How Hong Kong became a police state
economist.com
economist.com
I lived in HK during the protests. There is a big gap between what was being reported in the western media (which I assume you consumed) and what was actually true.
Slowly increase temperatures so so frogs in the water don’t realize they’re in danger. It’s not a real thing though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
I’ve seen this stated before but it seems very confusing. Widespread poverty sucks. There’s no way people are fine with returning to it because they saw it decades ago. Surely nobody thinks that’s ok?
They are, of course, utterly delusional.
If we interpret this to mean independent and free to set its own foreign policy, independent of conformance to the global rules-based order, then I think it’s true. There is pride in answering to no-one. Unfortunately they appear to be using that freedom to trample on the freedom of other countries.
I think most of us are aware of how propaganda works.
Since the protests, their politics is completely controlled by the mainland; their last bits of wiggle room removed. I remember clearly the lead up to and results of the 2019 district election, with its unprecedented turnout and results. I'm curious what you feel the gap was since I rarely read western media about the protests while I lived there.
I was not involved in political activities at all, but still went out to protest for the first (and last, currently) time in 2019. The situation escalated quickly, and for reasons that I cannot understand, some protesters started to act violently, which we know from history that the CCP will not compromise and protestors have no chance of winning the fight... And then there is the national security law, using the pandemic as an excuse to ban every protests, etc. People either leave or become silent.
Actually I am not sure why I would want to write this, perhaps I just wanted to say something like this for a long time but was too afraid to. Some of the protesters were illogical at the time, so saying that their action is naive and will only worsen the situation may cause me trouble. Writing these now may trigger the police, although I don't think they will arrest me due to this alone.
During the HK protests, I can imagine the same thing happening. Actually, in only a few cases where a strong leader and organization is involved (MLK, Gandhi, etc...) can protests be largely peaceful and more effective (not giving the other side an excuse to crackdown without losing face, and even these movements weren't perfect).
Yet, planted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur are a well documented and widely used tactic. It has proven to be effective in many cases to justify a reaction in the eyes of public opinion.
A planted agent definitely in the realm of possibility, but it is just more likely that some kids took a chance to get angry, violent, and cause chaos. Some combination could also have happened (e.g. a plant takes advantage of enraging people who are already closed to being enraged). In all cases, better leadership and some practiced discipline that comes with that could have helped avoided the problems.
I also lived in Hongkong during the last rounds of protests. One of the comments I frequently heard from foreigners from stable, highly-functioning democracies: "I cannot condone (support) violence during political protests." On the surface, it sounds great -- very pithy (short, succint)! Then, I thought a long time about it. Peaceful protests mostly do not work in non-democracies (dictatorships). For me, this is the reason why transition to democracy in Taiwan, (South) Korea, and Indonesia was so violent. (OMG: Go and read about Korea. It reads like a civil war. Protesters stole automatic weapons from police stations to used against the police. It was crazy!)
If readers are unfamiliar with the transition to democracy for these three countries, or the current state of affairs, I strongly recommend a "rabbit hole" deep-dive on Wiki. You will be impressed! And when you observe these three democracies from afar, you will be further impressed by their passion to create a great society that is governed by the people. People in their 50s sound like high school students from highly functioning democracies when they discuss government affairs. It is very inspiring!
A different angle: When you live in a highly functioning democracy, protests of any size always capture the attentions of politicians (members of parliment, etc.). Why? Because they represent the people, and they can lose the next election if they do not listen. In low functioning/non-democracies, protests can be ignored and protesters arrested / beaten / gassed. Why? Because accountability is so low.
I will never forget walking through a Hongkong wet market to buy groceries (veg, fish, etc.) and being tear-gassed by the HK riot police. Yes, I regularly attended protests, but on that day, I was simply shopping for a weekend meal. Their annoucements were only in Cantonese. The domestic helpers (Indos and Fils) in the market were terrified. It was an all-out assault on humanity. I sent careful documentation of the event and evidence to the police, but my complaint was entirely ignored. I knew this would happen, but still, I filed my complaint.
At the peak of the 2019 protests, there were unjustified, daily beatings by police of protesters. An unimaginable amount of mobile phone video footage was captured, but not a single HK police officer ever faced the court system for their appalling behaviour. They was an incident on the HK metro where police officers boarded a train to confront protesters peacefully delaying service. It was a particularly grotest display of police brutality. They swung metal batons at unarmed civilians causing so much harm. (These YouTube videos were later used in Taiwan election adverts!) It does not mean that every protester was innocent, but you will never win peacefully against a dictatorship. Sadly, violence is required. (See Burma / Myanmar!)
At some point, HK gov't pledged to create an international council to help them decide how to handle arrests on both sides. Once the foreigners selected saw the total lack of accountability, 100% of them resigned from the board. It was a collassal embarassment to the still paper-thin democratic system in HK.
To be honest, I think technology is increasing the power imbalance between the public and the ruler. We have AI for surveillance system that can track the activity of every single citizen. The media and social media can overload most of the people with useless information, distracting them from the important issues. Advanced weapons so people have no chance in winning the fight if the authority don't care about casualties.
The exact same kind of thinking the led US to invade Irak.
We're bringing democracy!
They will love us over there!
What could possibly go wrong!
With exactly zero understanding of the history and culture of the place.
I mean had Bremer ever crossed a US border once in his life before he was posted there?
That level of blindness and self-righteousness, while rather commonly on display in the US, is unfortunately not an american monopoly.
> The exact same kind of thinking the led US to invade Irak.
Encouraging (maybe there's a better word to use) a different way of running a foreign economy to bring about political change is not the exact same kind of thinking as overthrowing a foreign government to bring about political change. Yeah, there is the belief that political change needs to happen, but in practice these things are very different.
See here: Saudi-Arabia, Oman, UAE, Philippines, Egypt (military junta), Turkey, etc.
If being friendly with an authoritarian state yields economic or military geographical advantage then that overrides any ideological hang-ups involved.
They attack democracies that they don’t like labeling them autocratic and dictatorships. Then install their military juntas. See numerous examples like Chile, Ethiopia, Iran etc.
Stephen Kinzer has written extensively on this in the book Overthrow:
https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...
On overthrowing the Iranian democracy and installing the Shah:
https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/B00S...?
On the Jakarta Method:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
https://www.amazon.com/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommun...?
A big part of it is that the "democrats" (which was a catch-all term for all Western-minded liberals) favored a quick reset of the vestigial planned economy into a free market-based one; words like "shock therapy" were thrown around. The idea was that any inconveniences would be temporary, and more than made up for when the transition is complete.
The immediate result, however, was a significant drop in quality of life for the majority of the population, with a corresponding rise in crime. And because the "democrats" were the ones spearheading the efforts, they carried the reputational hit. This gave people like Putin the opportunity to ride to power on "strong hand" policies that were supposed to fix all that.
I grew up in Russia during that era, and remember the rhetoric then. One thing I'd say the West did very wrong was to let organizations like the IMF run wild, pushing for their (austerity-centric) ideological view of the economy through loans. Then again, from what I've read later, it wouldn't be the first or the last time they messed up a country they were supposed to help.
(Side note: Zelensky's "Servant of the People" is available on Netflix with decent subtitles, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone in the West who wants to understand the historical trajectory of former Soviet republics - Russia and Belarus especially, of course. What I found interesting is that, while it was targeted at contemporary Ukrainians in 2015-2019, the world that it depicts was very familiar to me from my memories of 1990s in Russia, aside from uniquely local issues like the languages.)
The difference is that one of Russian oligarchs decided to make a new political puppet with a "strong man" image. He was very successful, but then the puppet decided that it can make it on its own - and did so.
Like all simple economic theories, it looked good on paper, and convincing to the crowd. Then it turned out that the new owners were largely the same people who were in charge in Soviet days, except for a few talented and lucky grifters who made their way from the very bottom to the very top.
Those arguments always sound like straw men though: they are designed because they are easy to tear down. China is...weird. You can't really take anything at face value, good or bad. And I say that having lived there for 9 years. E.g. sometimes a ghost mall or district is one waiting to be populated, otherwise times it's just waiting to be torn down (either way positive GDP is generated).
And then all of a sudden it collapsed.
In your view how is it different from today's situation where China might declare the same thing about Taiwan?
UK has no legitimate claim to Hong Kong, so the non-China option is independence.
Taiwan has always had a local military.
* by 1997 (handover date) Britain lacked a colonial empire from which it could assist in a defense of Hong Kong, and of the overseas posts it did have, the regiments were fairly small. Sending a large military force all the way from Britain itself would take too long in any sort of conflict. Taiwan has always come with the implicit security guarantee of the United States, which maintains a very active presence in the Pacific.
* the PLA has the law of numbers on their side, not only due to part 1 but because of how large their army is in general, and the border between Hong Kong and the rest of China is a fairly small river. The PLA generally lacks the amphibious capacity to do a land invasion of Taiwan.
* the New Territories in Hong Kong, unlike the rest of it, were signed over in a 99 year lease. 1997 was the end of those 99 years. The New Territories are a mountainous area with a good deal of Hong Kong's postwar population and also its major water supplies; without it and bordering a hostile China, Hong Kong would quickly cease to be a functioning city. Holding onto the territories wouldn't last a very long time due to parts 1 and 2, and unlike Taiwan where international law depends on who you think China is, the UK would clearly be in the wrong by violating the 99 year lease unilaterally.
The alternative is war.
>today's situation where China might declare the same thing about Taiwan?
And everyone pretty much agrees the alternative is war.
Calling for war in times of peace from your couch is a very easy thing do; but it's not something to be taken lightly. There's no telling how quickly this appetite for war against our 3rd largest trading partner will dry up once we start having to deal with the economic fallout.
Thatcher was a lot of things but naive certainly wasn't one of them. The Western powers simply wanted to become closer to China for economic and geopolitical reasons, but need an excuse to back away from the Red Scare. "Bringing Democracy" is the oldest page of the manufacturing consent playbook. It's honestly embarrassing of how well it works (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya).
I would regard it more as a “pull out” than anything. Set up HK the best you can than wash your hands of it.
Looking back, I think it worked quite well for as long as it did.
Also not known to most is that Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the US all have larger Chinese populations than Singapore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong%E2%80%93United_Sta...
and in particular
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Hong_Kong_Poli...
(though this seems a little focused on export controls)
but I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in whatever meetings American diplomats had with one another and with the various other parties (Hong Kong, China, and Britain).
It sounds like the US was pretty hands-off at the time, though. Maybe that's just the official position, but it's surprising. I suppose 90s optimism could have caused this behavior...
Now I imagine what would have happened instead, say, under an Eisenhower administration, with John Foster Dulles as secretary of state.... It's hard to say: They were much more aggressive (e.g. Iran, Korea, ...), but they were also trying to get the British out of places (the Suez Crisis, the subtext of The Quiet American, ...). At this point it all just becomes alternate history though...
Practically, Britain should just offer citizenship to Hong Kongers...
I wish there were freedom of movement within AUKUS + ASEAN (+ OAS?), as a block, like there is within the EU... Instead it's almost like the neo-empire has hukous. Which sucks. Just come out as an empire and let subjects get some benefits, like the freedom to live anywhere... Or, I don't know, maybe that would just result in Americanization of the world, which would be kind of tragic... Hmm... Well anyway, at least invite Hong Kongers in; it's the least you can do...
Hm, actually CUKCs used to be a thing (unfortunate acronym now in 2022):
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/the-staggers/2017/05/f...
(Sounds like the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 should be repealed.)
Maybe this can all just be done in a bilateral way instead... Problem is, western countries have no incentive to bargain for looser visa regulations that let their people leave...
Still, it's nice to imagine a world where a person from Hong Kong or London or New York could freely move to any of the other cities...
Hm, maybe the collapse of national legitimacy and the rise of sanctuary cities (somewhat overhyped) paired with something more prosaic like sister cities could do this... Why can't a mayor have a foreign policy? Eric Adams or Sadiq Khan: "Hong Kongers are welcome here!" Hm...
How would such a league of city-states defend itself though? I mean, this is the problem in Hong Kong to begin with...
Hm...
Maybe we just need Mr. Lee's franchises... Make it real, people... If Mark Zuckerberg can get 15,000 engineers to try to build the Metaverse, surely we can raise an army to construct good things from cyberpunk...
Well, if the UK wanted to, they would have done it before 1997 but they chose to give the majority a chance to apply for a BNO passport which was literally a slap in the face. No right to live and work in the UK when you are a 'British National Overseas'.
Even when they let BNO passport holders apply for the right to live and work in the UK recently, they could pick and choose who they wanted to let in.
BNO passport = joke of the century
The US is getting more fascist in observable ways. Suspension habeas corpus in GWs time, pepper spraying college students in 2008 for a seated protest in Cali, to no abortion rights, and the political snowflakes in both parties calling for each other’s heads, kids in cages and yet everyone tucks their chin and goes on, inequality and taxation without holistic demographic representation; SCOTUS Justices openly demanding the public just accept things it does not like.
Keep complaining about Russia and China, USians. Virtue signaling while actually operating as moral relativists is creating the culture you talk to be against in your own backyard.
Are you serious? I am not, I am being sarcastic.
One out of two ain't so bad. /s
Consider that the UK only barely managed to defend the Falklands. Thatcher saved her and her country's face in the negotiations which is the main job of any politician.
Unification. You can’t reunify something that wasn’t once unified.
But in any case China screwed that up because the world and Taiwan have seen what China has done and is doing and Taiwan doesn’t want any part of it.
After the Qing Dynasty took over they did nothing with Taiwan. The Qing Dynasty called Taiwan a ball of mud in the sea not worth the effort of China. There was some people who travelled and setup in Taiwan but ultimately the Qing Dynasty never controlled Taiwan and was in constant conflict with the locals.
In 1887 they decided to call Taiwan a Provience in order to defer Japan from attacking. During this time they tried a little bit to build Taiwan, but again, ultimately not controling the Island.
When Japan attacked, they threw their hands in the air and ceeded to Japan. Japan wasn't even convinced that China controlled Taiwan, and China convinced Japan they did by saying there are other countries where the governments cannot control the indigenous people.
Japan took over and ruled with an iron fist.
After the war the US handed Taiwan to KMT as temporary administer the Island until the fate of the Island had been decided. This part has never happened and is why the US is ambigious on the status of Taiwan.
So no. The populations were NEVER unified in any way.
I think the CCP’s strategy is much simpler. They don’t expect Taiwan to be annexed any time soon, they just want to quell dissent in China. I believe popular opinion among Mainlanders is that HK citizens are spoiled drama queens (negative sentiment) so a display of force is a way of showing internally that HK - once a far more prosperous part of China, that saw itself as superior/gave mainlanders an inferiority complex - is now subservient to China. Basically a demonstration that China is a rising power (internally)
It's a display of strength, in my opinion. "Struggle all you want, but in the end we will have our way with you." I'm not a geopolitical expert or anything but I fully expect China to take Taiwan by force while the West is busy with Russia. I'm fairly certain that we couldn't effectively sanction both China _and_ Russia
The US is still giving out Purple Hearts medals meant for the land invasion of Japan, which was expected to be horrific in terms of casualties due to the terrain. In this context, the US actually investigated and totally gave up on the idea of a land invasion of Taiwan, because the geography is so much worse; there are very few flat beaches from which to do an amphibious D-day style landing, and all of them are a few km away from mountains from which to rain down artillery.
It's funny people think these are all random occurrences or all the doing of the CCP. During the detente, even the Dalai Lama suddenly went to the "Middle Way" and shut up for 15 years.
The CCP/PRC knows that very well so there is no point for them to allow HK to persist, especially considering that this could give ideas on the mainland ("if HK can have this, why can't we?")
(Also, no-one ever talks about Macao, but it's the same as HK)
HK is one of my favourite cities but one thing that I do not like about HK is how its citizens of Chinese descent (not all of course) think that they are superior to people in the Mainland. They try to make the differentiation by identifying themselves as Hongkongers (香港人) and not Chinese.
When they are outside of Hong Kong and have to fill in their ethnicity on application forms etc, no country has 'Hongkonger' as an ethnicity or even nationality.
My friends of Chinese descent born in the UK with parents from HK identify their ethnicity as Chinese. I really don't understand the minds of these Hongkongers sometimes..
Like how we shipped factories to China.
Do something about China? Like shipping factory machines wholesale?
The idiots in charge built up the Chinese into a manufacturing superpower!
We invested specifically and heavily into the PRC, and there’s a case to be made that that was a mistake as long as the CCP was the exclusive dominant political party within the PRC because right now, it’s still that. Not that a democratic China is necessarily a friendly China, but it’s at least one we wouldn’t have to trade against our liberal values to trade with.
A government has an obligation to protect national security. Letting another country be a single point of failure in your supply chain is a major failure of national security and ability to self determine. The government failed to regulate IP transfers and failed to restrict businesses from behavior that, while individually harmless, is collectively harmful.
The US governments failure to regulate very much ceded power directly to China.
Add to that the unequal trade agreements of china practicing protectionism while America does not and the result is a stunning American foreign policy failure.
The prevailing idea was that the west thought an economically successful china would liberalize, and therefore this ceding of power was ok and a net benefit. I think the violation of Hong Kong and Xi's wolf warrior diplomacy has been the turning point where the west now understands that China is an ideological enemy with a zero sum ideology.
"AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help repressive regimes and endanger open societies. Interestingly, the Coronavirus reinforced the advantage repressive regimes enjoy by legitimizing the use of personal data for public control purposes.
With these advantages, one might think that Xi Jinping, who collects personal data for the surveillance of his citizens more aggressively than any other ruler in history, is bound to be successful. He certainly thinks so, and many people believe him."[1]
https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china...
-- Aldous Huxley
There seems to be this implicit believe in society that wealth implies superpowers across a spectrum of topics, especially politics. Personally getting tired of all the opinions from guys like Soros, Dalio, and Ackman -- the cynic in me can't help but wonder whether these types of articles are an earnest attempt at public policy, or just a veiled bull case for their next investment thesis.
I do agree with you that people shouldn't listen to others simply because they're rich, that's not a basis for a logical argument. That said though if I were a Westerner with no idea about China, I would consider the opinion of people with skin in the game, and would value it over that of random others on the internet. Listening just to Soros may not be smart but you might check where most of the money goes, what most of them are saying - where the wind blows, so to speak. I don't see any billionaires moving to China In general more wealthy Mainlanders leave than the other way around. Also the government is getting stricter and stricter with their currency and exchange controls in China. Why would they need this if money weren't trying to leave? In most other countries, you can exchange as much local currency for foreign currency as you like.
All this should tell a keen observer something about the direction the Xi regime is headed, if other developments like the concentration camps aren't enough of a hint.
Soros has zero skin in the game. He expects Xi to no longer be in power by the end of the year; and will suffer zero consequence if he's wrong.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/soros-joi...
Investors don't generally bad-mouth their own holdings for obvious reasons. They'd usually sell or go short first. Look at it like this: You can't look up to them for moral guidance because they have their own money on the line and will not give you neutral advice. Case and point is that Soros apparently didn't have issues pouring millions of dollars into CCP controlled China earlier, despite already questionable ethics of such investments. But now it's gotten to a point where even people like him are pulling out and have started criticizing the Communist Party - because Xi has gone full dictator and not even billionaires and their holdings are safe anymore.
It's not only about Soros, he's just an example the other guy brought up. A theoretical billionaire who only has investments in the US would also have skin in the game, that would be a clear stance. Not sure if such a person exists, when you have that much wealth it's generally globally distributed, at least to some degree. Some of it for tax reasons, some because there might be a good opportunity somewhere, but in the above mentioned case it's clearly political. We could also look at someone like Jack Ma. He quite literally risked his skin speaking out, and ended up losing most of his wealth. In a way he's lucky to only have lost his money.
Billionaires like Soros have access to experts that they can call upon at a whim. An intelligent creature like Soros would know his limitations, and would either ponder deeply and thoroughly research a subject before delivering his conclusions, or he would skip to the end and regurgitate the current trendy things to say. Or a combination of both.
I agree and disagree with things Soros says and does. I'm no sycophant. But I think he's probably in a different caliber as the common celebrity.
But anyone that was at CVPR last week probably saw how much research was put into crowd counting, gate tracking, and other such systems. There is a lot of money being put into this. I know there is some good that can come out of it, but talking to people, I don't think they realize the implications for when it is used for bad. There's often the notion "but it will only be used for good" and not how power can turn quickly in a country: hence turnkey tyranny. I think our Chinese colleagues, like many of us and our European colleagues, are more hopeful about our governments than others. It is a tough situation.
See this thread: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1039842312061374464
Notice that 'the West' partially supported the Hong Kong protests[0] through its US Agency for Global Media (USAGM; independent US agency), Voice of America (US state-owned), and Radio Free Asia (subsidiary to USAGM), and that the HK protests were partly violent.
To be clear, the idea of billionaires funding NGOs or using media influence to achieve societal changes they desire (no matter how laudable) is not open society.
edit: added link
[0]: https://time.com/5860163/trump-hong-kong-funding-freeze/
It was oddly not that different from San Francisco. Both places have many, many Chinese people on the streets; just a few more in HK. In both places you might wander into a store or restaurant where not everyone speaks English; slightly more often in HK, but there was always someone who did.
Memory: Lantau Island and the clack of mahjong tiles as ladies played in the alleys.
I doubt you would recognize it though. Discovery Bay which would have been very new in 1989 is now a huge and wealthy place gathering mainly westerners. Tung Chung is now a busy hub with the new airport and Macau bridge.
Mui Wo is booming.
There are even talks of expanding the island artificially for more housing.
I'm not a movie expert, but it does feel like Hong Kong movies have nosedived in the years since it joined China. And is now a bit of a dead end. Police states aren't exactly conducive for creative expression. There's a lot of factors that could explain it but I do wonder how much regime change played a part.
China, a civilization-state that predates the West by thousands of years, was not going to turn into the West, no matter how much we wished for it.
Very normative patriarchal colonialist judgments on a country that raised more people out of poverty than any other time in human history.
Those three words mean three different things and are not interchangeable. The CCP cannot accurately be called a "colonizer", because, regardless of its faults, it's not exogenous to China.
It's a category error.
And it feels very different compared to the old West/East divide. Because, ideologically speaking, the "other side" has nothing to offer in comparison to the Communists. At least they offered something (in theory) to strive for.
The Third World is full of countries and people who yearn for a vision of Chinese-like economic growth. I deliberately use the word vision, because I doubt that Sri Lanka or Pakistan can replicate Chinese growth in the real world, even if they adapted all the institutions of CCP. But their wannabe authoritarians can at least sell that vision to their own subjects, together with some material improvements financed from the Road and Belt warchest.
Edit: Interesting that someone downvoted this. If I were a foreign investor, a chaotic policy of locking down big cities and subjecting foreign visitors to humiliating anal swabs etc. in order to keep down a respiratory virus with extreme R0 rate, much less deadly than original Covid, and with a ton of existing vaccines available, would be quite off-putting to me.
For what it’s worth, I think the Chinese lockdowns made sense early in the pandemic, but at this point are solidly in the mad-emperor-on-the-throne territory.
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1531768589098921985
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1539219754338160641
I think the 2 tweets above make a good case for an elimination strategy. Permanently circulating Covid means ever-increasing rates of long Covid, disability, unpredictably-disrupted large events (how can you plan anything a few months in advance with Covid still circulating?). And keep in mind that Covid isn't just for the old, the magnitude of risk increase is equal (proportional) for every age group; and that reinfections have worse outcomes (discredits "live with it").
The "live with Covid" strategy was never good, is still not good, will likely never be good, yet Western countries have burned down their political capital so much that if they ever try zero-Covid, they'd face civil unrest. Not a good situation they've built for themselves.
I am fairly skeptical against the idea that Covid, with its enormous ability to spread, is going to be eliminated in our lifetimes. There is a lot of coronaviruses out there and they seem to be fairly resilient.
Locking cities of the size of Shanghai down has serious downsides too, and, in public health, everything is a trade-off.
You can’t eliminate an endemic disease. It’s not a winnable battle.
"Go the Chinese way and you do not have to worry about nosy journalists and unexpected election losses. Rule at your will and be respected, or at least feared, by everyone underneath. And provide those subject with enough material comfort to become a bit complacent and afraid to shake up things."
To achive a sustainable way of life, which tackles alot of our problems, China is in a pretty good position to reign into its citizens lifes and change vast economic processes top to bottom.
Fwiw, it comes from the observation you had about what is next if liberalism, communism, and fascism aren’t working for a culture? The answer is an odd hybrid of the three.
As for what Russia and China can offer, there is no great ideology, but what I think they try to sell to their citizens is some combination of nationalism, wealth and solid pragmatic rule. The west is currently wealthier of course, but China is upwardly mobile so it remains to be seen whether they will eventually manage to eclipse say the US on a gdp/capita basis.
If they manage to do that, and can contrast their leader with some unpopular US one, they will have a decent value proposition in many eyes.
Those countries haven't 'united over their shared dislike of democracy', they really can't give two rat's asses about how, say, the US, or France governs itself. "They hate us for our freedoms" is as wrong today as it was 21 years ago.
What they are 'united' over is being to one extent or another, surrounded by US-aligned systems, that view them as an enemy. Aircraft carriers floating around just off their coasts, US military bases a few hundred miles from their borders, global trade and financial markets being fully dependent on the forbearance of Washington - that sort of thing.
(Also, there are countries like, say, India, who have no dog in this fight, and also don't give a rat's ass about how other countries govern themselves, but see it as an opportunity to improve their trade relations - which is why India currently has no issues with forming closer ties with Russia. But, well, we don't want to piss India off, so for the most part, we quietly ignore that.)
>global trade and financial markets being fully dependent on the forbearance of Washington - that sort of thing.
This feels very disingenuous. Nothings stops those countries from adopting a demurrage currency and outcompeting the US-aligned systems. Of course there is a reason why they don't do that, because demurrage has anti corruption properties. You can't just stash the money you obtained through corruption and maintain purchasing power and extort interest against the will of the rest of the population. Since capital gains approach zero and monopolies can't form, the only way you can keep your wealth is through honest work. Of course I am also assuming a land value tax.
1. Russia currently can't make its outstanding foreign debt payments, because a large part of it has been cut off from the global financial system. :)
2. There's also the occasional bit of regime change and freedom bombing that comes around when you consider shifting away from, say, the petrodollar. (Maybe? [1])
There is some credit to your point, but it's not at all unassailable, especially from the perspective of the 'other'.
[1] I'm not entirely sold on the claims for a strong causal link between the two, but it does seem like a somewhat weird sort of coincidence.
It seems that the replacement ideology for totalitarians is essentially a crude nationalism, which claims that "we" are a proud independent people whose history and culture are superior; "our" only problem is that we are beset and undermined by the horrible machinations of the US and its puppets. That's certainly the essence of Putinism, although China is perhaps a little more nuanced.
Something's gotta give but I've been saying that for awhile now.
Capitalism and autocracy work perfectly well, as Peter Sloterdijk often points out, Lee Kuan Yew may very well be the most consequential person of the second half of the 20th century, by building the basic model for capitalist states without democracy or civil so ciety in Singapore. In fact the most fundamental unit of capitalism, the private corporation is exactly what most non-democratic states today aim to emulate.
What do you do, or how should you feel/react/believe if a people actually want the tradeoffs of more authoritarianism in exchange for more security/economic stability/etc? Whether they make that choice informed or not so well-informed, is that an illegitimate choice, always bad?
I have the feeling that media bias is to side with the most visible and sympathetic example stories, which are people who oppose China in this case. What about the many, many segments of the population which don't care about the change, or actively support it? There is quite a bias, you must admit, in the media, that "China's encroachment/takeover/etc is objectively bad" -- which to me sometimes comes off as not having done much homework why that's true, or why it's so obvious.
In regards to media bias, at least in the US, the nielson ratings among others are monitored vigorously, often given to anchors during commercial breaks. Content is filtered through a, or multiple people's worldview(s), but ratings rule for all but the most ideological. The juggling of entertainment and news will never go away, I think - people don't listen to the newswires like AP or reuters for fun do they?
There is no tradeoff, they are the same thing. Freedom from rent seeking results in both security and economic stability and is anti authoritarian.
https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000...
Step 2 - Start a meaningless war over definitions (of colony) to muddy history
Step 3 - Turning to what's next (Taiwan)
nomnomnomnomnom
https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202109/14/P2021091400837....
HK is still the most freedom area in economy freedom ranking. How is that squared with "police state"?
These type of sentiment among the people is like the typical reaction of the cultural adaptation of HK, in the background the reinforced tie with the mainland China.
To link this to "police state" is a stereotype of Chinese society. This stereotyping is a well understood political propaganda campaign started since 1840. I.e., when the west realized the mighty Qing dynasty is so weak and wait for them to plunder, they start to manufacture an inferior sense on Chinese and China.
For a simple fact: China's incarcerated population 121 per 100,000 of the national population, US 419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000. Great Britain is 131.5 per 100 thousand people in 2021
If you want to define a police state, then incarceration rate is a better index than a few political activists, especially those political activists are not patriotic towards their home country.
It's like asking people naturalized in US to take an oath:
``` The Oath will ask you to swear that, as a new citizen of the United States, you will: Support and defend the values of the laws and Constitution of the United States against its enemies. ```
But these political activists will refuse to do so, and still demand to be naturalized.
> In 2021 the Heritage Foundation removed Hong Kong as a separate entity from China from its list of freest economics of the world citing increasing interference from the Chinese government in Hong Kong's governmental system and democratic process. With this Hong Kong along with Macao lost a position they had held in the index after several decades. The head of the Heritage Foundation indicated that Hong Kong is guaranteed with more economic freedoms but however, those economic policies are still ultimately controlled by Beijing.
Good luck to find truth from political propaganda outlets.
Don't people here think it's kind if suspicious that nothing ever positive gets written about China in the western media?
Something positive happened in China? CCP propaganda!
Like nothing ever good happens in a huge land with 1.4 billion people and thousands of years of rich history?
Only thing that ever gets posted here are how China steals IP, how Chinese people aren't smart enough to invent their own stuff (check long history), etc. etc.
It's really annoying.
The above article recently posted to HN doesn’t fall clearly into “steals IP” or “can’t invent their own stuff”.
SV/USA can't have mature and fact-oriented discourse about China because it is in deep denial about SZ/China surpassing it. Started happening big time with TikTok.
How about this one - China prioritises well-being over algorithms?
China has positives as well as negatives. There are positive comments as well as negative on HN. If you look for negative comments and stories you will find them.
If you look for positive stories I think you will also find them. If not, I’m happy to read your positive stories and comments about China.
A quote from the comments there:
“I feel like at some point, China might find a chill government who will let a lot of those slide or move into a more balanced position. I hope they do. I can see path for China to really become closer to a utopia than virtually any other place right now.”
I used to think that way. I joked with my engineer friends 15 years ago about Huawei copying American-designed routers down to the English silk screening on the circuit boards. Seeing Huawei pump out their own state of the art switching and router chips disabused me of that notion.
Not sure if this counts as a positive post but at least it seems balanced and informative.
The Chinese name for America literally means "beautiful land". All of my Chinese friends were confused why America suddenly started hating it so much during Trump's era.
The level of ignorance regarding China here is astounding.
Btw your comments aren't actually a reply to the article at all, which is about the situation in Hong Kong. Instead it's whataboutism regarding Western bias. Any reason for not wanting to discuss the Hong Kong police state?
You hear the same here about the EU and tech companies. You take it personally when it's about your own people.
2) What do you expect? The Chinese government is actively running concentration camps. Most people in western democracies consider many of the Chinese government's policies to be outright immoral. They have a recent history of leveraging surveillance and propaganda - both unpopular in western societies - to a much higher degree than western nations. We could go tit-for-tat listing off both sides' history of atrocities, but the ruling party in China still refuses to even recognize some of their most noteworthy atrocities. China and the western world have been engaged for decades in a back-and-forth war of economics and diplomacy on a global scale, each vying to get significant leverage over the other. Did you really expect a lot of positive coverage of a nation whose history, actions, policies are so maligned by western society? One who poses such a significant risk to western ideals?
I'm not arguing that the western world is without blame, but it seems silly to expect such impartial coverage of China from a western perspective, all things considered.