What the world can learn from Hong Kong (2019)
media.ccc.de
media.ccc.de
Her newer post seems much more interesting and apt to age better.
https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-2021-xhain-354-painting-tech-dyst...
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/democracy-dis...
In other words, these "protests" weren't hong kong driven, hong kong focused or really hong kong related. It was the US/UK/EU/etc trying to destabilize china. The only thing it did was prove a slight nuisance, turn the hong kong public against the "protestors" and secure china's control over hong kong.
I didn't say everyone was paid. Protests require organization and that was obviously funded by foreign sources.
> No, what stopped the protests was not a question of money
Sure it is. Without anyone leading the protests, there is no protest. And those leading the protests require funding.
> it was the wave of arrests after the CCP destroyed democracy with the national security law
"democracy". Sure. The only reason hong kong has a democracy in the first place is because of the "CCP". Lets not forget britain never gave hong kong democracy in their 150 years of colonial rule. It only came after the british left or was liberated by the chinese - however you want to view it.
> it was covid coming at that time, it was when it became too risky to have an opinion contrary to the CCP in Hong Kong because "sedition" is illegal.
Is sedition legal anywhere? Covid? The "protest" was done in the fall of 2019 when the foreign funding was blocked. I remember the media going crazy over it ( wonder why? ). Now you hardly hear a peep about it. I'm sure in a few years when we want to agitate the chinese, we'll being funding protests again somehow. That is after we are finished funding protests to destabilize myanmar, venezuela, another middle eastern country, african countries, etc. Or maybe we'll be too busy destabilizing ukraine to bother with china for a while. Lucky them.
> Have you even talked to locals?
No. But I don't need to. I'm sure many of them had their own reasons to protest. I'm talking about the protest organization. Two separate things. It's like the difference between people who attend a rave and those that organize it and publicize it.
> or are you just parroting the bullshit that's repeated on Weixin?
Don't know what that is. Sorry. These are my own thoughts. If I wanted to be a parrot, I'd be parroting the propaganda I see on the news everyday. Oh those terrible CCP and Xi who cares nothing about the chinese people, but it's us in the west who truly care about china and democracy. Nevermind we owned china for 100 and hong kong for 150 and never introduced democracy to china or hong kong or even india. Who are we kidding here?
Ok, so if you don't even know what Wechat is (weixin in mainland) and have never talked to Hong kongers (and I'm talking about Hong Kongers) then you're just spouting off nonsense without knowing the situation.
> I didn't say everyone was paid. Protests require organization and that was obviously funded by foreign sources.
How so? Why would you think that only foreign sources have money? Hong Kong had plenty of financial tycoons who were involved in the protest and pro-democracy movement. Just as example, the owner of Apple Daily (one of the biggest newspaper critic of the CCP) was sentenced to prison over it. Why would you believe that money only came from foreign sources??
So yes, you're right the pro-democracy party needed money but there's no need to start imagining conspiracy theories that that funding necessarily comes from US/UK/EU. Plenty of rich people in Hong Kong are unhappy with the CCP and people here are perfectly capable of using their money.
> "democracy". Sure. The only reason hong kong has a democracy in the first place is because of the "CCP". Lets not forget britain never gave hong kong democracy in their 150 years of colonial rule. It only came after the british left or was liberated by the chinese - however you want to view it.
Democratic reforms were first introduced before the handover under the last Governor Chris Patten. Also, that's neither here or there, the fact that UK was an imperialistic power that didn't exactly promote democracy is completely orthogonal to the fact that locals want democracy (they also never had it completely and what they did have was taken away from them)
> Is sedition legal anywhere? Covid? The "protest" was done in the fall of 2019 when the foreign funding was blocked. I remember the media going crazy over it ( wonder why? ). Now you hardly hear a peep about it. I'm sure in a few years when we want to agitate the chinese, we'll being funding protests again somehow. That is after we are finished funding protests to destabilize myanmar, venezuela, another middle eastern country, african countries, etc. Or maybe we'll be too busy destabilizing ukraine to bother with china for a while. Lucky them.
Once again, you show that you weren't there and have no knowledge of the situation in the city. There were still a lot of protests up til early 2020 and protests were bigger and more intense from December 2020 to January 2020 than in fall 2019. Once covid hit, people were more reluctant to meet due to covid (people in Hong Kong were definitely more scared of Covid that in Europe due to the prior experience of SARS). The government also used this as an excuse to disperse protesters.
The national security law was passed on June 30th 2020 and that pretty much made any pro-democratic movement illegal. It became a lot more dangerous to protest but still people went out to protest on and some got arrested.
Still, the pro-democracy primaries in July 2020 that saw a massive turnout for the primaries of a political party. it was the most-participated primary held in the history of Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, despite the government's threats of the organisers' potential breaching of the newly imposed national security law. This resulted in a massive wave of arrests by the government.
So you have the timeline wrong and no fall 2019 it was not over or done at all. Was it less covered in other countries? Certainly at that point there was covid and a lot of other things to cover.
It's funny, you criticize colonial powers for not bringing democracy back when there were colonies, yet you seem to think that people wouldn't be able to do anything without funding from the west?
"Is sedition legal anywhere? "
Well, in a lot of countries, criticising the government is not considered sedition. There's plenty of people in opposition parties who criticise the government safely. The law is incredibly broad.
Best wishes to you.
https://wtop.com/dc/2022/02/chinese-artist-blasts-gw-preside...
For example, it is true that they don't really track individuals for contact tracing by BT without a human in the loop. But it is also true (and reported locally on Wiebo) that individuals based on cell location, who had visited cities (of >1M) were forced to quarantine and unable to return to work, when COVID cases were reported in those cities. It's not magic, it just requires the local administrators and police to send you a message through your WeChat. You had better stay in place. Similarly, SocialCredit is not some magic automated thing, but it is definitely used to punish people by local administrators or national party for (political) crimes, and it can definitely prevent you from buying train or plane tickets or getting a job, passport, university entrance. As usual compliance is _mostly_ based on fear rather than enforcement, and that means that China state news supports such fetishized AI dreams in their reporting.
Yes, we need to look at our own issues, but that doesn't mean ignoring (or normalizing) those which exist elsewhere. I suspect that London has about as much effective surveillance as Beijing or Shanghai, but that doesn't mean that they don't often track people (especially foreigners). Are these myths that needed busting? This just feels a bit like a softer whataboutism, and I don't know if she needs to travel to China now, but she would pay a price, if she didn't toe the party line.
Just because it's propaganda doesn't mean it's not true. Sure the chinese are using it for their propaganda. It's not their fault we make it so laughably easy for them.
> It is certainly true that the COVID tracking and Social Credit mechanisms are no where near as automated as some would believe (and perhaps fetishize), but it is not true that they somehow don't exist or don't have consequences.
There are interviews of chinese people on youtube about the covid tracking and social credit propaganda online. The chinese people laugh at it because the propaganda is so absurd. Here's a clue. If you see propaganda on mainstream media and joe rogan/"alt-right" and they agree, it's most likely absolute absurdity.
> you need to realize that as a foreign citizen your hotel is required to report you to police for each night that you stay, and they will track you down, if they need to, and your host will be held accountable (possibly jailed) for failing to report your location.
You realize that in europe and most other nations ( including taiwan, singapore, korea, etc ) around the world, hotels take your passport from you right when you check-in. It's good that they track foreigners because you don't belong there.
> This is not at all like the rest of Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Signapore etc) and conflating them together is a huge mistake.
You sure about that? You do realize that china studied and modeled much of their society off of singapore, japan, korea, etc. I think you are understating how "authoritarian" these countries are.
> and it can definitely prevent you from buying train or plane tickets or getting a job, passport, university entrance
Every country has had this forever. You do realize that in many countries, if your "social credit" isn't good, you can't buy a house, get a job or even vote.
> Yes, we need to look at our own issues, but that doesn't mean ignoring (or normalizing) those which exist elsewhere.
Even if those issues don't exist? Even if these "issues" are manufactured to attack a country? It's funny how so many people suddenly care about muslims, chinese, etc all of a sudden. But you really care about the chinese people right?
Yes, because I have known some for over 30 of my formative years. It has been New Years so I've spoken to many of them recently. The Chinese people are not their political leaders (any more than Russians, British, or Americans), they are smart, hard working, and kind.
Somehow you seem to have conflated the two. The idea that China modeled their society (other than economically) off of their most despised (excluding Singapore) neighbors, is laughable. There are fairly recent wars with each (and I'll include Vietnam in '79).