
‘No to China extradition’ – Hong Kong protest against controversial new law - ksec
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/09/just-no-china-extradition-tens-thousands-hong-kong-protest-controversial-new-law/
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Renaud
This is huge for Hong Kong.

It's not just a standard extradition agreement like existing ones made with
other countries.

With Hong Kong under China's foot, there is a grave risk that any
-unverifiable- trumped up charge made in the Mainland against dissidents and
those voicing discontent against the Chinese government would result in
potential extradition to China, a country that has no rule of law and where
torture is routine (China is 82/126 in the latest Rule of Law Index[1]. HK is
16/126).

The HK government tried to assuage the critics by including some safeguards
that would require the crime to be serious enough to require at least 7 years
of imprisonment for the extradition to be processed, but voicing criticism of
the Chinese government is considered a crime against national security in
China...

There is little doubt that at some point these types of requests will be made
and this new rule is opening Pandora's box wide.

Hong Kong is a great place, with great people who basically have little to
hope for as the little freedom they had is getting eroded day by day.

China advises against the western views on separation of powers. This alone
should ring alarms bells.

Loud ones.

[1]:
[http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/](http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/)

~~~
jasonlingx
Is there a point to this? Isn’t Hong Kong already a part of sovereign China?
Doesn’t China already freely “extradite” anyone they want from Hong Kong?

~~~
gotorazor
Not legally. No. There is currently no extradition of any kind between China,
Hong Kong, and Macau.

~~~
jasonlingx
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearances)

I mean, the reality is Hong Kong’s “autonomy” only exists because Beijing
allows it. I guess it means something that so many people still show up
despite the “futility” of it.

~~~
derefr
A sovereign nation stays sovereign not because it can defend itself, or
because of the treaties it has in place, but rather because of the way the
people there delineate the mental boundary between “us” and “them.” The
government of a country can sign away every _legal_ element of there being an
independent country, and yet still not destroy the sovereignty of the nation
of people that exists there. Before and after legal annexation, it’s still
just as hard to absorb that “country” into your own, because the legality of
doing so was never the blocker.

Empires want _productive_ colonies. They don’t go around conquering land just
to kick everyone who lives there off and move their own citizens there. They
want to capture the GDP of the existing nation-of-people, and have that GDP
become part of _their_ aggregate GDP, advancing their ends. So empires are
unwilling to do anything to conquer a nation-of-people that destroys their GDP
in the process. They don’t want to start with a first-world neighbour and end
up with a third-world satellite.

And nations-of-people, who actively resist thinking of themselves as part of a
given empire, when the order comes down to work toward that empire’s
ends—they’ll just _not work_. They know they might be sent to “labor camps” in
said empire, to get a _little_ productivity out of them—but they also know
that this is still a destruction of economic value from the empire’s
perspective, since they were doing labor before which had far more economic
value than the labor the empire can coerce out of them in a labor camp. So
they know that, by and large, the empire won’t bother to do this. They might
try doing it a few times, as a terrorist tactic to scare the nation-of-people
into compliance... but they don’t want to _actually_ do enough damage to the
GDP of the annexed state to matter.

Or, to put that another way: a nation-of-people under annexation is like a
city _made of glass_ , under siege (where “made of glass” refers here to both
the city _and its people_.) Sure, anyone could just go in and break all the
glass, if they wanted the city wiped off the map. But—at least in the modern
geopolitical landscape—there’s no reason to want to. Everyone wants to
_capture_ the city. And that’s basically impossible by military means, because
the military tools empires have available to them are designed to shatter
glass. They’ll end up with a big heap of nothing, rather than a city. The only
way to make the city _yours_ is to just _convince_ its citizens that they
_want_ to work for you.

And, if an empire is in a negotiation at that level, they’re essentially back
to negotiating with a peer sovereign nation. They can’t truly dictate law or
custom, because the citizens (as-yet unintegrated, still thinking of the
empire as “them” rather than “us”) won’t work under those conditions, and
there’s no way to force them to do so without killing the golden goose.

——

China is in a holding pattern with Hong Kong. They think they can, through
secular drift, get future generations to think of themselves as just
“Chinese”—to think of the Chinese empire as “us” rather than “them.” At that
point, the game is won, and China can enforce whatever laws and customs they
like on Hong Kong.

But _until_ that point—and, perhaps, that point may never come, if the
citizens of Hong Kong continue to raise their children to see themselves as
“citizens of Hong Kong” first-and-foremost—China can only put in place such
laws and practices as the citizens of Hong Kong will tolerate.

~~~
jhanschoo
Great point regarding GDP. Vox did a piece[1] that pointed out that with the
recent rise of highly economically productive cities in the mainland like
Shenzhen, the mainland is getting more emboldened in projecting its control
over HK.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyxG4vTyZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyxG4vTyZ8)

------
hkai
I'm at the event right now, was waiting for 4 hours in Victoria park before
finally started moving. People are very peaceful and non aggressive, and I'm
not sure this strategy will work.

Extradition to China is basically extradition to North Korea, a lawless
country with no police, no courts and no justice.

Eventually this will extend to crimes like using a VPN and operating a group
chat, not to mention the threat to businesses, journalists and lawyers.

I imagine if my startup refuses to provide data to mainland China, I could be
held without court at an undisclosed location for as long as needed.

~~~
flying_sheep
To be exact, China has police (serving Communist Party), has court (highly
bias toward plaintiffs who have power), and has justice (the Communist version
of justice).

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ngcc_hk
Inside the protest.

I think that is really a new break as anyone can be pull back to china.
Including any foreigner. China has no rule of law. No human rights or at lest
right in court.

Back to the protest.

~~~
utbabya
Can't believe this makes it to HN, although I feel politics is off topic I
can't help but to feed to this because it means so much to me.

Over a million people, or 1 out of 5-7 people walked out against this tighten
grip. The whole Hong Kong island is dead lock now. China has been subtly (or
so much with this attempt) trying to erode our freedom, rule of law and
culture.

Shamefully I'm not physically in Hong Kong. Thank you for your effort, that's
the least I could do.

~~~
heraclius
Not sure that turnout is over a million. Even HKFP are being cautious and only
switched from “tens” to “hundreds” of thousands about an hour ago. I do hope
that you are right though! And even 1 in 10 or 15 would be remarkable.

Edit: the SCMP has some turnout figures. As usual they vary wildly.¹

1\. [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/politics/article/3013725...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/politics/article/3013725/hong-kong-edge-crowds-gather-ultimate-showdown-
against)

~~~
utbabya
I just gathered it from live video, local forum posts, news and my intuition
of the size of Hong Kong island (it's all full with people still being stuck
in the train system from Kowloon side). From images, it's also visually much
bigger than the previous ~500K turnout protest.

But yeah it's intuition after all so I could be wrong. Still, numbers in the
60K range is just impossible.

Edit: By gather and intuition, I mean I'm getting quite a volume of
confirmation bias from forum post, video comments and the hosts of the
protest.

~~~
heraclius
One of the pan-dems doubts it’s more than the aftermath of 6/4 which was ~a
million, but the opening of all the roads etc. suggests more than the art. 23
protests, yes.

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est31
Hong kong is the least independent in a group of regions like mongolia or
taiwan that China all lays claim to. It's an interesting lithmus test for
their future behaviour in those regions.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/ROC_Admi...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/ROC_Administrative_and_Claims.svg)

~~~
lozenge
That's a map of ROC (Taiwan) claims, not China.

~~~
Arkanosis
Yep:

    
    
      - ROC: Republic Of China (Taïwan)
      - PRC: People's Republic of China (China)

