
Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life - frrp
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/hong-kong-mourns-way-life-china-cracks-down-dissent/
======
canada_dry
What has happened to Hong Kong is a strong _canary-in-the-coal-mine_ indicator
for other Chinese territorial disputes [i].

With Hong Kong it was somewhat inevitable but I can't help but imagine how
different it would be if the US and EU/Britain (as leads) would have strongly
denounced their approach. I suspect in a decade from now the West will be
lamenting how Hong Kong was the right opportunity to stifle China's ambition.

[i] [https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/territorial-
disputes](https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/territorial-disputes)

~~~
blhack
> I can't help but imagine how different it would be if the US and EU/Britain
> (as leads) would have strongly denounced their approach.

What? What could the US have done beyond what we did other than all out war?
The US response to this was very harsh.

We undid 50 years of diplomacy with China, and have started building a sortof
SEA equivalent to NATO.

Chinese/American relations have probably never been as unfriendly as they are
right now, and Hong Kong is a major part of that. Seriously I don’t know what
the next step would be that wasn’t a de facto, weapons-hot war.

~~~
magicsmoke
I think the dissonance over the US not doing enough is that if the US pulled
these moves a decade or two ago, China would have blinked. China not blinking
doesn't mean the US isn't doing enough. It means we're living in a world where
China doesn't blink anymore. America's absolute influence might still be the
same, but its relative influence has fallen.

~~~
ianai
Right or wrong, I suggest you and others go back to interviews of Kissinger
about why he pushed to open the world to China the way the US did. It was
essentially do it on our terms now or theirs for ever after. Not that it was
right, but it is informative.

~~~
thewarrior
Couldn’t find it can you share a link ?

~~~
ianai
Personally I watched an old episode of “Firing Line” on amazon prime with him
and Ariana Huffington on it. Ariana was arguing against trade with China.

Edit-might be this one:
[https://youtu.be/U4bBftiRo2Q](https://youtu.be/U4bBftiRo2Q)

------
oxymoran
The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing
around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the
other way to authoritarian regimes.

~~~
aaaxyz
In the last decade : \- Russia annexed Crimea; \- Turkey took control of most
of the Syrian land across its borders; \- Israel continuously colonised bits
of Palestinian land; \- China is now taking political control of Hong Kong; \-
UAE forces tool over the Socotra Islands;

The West's reactions so far have been ranging from ineffectual economic
sanctions to completely ignoring it. I would expect similar "annexations" by
nationalist/totalitarian states to continue in the future.

~~~
magicsmoke
Because none of those annexations haven't affected "core" territories of the
west or their "core" population. The west definitely did not ignore 9/11.

Some people are more "western" than others. More specifically, the ones that
can vote to mobilize the "western" military. Spill their blood and get
demolished. Spill the blood of their worshipers and suddenly their own blood
is too valuable to waste.

~~~
srtjstjsj
9/11 was an used as an excuse for pre-planned actions again unrelated
entities. The US made huge efforts to _avoid_ responding to the actual
attackers for almost a decade.

Iraq was not a threat to the "core".

------
hh3k0
I've been boycotting Chinese goods whenever possible (it helps that I don't
really buy electronics) because of Hong Kong. I regret not having started back
when our professor urged us to do so roughly a decade ago. One time, we had
officials from Chinese universities visit ours and he made sure to have big
"free Tibet" patches on his jacket and backpack while always hanging around
said officials. He was quite the character.

~~~
croes
Free Tibet to go back to feudalism? You do know that Tibet and Taiwan wasn't
any better for the poorer part of the people. Hong Kong is one of the most
expensive places to live. The protesters are part of the privileged and are
just fighting to keep them. Didn't hear them complaining back then in the
asian banking crisis when China bailed them out with the money from exploited
chinese workers.

~~~
hkmaxpro
> Didn't hear them complaining back then in the asian banking crisis when
> China bailed them out with the money from exploited chinese workers

China “bailing out” Hong Kong is a common myth popularized by the CCP [0].

China refused to interfere with Hong Kong during the 1998 financial crisis,
according to former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa [1].

The Monetary Authority head did not acknowledge any help from China back then
[2].

[0]
[https://medium.com/@lineposthk/%E5%AF%92%E6%9F%8F-%E4%B8%AD%...](https://medium.com/@lineposthk/%E5%AF%92%E6%9F%8F-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E6%9B%BE%E5%8B%95%E7%94%A8%E5%A4%96%E5%8C%AF%E5%84%B2%E5%82%99%E6%95%91%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF-4fb1723292cd)
(in Chinese)

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/politics/article/2101761...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/politics/article/2101761/beijing-refused-step-during-1998-hong-kong-
financial-crisis)

[2]
[https://hk.finance.yahoo.com/news/%E4%BB%BB%E5%BF%97%E5%89%9...](https://hk.finance.yahoo.com/news/%E4%BB%BB%E5%BF%97%E5%89%9B-98-%E5%B9%B4%E6%BC%94%E8%AA%AA-%E6%B2%92%E8%AA%AA%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E6%95%91%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF-081319406.html)
(in Chinese)

~~~
croes
Thanks for the sources.

------
xoxoy
I suspect we will see China attempt to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later
now.

In particular I’ve suspected for awhile that China desperately wants to “own”
Taiwan Semiconductor ($TSM) since they’ve been trying to build up their own
domestic chip business for awhile and $TSM is the gold standard in chip
manufacturing.

~~~
magicsmoke
Any invasion of Taiwan will just leave TSMC a smoking husk, either from PLA
jets or from self-destruct switches. Invading won't help in terms of owning
TSMC's facilities and technology.

~~~
xoxoy
huh? by invade i mean they want to own Taiwan, not destroy it.

~~~
yorwba
How do you expect an invasion to happen without a lot of destruction? Maybe
you should read this: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-
war-wi...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-with-
china/)

------
dontcarethrow2
From a simpletons perspective, I don't understand why we get to have a say of
how a country reclaims its former territory. Especially from Westerners(not
even land connected) who have no claim whatsoever. Why do we have a negative
outlook on our former empires colonizing the world while at the same time
doing everything possible to retain profits/power from these bad things we
shouldn't be doing? Very hypocritical to simpletons. Someone is shutting off
our outpost, ofcourse we won't let it go without kicking and screaming to get
everyones attention to what?

~~~
will4274
The universal declaration of human rights declares the right to self
determination. I don't think it's hypocritical for the United States to preach
principles of human rights.

~~~
akvadrako
The right of self determination is only theoretical because in law it's always
overridden by the right of territorial integrity.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_integrity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_integrity)

But just imagine how crazy it would be if every place could declare itself
independent. Would states count? What about cities?

~~~
pas
Why would it be crazy? Local autonomy is a very important concept. That's why
many regions want more of it. (Eg. Catalonia in Spain, Scotland in the UK, and
HK in China.)

There's also the tradition of cities being "free" as in they were not feudal
land.

Of course self-determination doesn't mean complete total independence.
Sometimes cities/regions/states lack the ability to control their currency
supply (see the problem with in the Eurozone due to the differing interests of
Germany and Greece), but inclusive institutions should maximize the ability of
the member to work within the institutional framework to have its problem
addressed. And that's why democracy is such an institution, and in theory
other institutions built on democracy have this ability too. Of course it
needs many things for it to work well. (For example empathy of the other
members.)

------
PopeDotNinja
Greg Egan wrote a novel called Quarantine (which I liked quite a bit) that
introduced New Hong Kong, a mega city built in Australia ahead of the British
return of Hong Kong.

~~~
kilroy123
Was the city called Sydney?

------
yodsanklai
Does anyone here have an informed opinion on what will happen to Taiwan?

~~~
PakG1
Did an MBA in Hong Kong, just finished earlier this year. A lot of my
classmates are mainland Chinese. Bunch of them would regularly talk with each
other and say that military action was the only way to resolve the situation,
China needs to send its military to Taiwan and overrun the Taiwanese defenses
quickly. Baffles my mind that they're so ready to default to war.

Some other mainland Chinese people are more nuanced in their thoughts. I have
no idea about population percentages for opinions. But this a world-class top
20 MBA school, and had one undergraduate student die while protesting (fell
off a building). Bunch of these classmates are educated with masters degrees
from American universities. If they default to war, I'm a bit concerned, I'd
expect them to see more nuance in the world. For them, it's not really war of
course, as Taiwan was always theirs in the first place in their eyes. Any
foreign interference in the matter is a slap in the face of Chinese
sovereignty, was the same for Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a difficult situation because the entire world agrees that Hong
Kong belongs to China. Taiwan is difficult in that most of the world has
agreed that Taiwan belongs to China, that is the crux of the One China policy
that China forces all countries to agree to if they want to have diplomatic
and trade relations with China. If you break with the One China policy, you
break diplomatic and trade relations with China. Don't see most countries
willing to take that step. Big game of chicken.

For what it's worth, the Chinese government's official stance is that military
action is a last resort option only if diplomatic negotiations fail.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Taiwan is in 'China' in the same way as both North Korea and South Korea are
in Korea.

The difference is that the People's Republic of China (what 'China' usually
refers to) has decided that the Republic of China has ceased to exist in 1949
(Taiwan is the last remaining territory controlled by the Republic of China)
and that they are strong enough to largely 'enforce' this policy on the world
stage.

So, of course for Chinese this is a domestic issue.

The West cares because the PRC is an adversary and Taiwan has a strategic
location on maritime routes to East Asia.

~~~
PakG1
Yes, but my point is that most of the world, including the US, has agreed to
acknowledge the One China policy as correct in order to access China on a
diplomatic and trade basis. Hence why it's not so easy to resolve.

~~~
mytailorisrich
The PRC controls 99% of China (that's about the ratio between the PRC and
Taiwan). There was not really a choice there.

As a European I don't really see what there is to resolve. I can just hope
that things stay peaceful.

~~~
srtjstjsj
The desired resolution is that China becomes a free country.

When the Nazis occupied France, the world didn't say "oh that's an internal
German domestic issue"

~~~
PakG1
The difference being that the world never agreed to the idea that France was a
part of Germany. The world has for the most part agreed that Taiwan is a part
of China. It is what it is. Whatever people's personal feelings might be, that
is what most of the world has agreed to at an international diplomatic level.
Only insignificant countries like Paraguay have decided to consider Taiwan an
independent nation state.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Taiwan is factually an independent state and in practice recognised as such by
everyone, including the PRC. "Nation state" has a different meaning and that's
not really the case for Taiwan.

There's a lot of propaganda like for HK, which is popular with the Western
public who is naive and not well informed (as all public)

~~~
PakG1
We can go back and forth about this, but political feelings aside, although
Taiwan acts like an independent state and has its own government, no important
independent state treats it like an independent state, including the US.
Donald Trump is the first president in four decades to even send a cabinet-
level official to Taiwan when Alex Azar went to visit last month. It is what
it is. Whether you like it or not, no important country has official
diplomatic relations with Taiwan because they've all agreed to the One China
policy. It is partially because of this One China policy that Taiwan's economy
has deteriorated so much, they are not on equal footing with other countries
in being able to develop trade agreements with other nations. China has them
boxed in.

~~~
fomine3
> no important independent state treats it like an independent state,

Yes and no. Few countries officially treat Taiwan as an independent state but
most country unofficially treat it.

------
rkagerer
[https://archive.is/Rsirg](https://archive.is/Rsirg)

------
esturk
I wonder how long before services like Facebook is banned in HK under the new
Security law. One interesting thing to see is whether Facebook would comply
with censorship requests to appease the PRC. If not, could this be the single
largest decline in users for Facebook?

------
pastaking
Truly sad. When HK was handed back to China in 1999, did we know this is
inevitable?

~~~
zdragnar
Considering China's relationship with Taiwan, I would say yes, we absolutely
knew that China would not allow a Chinese territory to be outside of thr CCP's
control indefinitely. If anything, I am surprised it took them this long to
decide the rest of the world would simply watch and do nothing of importance
about it.

~~~
dmurray
It's not about geopolitics, it's about economics.

China has been extremely pragmatic and results-oriented. When Hong Kong was
the most economically successful part of China, they were happy to leave it be
and learn some lessons from it. Now the rest of China has largely caught up
and it's time for them to make HK more like Shenzhen, rather than the other
way around.

~~~
spectramax
Giving that Shanghai stock market trades more than HK, that argument doesn't
hold up. China didn't need HK. They did not want a western-aligned population
of 7M people within 40km of its borders and instead decided to deal with them
with a heavy hand.

I think China played their hand too soon and the west is waking up to it.

~~~
dmurray
"Shanghai stock market trades more than HK" is a strange rebuttal to my
argument. You presumably mean that's true now, rather than 20 years ago when
China decided to go with "one country, two systems" \- which is exactly my
argument, that Hong Kong is no longer the needed as a moneymaker. Either way,
overall stock exchange volume is not a very standard measure of economic
activity - at the very least you'd want to weight it per capita.

Of course China is motivated to have Hong Kong aligned with it rather than
flirting with the West. Whether the West is "waking up to it" is not so clear
to me. The HK riots were a big deal in the Western media for a while but now
we've moved on.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
A lot of mainlanders still prefer to trade on the HK market because the inside
trader rules are much more strict and actually enforced (for now?). If you
trade on the Shanghai stock market, you need to learn how to follow in the
wakes of whales, it isn't for the feint of heart.

------
koonsolo
I think we all agree that none of us would want to live under CCP.

So the real question is what or who is going to stop them from expanding?
Asians have a higher IQ, they have the human numbers and natural resources.

The only thing I can imagine stopping them is that they will be composed of
too many regions that want to split. But as long as they can maintain a strong
grip, I don't think anything can split off.

There is no world power that can or wants to face them head on, and it will
only get worse when they grow bigger (which they will).

Maybe I'm pessimistic, or maybe just realistic?

------
adaisadais
I was taught to prepare for globalization in most of my business classes in
college. The world was now flat so you must prepare. We must be willing to
compete and allow free trade as the internet (specifically the www) has opened
the entire world up.

But what’s really happened is that the internet has given new powers to
governments to regulate and control the people. While I would love to talk
about how big and bad the CCP is (they are both of those adjectives and many
more) I would be in remiss if I didn’t look at my own country (US) and see
that we have been guilty of creating false narratives on free trade.

It’s sad to me that we lack Political leadership in our country. That’s one
thing that China does not lack. Both governments are propagated by lies. But
the difference is that the Chinese people have suffered greatly and now (on
average) are suffering less. So they may be willing (as a whole) to turn a
blind eye to situations like HK and what’s happening to the Uighur people.

~~~
hervature
> what’s happening to the Uighur people.

Let's call it what it is; genocide [1].

[1] - [https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-forced-
steri...](https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-forced-
sterilization-uighur-women-cultural-genocide)

------
sunstone
The problem for Xi with respect HK and Taiwan is that plenty of mainland
tourists will visit and learn from the locals how much they prefer democracy.
These values will then seep back into the mainland and the CCP wants to
maintain the fiction that democracy doesn't work for Chinese culture. Letting
HK continue on for 30 more years might become uncontrable in China.

~~~
coronasaurus
Doubtful. Most Chinese students who studied abroad only end up more
nationalistic. [https://supchina.com/2018/01/18/caught-in-a-crossfire-
chines...](https://supchina.com/2018/01/18/caught-in-a-crossfire-chinese-
students-abroad-and-the-battle-for-their-hearts/)

------
adultSwim
What would be wrong with One Country, One System?

------
rado
This "way of life" was unsustainable anyway, because of the property prices
and the de facto feudal system with the tycoons on top. You can rage at the
red flag all you want, but ideology has nothing to do with it. HK life was
almost unbearable before all this.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Is China any more sustainable?

~~~
rado
Yes, because e.g. it invests in infrastructure on an unprecedented scale.

------
ColanR
"Way of life"? Way to trivialize their loss of freedom and autonomy and
_habeas corpus_.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Have no idea why you think the phrase "way of life" trivializes their losses.
If anything I feel it emphasizes how these losses are not just some abstract
concept but will concretely affect the everyday lives of Hong Kong's citizens.

~~~
ColanR
Oppression is just as much a "way of life" as autonomy. Calling it that makes
them of equal value as ways to live.

~~~
hoytschermerhrn
Why are you being pedantic? What’s your end goal here?

------
lehi
The circumstances of Britain's original forced takeover and colonization of
Hong Kong in the Opium Wars are the greater evil to me. Righting that wrong
after so long was always going to be painful.

By analogy: a violent drug-dealer shoots you, robs you, and then kidnaps your
child at gunpoint. Years later, you manage to have the child returned, but in
the interim they have been taught by their captor to hate you and resist
rejoining their family. What do you do?

~~~
ogogmad
The people of Hong Kong aren't to blame for the original injustice, so why are
they the ones being victimised?

~~~
magicsmoke
That's true, the people of HK were raised to believe in British values on
conquered land then abandoned there when Britain couldn't hold it any longer.
Britain should have repatriated them all instead of putting them through this
mess. Even POWs are treated better than their home country denying any
involvement or responsibility when their overseas outpost gets captured.

------
supernova87a
I don't know about you, but I see echoes of the US view in Vietnam that we
were saving the country from some unspeakable evil that was expanding
dangerously year by year. When we were 8000 miles away, looking at things just
as symbols and not knowing whether that meant good or bad for the people
actually living it day to day.

That got us into some trouble, I seem to recall.

Is this not similar? I worry this has a certain path written on it, with our
good intentions paving the way.

~~~
kilroy123
I mean have you been to Hong Kong? Have you ever spoken to people there about
how they feel about mainland China? I heard a lot of not good things from the
people I spoke with there.

------
cblconfederate
Isn't that an uber-wealthy city with the biggest concentration of
billionaires? With so much wealth you 'd think they 'd have a say on what
china wants to do with them. But maybe they just go along?

~~~
ardy42
> Isn't that an uber-wealthy city with the biggest concentration of
> billionaires? With so much wealth you 'd think they 'd have a say on what
> china wants to do with them. But maybe they just go along?

Why would the CCP defer to the wealthy when they already have far more power
than they do?

------
sushshshsh
Love how when the same restrictions are imposed in the USA, everyone starts
talking about "doing the right thing"

~~~
ogogmad
Not everyone on HN is from the US, so I don't see how your point is relevant.

~~~
stann
As a counterpoint, I have never been made to realize the US origin of HN as in
recent times. The "hacker" in the name is gradually being swallowed by the
"news"-mainly US

