural Revolution during which different factions in the CCP fought with each other rather than "keep their head down". At Tiananmen Square in 1976 millions of people, peasants and rich, shouted slogans attacking Mao and the Gang of Four. Deng Xiaoping then launched the economic miracle by reducing CCP involvement in the economy .
To say that the history of modern China is a long, stable period where the people never spoke up and built a powerhouse economy by listening to the directives of the all knowing CCP is historical revisionism at best.
The entire concept of economic prosperity is meaningless outside a free market with due process protections. If the government can take away your prosperity for no reason at all, it's purely arbitrary and ephemeral whether or not you actually have it at any given moment.
Just how poor have you ever been?
China's incarceration rate -- for crime -- is 118 per 100,000, for 1,649,804 total. Let's add the DOD claim that an extra 3m are held in re-education camps, and take that to 4.5m, which takes us to 308 per hundred thousand. The US figure is _655_, disproportionately poor people.
Comparing an over-zealous drug incarnation against a political political concentration camp is just perfect. Every time I visit Europe I encounter similar lazy thinking from aging leftists and teenage anarchists.
I want to point out that Hong Kong people tried every way they can before this protest. They are aware the consequence.
I recommend: https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/08/hong-kong-for-internati...
There have been many foreboding events that portend the loss of liberty that Hong Kong residence fear. Liberty is what they are fighting to keep. Not wealth.
Addendum: The Chinese judicial system is as one with the communist party. It does not operate the same basic law that Western countries, and tenuously Hong Kong, operate. Under China's judicial system, people literally disappear for months or more with no information provided to family or employer. Many times, they never return.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3012611...
One of the foreboding events before that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearan...
Unfortunately that's not what's at stake because they won't succeed; freedom isn't actually an option. They think it is, but they'll fail.
> Liberty is what they are fighting to keep. Not wealth.
That might be what they tell themselves, but I can guarantee that if all the HK youth got cushy finance jobs like the previous generation, these protests would have never happened. In absence of personal fulfilment, HK youth are searching for an identity.
> The trigger for the current mass-action was not an economic event
Yes, that was the trigger. However there are triggers, and underlying sentiment. Remember the Umbrella Revolution was a thing only a few years before.
For the record, I'm not saying that Hong Kongers are wrong for protesting or wanting freedom. I'm just saying they'll fail, and the consequences won't be pretty.
> For the record, I'm not saying that Hong Kongers are wrong for protesting or wanting freedom. I'm just saying they'll fail, and the consequences won't be pretty.
You may be correct, you may not. I wonder if people said the same thing right up to the end of segregation, and other things. But that doesn't matter: might does not make right. Our predictions don't matter, our individual stances do.
> Finally, it is the act itself that matters. When instrumental reason is the sole guide to action, the acts it justifies are robbed of their inherent meanings and thus exist in an ethical vacuum. [..] the moral good of a moral act inheres in the act itself. That is why an act can itself ennoble or corrupt the person who performs it.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum
Everybody dies at some point, anyway. All wealth goes down the drain. What these people are changing, and what cannot be taken from them, is themselves. If the results will "not be pretty", there will be no end to songs about them in our lifetime and maybe that of our children and grandchildren -- the kind of songs that would excactly not get written about people with cushy finance jobs, not even once. This isn't meant as snark against you, it's a compliment for them.
They are in the same political and cultural position as Hong Kong: 1 country 2 systems, colonized by a European country, speak Cantonese, etc. but there are no protests in Macau.
Why? The economy is doing well and people there are relatively well off.
[1] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_#...
Getting rid of segregation has a strong moral foundation and backing... keeping colonial roots in control of HK, not so much.
You are assuming HKers would sell their freedom to a tyrprican government in exchange for GDP growth the way mainland Chinese can. That's a big assumption.
Mainlanders may not like it to hear it, and I'll even go as far as to say the best strategy for discussing politics with mainlanders is to not directly tell them this, but their political canon is anomalously full of holes that are exposed when explored in any significant depth (yes I've been through this process with mainlanders).
There are plenty of examples throughout history, let alone in any of the many incidents of competition happening today - from sport all the way to war - of the opposite.
This is so cynical it makes me sad. Some people have principles that are not necessarily the best for their own personal outcome, but they are deeply felt.
I've never been an ambitious person, but I appreciate those that are and all they have created. I do live by principles, however, and my own personal well-being comes second to the idea of liberty.
There is a reason HKers were carrying American flags-> because America is an idea. I certainly support the people of HK protesting this power-overreach.
sources? yes, finance was always big in HK, but how many people got those cushy jobs really?
It's more than that.
Back in the 70s, Westerners could very easily make the case that the USSR was corrupt, inefficient, hopelessly backwards and fundamentally organised in the interests of the state rather than the people. The evidence was abundant, even to Soviet citizens; any possible defence of the Soviet system was predicated on blind ideological faith or a tapestry of lies.
Contemporary China is a long way from perfect, but a Chinese citizen could quite legitimately make the case that their system is superior to Western democracy on a pragmatic level. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese people who grew up in squalid shacks with no running water but now have a lifestyle that is recognisably middle class. They're on the tail end of the longest and fastest period of economic growth in human history and they're still growing - we can quibble about the percentages, but their GDP growth figures are still spectacular. While many Westerners are struggling with homelessness due to a chronic shortage of housing, Western newspapers are writing about China facing a crisis due to building too many homes.
We're not talking about North Korea, we're talking about a political system that can be legitimately defended. It's not whataboutery for Chinese people to point out the manifold problems facing many Western democracies right now - there are advantages to democracy, there are advantages to Communism with Chinese Characteristics and there's no prima facie case for the superiority of either that relies solely on pragmatism rather than ideology.
If Westerners want to promote democracy in China, their arguments will need to get a whole lot more sophisticated. Why is political and social liberty really so valuable? Why are the rights of the individual more fundamental than the rights of society as a whole? Why should troublemakers be allowed to destabilize society with impunity? Given the current political climate, finding better answers to those questions might also prove rather valuable domestically.
It is even easier to look at India, where the putative democracy the country has has not led to any kind of economic miracle for the poor.
There are a lot of studies about how economic prosperity and democracy/liberalism went hand in hand in a lot of countries. And there are outliers, and the studies can be questioned, and so on.
China rented out its workforce and a relatively enlightened but autocratic leadership made sure it works, they make a lot of money, and that they reinvest that.
India never had such a strong leadership. They probably spent a lot of time and energy just doing what other multi-party democracies do, squibble, play the politics game, and so on.
Also, don't forget how India slowly started to get rid of the caste system and other deep rooted inequality problems, similarly grassroots efforts to curb corruption progressed through the various courts and legislatures.
China spent no time with such sentimental stuff.
You might be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
China has a full blown caste system via hukous.
I generally agree with you but I think you got timeline wrong. Which matters in this example.
70s in communist countries was a period of relative prosperity. The political repressions ceased, the economies got more consumer oriented, the arms race slowed down, the goverments got more technocratic. Communist countries started to catch up with Western consumption levels. Mass housing developments, car factories, Coca-cola and Pepsi in shops etc.
Lot of younger generation had been happy to join the party not for ideological reasons but for the material prospects it opened.
Then two events happened - first oil crisis and the financial markets dried up suddenly (many communist countries borrowed heavily when money was cheap in eurodollar), second Afganistan, Reagan and Star Wars programme (arms race again).
Communist countries sliped from relative prosperity to austerity which resulted in fall of communism at the end of 80s.
What I am saying is that the revolutions happen often after long period of relative prosperity when economy starts going downhill. And we have similiar circumstances brewing in China right now.
I consider the 2 to be intertwined. If you are not free to pursue a better way of life, economic circumstances matter very little. The Arab Spring was sparked by a Tunisian street vendor having all his possessions confiscated by the local police. Out of frustration he set himself on fire.
Authoritarian regimes are rarely fair and are not particularly interested in the financial well being of the population.
> The finance industry is already planning to exit HK (too volatile), and China can kill the rest of their economy.
Businesses aren't leaving HK because of the volatility, they are leaving HK because Beijing is choosing the winners and losers. And they have decided that Beijing and Shanghai will be the financial capitals.
if you think Chinese government is authoritarian, then it is an exception coz it does care and try its best to improve the financial well being of the population. and it is the social contract between China government and its people. you need to realize that even "authoritarian" governments are quite different.
Otherwise not so much. See Xinjiang, Tibet, and so on.
and of course, the central power encourages integration, go to a university far from home, assimilate, etc.
And I have no problem with that on a fundamental practical level. But the reeducation camps, the constant aggressive in-your-face surveillance, the book confiscation, the history falsification, the other forms of very serious oppression is very real, and it is unacceptable.
Almost everything in these sentences are wrong. It's not just the young people who are protesting in Hong Kong, and most people in Hong Kong have never been born into wealth. There's a great divide between the wealthy and the poor and that's always been the case even in British time.
Source: I was born in Hong Kong 30+ years ago and our family of 4 shared a bunk bed in a room that's probably not much bigger than 100sqft
HK has long had a GDP per capita on par with western nations. Versus China which has had a GDP per capita on par with developing nations until fairly recently.
You think SV valley rents are bat shit crazy? Take a look at HK real estate listings.
Everything here is just wrong...Are the elder citizens also protesting? Yes. Were today's young protestors born into wealth? No. Are they protesting their career prospects? No. Are they protesting for their human rights? Yes.
The so called 'economic miracle' fallacy only works if you ignore that it was the CCP who crippled the economic development of China.
Loosening your grip upon your victim's neck is not the same as performing the Heimlich maneuver. It doesn't make you a qualified doctor. The 'economic miracle' fallacy presents the strangler as the savior.
If we can agree that the Great Leap Forward was a regressive measure, then what of the One Child Policy? Is this not regressive and changing the terms of success? If you can not create positive economic outcomes for the majority of your population, shrinking your population is the same as moving the goal posts.
Ultimately it was not central planning which advanced the economic circumstances of Chinese people. It was the individual acts of citizens.
Given the large disparity between China and other developing countries, yes the government from the 80s onwards has played a significant role in accelerating the development of the country. The alternative conclusion would be that individual citizens of the rest of the world are somehow significantly less capable than the Chinese, which strikes me as a odd conclusion.
And the one child policy definitely had a positive effect on the development of the country. It effectively kickstarted a middle class by enabling parents to funnel resources into a single child.
Economic concerns elected Trump.
They have been saying this since 1997 and I have yet to see it happen. In order to have a functioning finance industry, you need people with education and a willingness to move.
Bankers won't move to China because a) personal risk b) no banker I know actually likes staying in China (they always fly back over the weekends) and c) 60% tax rate. And people just don't trust the legal system there. And Hong Kong is the next closest things.
The only bankers that I have seen move from HK to China is when they pay them 10x the salary. Those are usually family offices with private equity money. It just isn't sustainable to do.
Also, Hong Kong provides a lot of financial benefits for mainland Chinese companies. That's why there are so many shell companies in Hong Kong. All those benefits will evaporate if moved elsewhere. Even Singapore is 3-5x more difficult for a Mainlander to open a company. Added to the fact Mainlanders have no sway on the Singaporean government and have a history of cracking down hard on criminals, they are much more reluctant to swap HK for Singapore.
All this talk about the financial industry in HK going down is just wishful thinking. Even Mainlanders are logical when it comes down to business. They won't shot themselves in the foot. That's why they have been showing restrain. It's not because they are afraid of another Tiananmen Sqaure. It's because they are looking at their wallets. How much damage it would do to their own companies.
I just want to point out that WW2 was fought with horses[1]. It's not like the West has always been fully industrialized. The development may appear as a miracle to the people, but it is not out of ordinary.
This is what happened in South Africa and in also France as it does not take much to figure out that political freedom is required to make a fundamental change.
I think in China the ruling party elite seemingly were not so much different from the peasants in the beginning and everybody lives improved overall as they adopted Mao's two systems approach.
Take a tour outside the shopping district or the high end business district.
Having lived in both places, it’s clear why their school books repeatly give opinion rather than statements.
I’m sure Hilter would have loved That...: also let’s not forget about the color revolution, seem to do a lot as well.
But hey if we all cherry pick, we can see the world our way rather than reality.
While this is true, I think those improved economic circumstances will eventually create a need for more political freedom. Chinese people already make occasional demands of their government, and that will only become more common. I think that as China grows more prosperous, it will eventually also have to become more free.
What makes you certain of that? HK did attract more billionaires/rich people in the last few years despite the volatility.
... And their kids will probably look at their own situation being worse than their parents and protests in response.
I am not sure that these international Chinese students are good for our universities. I feel like the universities sold out to them because they pay full price tuition.
This is latest example of them not understanding even basic behavior in western country.
In contrast, we in the West never expect other countries to do it our way when we visit them... /s
I think that almost all cultures would agree that murder and child rape are unacceptable, but "Kafkaesque totalitarianism" and "Shouting-down opponent speakers" is certainly more controversial. [0] The west values democracy and free exchange of ideas, but even in the west failing to uphold those values is not similar to murder.
I am certainly not an expert in Chinese values, but maintaining order and obeying social structure seem to be core values in China. I personally don't think they are worth sacrificing the freedoms the west focuses on, but they are worth trying to keep if you can. Those values would not disallow "Kafkaesque totalitarianism" and "Shouting-down opponent speakers".
[0]: I think wrapping the much less clear cases in between murder and child rape is at worst bad-faith arguing and at best revealing of intense biases.
Like literally the purpose of a democracy is to establish government by norms and the establishment of those norms as laws. A democracy exists explicilty to bound law making within a set range of socially acceptable public disourse.
To expend a strawman, Jeffrey Epstein seems to think sexual acts with human beings this country views as unable to consent - that is a difference in opinion, but he ended up in jail rather than tolerated. Invite NAMBLA to your next city council meeting and see how that goes.
We don't have slaves, but the greeks and romans who had closer to a true democracy surely did. The idea of owning or not owning slaves was tolerated, and debated, in their time - it wouldn't be in our modern democracy.
That said, tolerance of differing opinions exist on a continuum and no perfectly tolerant society exists.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-post-trut...
https://supchina.com/2019/08/21/college-daily-fires-back-at-...
>The editor claimed that during their talks, he explained to Zhang how much effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references. But none of these went into the final piece.
> “In the profile, there is no mention of all the insight, knowledge, experience, and stories that I shared with her about the new-media industry. Instead, it made up some lies and criticized Chinese publications like ours for producing fake news.
Was there bias in the reporting? sure. Is there bias against China in the MSM? sure.
That isn't a rebuttal.
> >The editor claimed that during their talks, he explained to Zhang how much effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references. But none of these went into the final piece.
This is the same editor who the article quotes as admitting to complete fabricating a story? If there is so much good information about "effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references", why did none of those details make it into the rebuttal?
> Instead, it made up some lies
What lies? If there were lies, they should be specifically identified.
> Pressed to articulate the identity of his publication, Lin used the phrase “post-truth,” which he attributed to the New York Times, to express his belief that the true essence of things is fundamentally unknowable and that the meaning of the news of the day depends on the spin one chooses to put on it.
EDIT: The article itself also makes a point of including Chinese with perspectives on College Daily.
As for the balancing Chinese perspective, it was one paragraph of people who are disturbed that the publication is "synonymous with government propaganda" and a more detailed examination of one named individual who is apathetic towards the role of journalism to further support the narrative that Chinese students are "melon-eating masses". These accounts hardly encapsulates the amount of distaste among the Chinese diaspora for the publication, who regularly shits on the journal for being a clickfarm the same way many called out Buzzfeed or Gawker in the west, tacitly endorsing the generic Chinese as a monolith trope. There are plenty of Chinese students / general diaspora members who are high-information consumers that have a rational basis to support (and not support) the CPC whose world view is informed by both Chinese and Western sources and experiences. And unsurprisingly there is a conspicuous lack acknowledgement of their existence in western MSM, which is a shame because their perspective is worth understanding.
Anecdotally, there's many highly educated Romanian and Chinese immigrants up in Canada that escaped repressive conditions of the old country. You won't find many Romanian nationalists in the diaspora, and very few who returned. Not so with China. It's worth understanding why and I surmise the answer is more nuanced than these folks are brainwashed.
No, not particularly. However, having read both the contents and the piece the and summary of the "rebuttal", I find the headline sufficiently accurate. If find the headline more accurate that your attempt to characterize it as "the kind of headline one would engineer to dismiss Chinese perspectives"
>as for the balancing Chinese perspective, it was one paragraph of people who are disturbed that the publication is "synonymous with government propaganda" and a more detailed examination of one named individual who is apathetic towards the role of journalism to further support the narrative that Chinese students are "melon-eating masses".
I count 11+ paragraphs that detail the opinions of 3 different Chinese individuals (Xiao, Fang and Huang) and they are not presented as monolithic.
The headline is accurate in the sense that's it's not factually wrong, but that's the nature of propaganda via omission. Repeat such pattern over many articles and it gives credence to the "rebuttal" that identifies the piece as one of many designed to "orchestrate a defamatory campaign" against China and in particular increasing politically active Chinese students in context of current political climate. I'm going to end my contributions here, but thank you for the discussion.
You can't just ignore things you disagree with because they are biased.
>how much effort the publication put into fact-checking and confirming references.
Looks like you can read Chinese, so tell me if they do what say, why are there so many allegations of fabrication and plagiarism against this "self-media" on Chinese social media?
EDITED.
Yes. "Jeffrey Epstein" was a suicide. Americans electing Trump because... "Russian collusion". Bombing countries all over the world in the name of peace. "weapons of mass destruction". TSA. Prism. Student debt that can't be discharged.
Thinking that it's only "other evil governments" that use propaganda and deception, and US Gov. and interests groups are some beacon of truth, sincerity and transparency is just sooo naive.
Chinese in American have actual unconstrained access and understanding of both sides, they lived in both places, seen both systems. And you think their opinion is just based on "heavily brainwashing", because it is different than yours?
From me talking with Chinese in America, they are acutely aware of realities of the Chinese political system. But they are also acutely aware of realities of the western one. Much more so than Americans. They are not brainwashed, they are very realistic, pragmatic and smart. They just don't share some core beliefs of the western wold. They don't consider democracy as a good in itself. They consider the good of the community in relation to the good of an individual, relatively more important than westerners. And so on. And even when they do agree with theoretical advantages, they see first hand how little of alleged freedoms and benefits of western system actually materializes in practice.
The simplest answer is because they don't bother to.
Many Chinese people in the West still read the same propaganda, hang out with the Chinese people. It is difficult for them to be un-brainwashed.
It's easier when you want to believe something, to believe it. No matter what the source is.
https://supchina.com/2018/04/27/nationalist-chinese-rap-prov...
All immigrants, not just Chinese, tend to associate with their own ethnic subgroup in the US and always have. Time is the only real assimilator.
That said, the CCP does and will continue to actively attempt to influence Chinese living in America and the US needs to take a look at that.
In China, Mao starved tens of millions to death because they had the 'wrong' ideas in their heads, and the expedient thing to do was to get rid of them while indoctrinating a new generation.
And lo and behold, those that lived through Mao's predations now see what they believe to be a miracle that things are so much better now, as long as they knuckle under to the CCP.
They could have been better without all of the killing and suppression. Those things were only necessary for the preservation of the CCP.
Ref: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/29/full-open-letter-hong-...
Let alone that many protesters are indeed violent...