
As Protesters Fill Hong Kong’s Streets, Businesses Are Alarmed, Too - ishikawa
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/business/hong-kong-china-protests-business.html
======
kenneth
I'm in Hong Kong and went to the protests today. This feels like a
continuation of the '14 umbrella movement, which was ended by police force,
and which left up pent-up anger in the whole population. It's the biggest
protest since the march in '97 when HK was handed over to China from British
rule.

When I was there, the protests were peaceful, but you could certainly feel a
tension building up, with the crowds gathering metal poles and bricks. I spoke
to the police a few times and they were nice and friendly, but were doing
their job. There is absolutely zero question that almost the entire HK
population opposes the extradition bill which sparked this whole mess.
Unfortunately, there's little that can be done… "one country two system"
hasn't been abided to by China for a long time, and there's nothing the
population or the Brits can do about it.

(My perspective is that of a foreigner who recently moved here, not a life-
long hongkonger. Feel free to ask me anything.)

~~~
theslurmmustflo
Is there police from mainland China or are they local to HK? Would they always
side with mainland interests?

~~~
em500
Police from HK, military forces from China (though they're not involved in
these matters). But like in most civilized countries, the police is there to
uphold current law and order, not to side with some national or political
interest.

~~~
Joakal
China Tiananmen square incident, the local military wouldn't get rid of
protestors. The government had to get military further away to do it.

With Hong Kong, the government can't do it as the country is too small. The
only option is Chinese military. If you say the Chinese military is there,
then a massacre is inevitable.

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taiwanboy
I think if you are a businessman/woman that have significant assets in China,
you must be aware that the current Chinese government is fighting 4 wars right
now:

1.) political conflict between xi jing Ping the new guards, and the old guards
that control the state owned firms

2.) internal conflicts in xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong

3.) near neighbor conflicts with Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and
Australia

4.) trade war with US and its allies (Japan, EU, Canada, Mexico, etc)

And the Chinese government doesn’t have the financial or the political assets
to fight any of these wars, let alone all 4 at once. IMO it is losing all of
them right now.

So if you were a businessman, it is probably safe to move out of such a risky
place for your assets

~~~
rrggrr
5.) Currency war featuring declining FX reserves and RMB devaluation.

6.) Economic war evidenced by domestic economic slowdown across most sectors,
most recently autos.

7.) Influence war whereby increasing numbers of Asian and African countries
are questioning China investment and loan agreements.

That said, displacing China's preeminent role as the world's manufacturer and
low cost supplier (still) for many products doesn't disappear overnight. They
have plenty of standing and resources to wait out the remainder of Trump's
administration and - they hope - to encounter China friendly leadership post-
Trump.

~~~
taiwanboy
Good pickups on the other wars. I would actually say China is the midst of its
own Great Depression right now.

I think their strategies to wait out trump is misguided. By the time he leaves
office, most of the manufacturing will have already moved out. For example, a
recent poll for Japanese business have said 60% of them have already left or
are leaving within the year.

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msvan
Ultimately, China owns Hong Kong and will subsume Hong Kong sooner or later.
What leverage does HK have besides taking to the streets every few years?
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests))

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What leverage does HK have besides taking to the streets every few years?_

Beijing is violating an agreement lodged with the UN.

The protesters just need to get the population in a G7 country pissed off
enough to turn this bill into an international issue, thereby increasing the
cost of its introduction to Beijing.

~~~
dmitrygr
> Beijing is violating an agreement lodged with the UN.

Oh how I wish this mattered, but the UN has time and time again proven itself
to be the world's most expensive essay-writing club and little more. What
exactly are they going to do?

~~~
kazen44
People seem to mistake the UN for what is truely meant to be. The UN is not
some government which can enforce agreements. Its mainly a "meeting room" for
global and local powers to resolve conflict if they wish.

At the end of the day, this is still hugely important to prevent unnecessary
war or conflict, but the UN is still bound by the actual realities on the
ground, not the legal framework that sits above the reality.

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diveanon
Without smart phones and social media this could easily be 1989 all over
again.

I'm not a huge fan of social media, but its ability to hold governments
accountable is one of the truly transformative aspects of it.

I wish we could distill that aspect off it and discard the rest.

~~~
dmitrygr
Accountable? What has this done to the Chinese government? They do not give
half a fuck most likely. They've crushed bigger revolts, with more of the
world's eyeballs watching. Social media just makes it easier to build this
crowd. Sadly, that just provides a bigger crowd to crush.

~~~
diveanon
Have they started crushing anyone with tanks yet?

I think you are being hyperbolic and ignoring the impact of the entire world
watching these protests in real time vs a couple of journalists taking candid
photos from hotel rooms and calling in to their home offices.

~~~
dmitrygr
The world watched ukraine be split in half. The world IS watching the uyghur
population in china being enslaved. The world's been doing an awful lot of
watching lately...not much acting.

What can the world do? Military action against china? Insane. More trade
sanctions? what what will we wear and where will we get batteries and
plastics?

~~~
diveanon
You are comparing direct military action to civilian protests.

I don't like what happened in Ukraine, but there is no realistic resolution to
that problem without starting a world war. I don't like it but that's how it
is.

The Uyghur's are another issue, and I feel like it supports my position more
than yours. We wouldn't even know about what is happening to them without
social media. The world is watching now.

Same could be said for the Rohinga.

The world sucks, and governments do evil shit all the time. The difference now
is that they can't hide behind their lies.

~~~
baybal2
> without starting a world war.

Without starting a flame war, lets check thoroughly if it is actually the
case.

1\. Who are Russian allies? How many of them? How much will their military
capability contribute to fighting force? Answer: 0

2\. Can enough Nato forces be deployed to decisively push the front? Yes

3\. Can casualty ratio be sustained? Yes

4\. Can subsequent enemy counterattack be made wasteful? Can your logistics
train support prolonged defense? Yes, Nato militaries' trademark is tenths of
kilometres long area denial killzones, enough to outrange even TBMs and
nuclear artillery. American military logistics is second to none.

5\. Can your gains be secured without you having to push further into enemy
territory? Yes, to begin with, it was Russia here that had to operate across
natural barriers, and frontline bottlenecks.

6\. All of above boils down to conventional positional warfare.

Nato countries had all tools they need to enforce global order all these
years, but they didn't because of their weak will.

When the Union collapsed, you saw a wave of all kinds of dictatorships and
satrapies falling down or softening up, all because they knew that there is no
longer a big guy behind their backs now, and that Nato can to "desert storm"
any of them 10 times over.

All and everything was setup for the West to police the world for 3 decades,
and use that time to clean the world from rouge states, but no, _the West
choose to simply walk away from that opportunity._

~~~
noir_lord
I think in a conventional war then yeah NATO clearly has the upper hand
_except_ that niggling doubt of "Do we really want to kill tens of thousands
of soldiers belonging to a country with enough ICBM's to end global
civilization".

The risk/reward is out of whack, the US and it's allies aren't going to risk
it for a non-NATO allied country (even if we _promised_ that we would after
the cold war) because of that.

Since WWII the US and Soviets (then Russia) have never thought even a limited
conventional war, it's always been by proxy or the odd pilot never people is
US army uniforms shooting at people in Russian uniforms (or vice versa).

It has the capacity to go so very very wrong.

~~~
baybal2
> enough ICBM's to end global civilization

There are enough conventional munitions stockpiled by major power to do this
10 times more than with ICBMs alone. A nuclear confrontation will not be the
end of any global scale conflict today.

~~~
noir_lord
You think the major powers have the equivalant of 8 billion tonnes of TNT in
conventional munitions?

Because I don't.

[http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nwhmt.html](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nwhmt.html)

~~~
baybal2
You don't need to completely vaporise a city to effectively "end the
civilisation" within it.

~~~
noir_lord
Except you said.

> There are enough conventional munitions stockpiled by major power to do this
> 10 times more than with ICBMs alone

Now you are saying that you don't have to vapourise a city.

Except there are enough nukes to obliterate every major city on the planet
with the side effects killing the rest.

------
mLuby
Question: why is Taiwan okay with being involved in this bill? It seems
strange since this bill is so much _more_ beneficial to China than to Taiwan,
and since if/when Taiwan returns to the fold it will likely be subjected to
these same tactics. From the BBC:

>The [bill] came after a 19-year-old Hong Kong man allegedly murdered his
20-year-old pregnant girlfriend while they were holidaying in Taiwan together
in February last year. The man fled to Hong Kong and could not be extradited
to Taiwan because the two do not have an extradition treaty.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
china-48615161](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48615161)

~~~
jubwub
Nice trolling. I see the pro prc upvoters have kept you upvoted while he
downvoted the other dude with the legit answer

~~~
dang
Actually I only just looked in on this thread. Whatever you saw was users, not
mods.

Pro-PRC? Have a look at the hostile media effect:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22).

Also
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hong%20kong%22%20points%3E3...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hong%20kong%22%20points%3E30&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
jubwub
Links are legit. Updated. Didn’t mean to be rude

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olliej
Businesses that were still acting like HK was not destined to become
indistinguishable from China have only themselves to blame - especially since
China stated that it no longer considered a treaty it signed with the British
to be relevant (the irony of the non-british party reneging on a treaty signed
with the British is not lost on me).

Mostly I feel sorry for the actual citizens of HK :-(

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neonate
[http://archive.is/0lnMW](http://archive.is/0lnMW)

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b_tterc_p
Does Hong Kong enable foreign companies to do business with a China in a way
that is not replaceable?

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squarefoot
Might this be an indirect hit against Trump' tariffs by the Chinese Govt?

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e2le
The UK should have given the people of Hong Kong full citizenship before
handing control back to China. It's a disgrace that we allow China to mistreat
the people of a former British territory.

~~~
oarabbus_
> It's a disgrace that we allow China to mistreat the people of a former
> British territory.

Do you know how many people of former British (and French, and Dutch, and
German) territories are mistreated? Why the faux outrage here?

~~~
e2le
I'm not familiar with the case surrounding other British territories however
this is one case that is still within recent living memory and not something
that happened 80/100/200 years ago. Many of those within Hong Kong who were
given BNO passports are still quite alive and wont be going anywhere for a
long time. I also consider the people of Hong Kong to be more British than
French/Dutch/German.

~~~
oarabbus_
>I also consider the people of Hong Kong to be more British than
French/Dutch/German.

It's a bit... gross that you only seem to care for people who are "more
British"

~~~
e2le
Who said I only care for people who are more British? You seem to be reaching.
You could apply the same logic to those who care more for their family than a
stranger and justify calling them gross/selfish. It's quite silly.

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jackfoxy
Paywall, as happens more and more frequently.

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download13
Good

