Thats an incredibly simplified take on it. HK might not represent a large part of the chinese economy but it still facilitates a large part of foreign investment into chinese companies.
In CN there are largely three types of listings A shares, B shares and H shares. A & B are listed on SZ and SH exchange and are not freely traded like you know it from the west. H shares are listed on HK exchange and are freely traded using the Hong Kong Dollar.
This is why companies like Tencent are dual listed on Shanghai and Hong Kong exchange, to facilitate foreign investment that wouldnt be possible in the same way if Tencent was only listed as B class on Shanghai exchange.
If it were true, China would not have delayed its Anti-Sanctions Law in Hong Kong [1]. Hong Kong is huge in supporting the Finance of China.
> But the Hong Kong government can only welcome the stock listing opportunity to reinforce Hong Kong as the world’s premier IPO destination, especially at a time when the introduction of the national security law
has raised concerns about maintaining the city as a global financial hub.
But that is a myopic comparison. The strategic value of Hong Kong’s (semi)-open capital markets is that they act as a conduit between a totalitarian isolationist state and the rest of the world.
The US’s capital markets support international trade in a somewhat similar way, and are thus innately valuable even without accounting for the productivity of American workers.
Capital inflows to China are done through Hong Kong. HK is just a financial center for China. As far as the population goes, China could care less as long as they two the communist line.
It isn't exactly easy to leave your country, family, friends, and entire life behind. The UK did make it easier for HKers to get visas and relocation, but I think efforts like this only go so far in practice. Not enough people want to leave until it is too late. Because, and it is hard to blame them, they hope that their home will end up being saved by the many people fighting to preserve it. Leaving, in a way, is giving up.
We should also note that with the growth of Shenzhen and other mega cities, HK isn't that important to China anymore. That's part of why they've become more aggressive in the situation.
It's an interesting idea, but it would amount to calling China's bluff. China has stated that they would definitely commit to a ground invasion of Taiwan if the US recognized it. The question is -- how serious are they about that?
Personally, I think they'd go for it. They've been itching to take over Taiwan by force anyway.
You can’t compare Afghanistan and Taiwan. The US never really cared about Afghanistan once they got rid of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. They only stayed as long they did because the optics of leaving were always going to be bad.
The US does care about Taiwan, because of real economic interests.
Absolutely not. US troops in Taiwan create a long term issue. It's objectively better for China to strike Taiwan before there are sizeable troops there than wait for those trooos to accumulate forever.
China would strike as soon as US troops officially settle in China in a military and not police/security/training/sales capacity.
I bet loads of people said the same thing when Britain and France gave the Sudetenland to Germany. That didn't work out very well for them, and it was only because Germany and Russia fell out and fought each other that Britain won that war; if not for that it's entirely possible that democracy would not have survived at the world would be a very different place today.
That's really easy to say when it's not you or your kids on the front line.
Beyond just Taiwan, the last cold war kept the third world in a constant state of proxy war between the major powers, costing millions of lives in the short-term and delaying development in the long term.
Worth considering if you're in favor of more of that in the name of human rights.
> ...the last cold war kept the third world in a constant state of proxy war between the major powers, costing millions of lives in the short-term and delaying development in the long term.
And the alternative might have been "let the Soviets win." That choice would have definitely been a way to avoid war and achieve a kind of "peace."
What happened when we finally left Vietnam? Absolutely nothing, that's what. Lot fewer people dying from napalm.
We had to support one-way helicopter rides under Pinochet and contras gunning down nuns? Or else the soviets win?
If it's about national pride and staying on top, fine, but don't tell me it's human rights with that record. The Chinese haven't acted with force outside of what they consider their soil/sea in like 40 years. Xi is pretty worrying but until he starts doing that, let's not agitate for killing a bunch of people just in case.
The world is a messy place and at many times it may be impossible to pursue that goal in an entirely consistent manner.
There's also the other factor of self-preservation. It's not a good strategy to cede advantages to your opponent and hope a deus ex machina saves you in the end.
> The Chinese haven't acted with force outside of what they consider their soil/sea in like 40 years. Xi is pretty worrying but until he starts doing that, let's not agitate for killing a bunch of people just in case.
Who's advocating for a bunch of killing? I think the main (perhaps only) thing I'm seeing advocated for here is diplomatic recognition.
As of right now, there's no battlefield. China's official doctrine has been non-interference in other nations since Mao and they've mostly stuck to it with a few aberrations like a 30 day war in Vietnam.
Xi has been pushing the limits internally and maybe one day that turns external but people here are talking about pre-emptive cold war.
EDIT: diplomatic recognition is a purely symbolic move, and in this case the symbol is a middle finger to China. I'd argue the upsides are limited, but I was more objecting to the general theme of china hawkishness that points towards a new cold war.
That's true, but if it ends there, then it's not a vital matter of self-defense for us. Honestly, not even that important in terms of balance of power provided we get that TSMC plant up in Arizona first.
What it IS, is a grievous insult to our insistence on being the last word in international affairs.
> That's true, but if it ends there, then it's not a vital matter of self-defense for us. Honestly, not even that important in terms of balance of power provided we get that TSMC plant up in Arizona first.
That's not a great look, and will probably eventually end with our allies either defeated or heading for the exits.
Being a reliable ally seems like it'd be pretty important to self-defense. China has a pretty big population, it's unified, and may have the patience to chip away at things and outlast us.
> What it IS, is a grievous insult to our insistence on being the last word in international affairs.
I suppose it's always an option to withdraw and leave our allies become tributaries of the new empire. Maybe we can eventually become one ourselves and our grandkids can gave peace under the emperor.
This would absolutely never happen, but if we were serious about completely removing the possibility of a Chinese mainland invasion of Taiwan, we could just publicly give Taiwan some nukes.
It would be a global political shitstorm, but even mainland China would not be stupid enough to invade after that.
Nuclear proliferation may be bad for all sorts of reasons, but MAD really does appear to work.
Also Taiwan already has nuclear power plants, so it's not that crazy. They are capable of developing nuclear weapons on their own if they really wanted to.
US would never do that, it would violate Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Some non-nuclear NATO countries do host US nuclear weapons, but they are legally and physically under US control. In an actual nuclear war, the US would release these nuclear weapons to their allies – at which point the US would have indeed violated the treaty, but in a nuclear war who cares?
So in principle the US could station US-controlled nuclear weapons in Taiwan, and publicly announce they have done so. But it would be an extremely risky move – basically the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again, but this time with the US playing the role of the Soviet Union.
Given the extreme risk of such a move, I doubt the US is going to make it.
> The US unlikely to be enormously bothered about violating treaties if it finds doing so in its interest.
The US cares greatly about the NPT because it wants a world in which only a small number of countries have nuclear weapons, not a world in which dozens of them do.
NPT limits nuclear weapons to 5 countries only - China, France, Russia, UK, US. Four nuclear states refuse to give up their weapons as the treaty demands (and hence refuse to join it) - India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan. But a world with 9 nuclear weapons states is preferable to one with 90
> What exactly is China going to do?
Attack Taiwan? China would likely try to call the US nuclear bluff with a massive conventional attack. The ensuing loss of human life and economic damage would be enormous.
> The US cares greatly about the NPT because it wants a world in which only a small number of countries have nuclear weapons, not a world in which dozens of them do.
The treaty doesn't ensure that in any way. It's an empty letter.
> NPT limits nuclear weapons to 5 countries only - China, France, Russia, UK, US. Four nuclear states refuse to give up their weapons as the treaty demands (and hence refuse to join it) - India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan.
Exactly. The NPT does fuck-all against this, and it's going to be of equally fuck-all use against the next bunch of countries that really want to get nukes. (Also, BTW, fuck knows if your four shouldn't be a five: how certain are you, really, that South Africa doesn't have them?)
> But a world with 9 nuclear weapons states is preferable to one with 90
Maybe. (Yeah: I'm not even all that sure about that, any more.) But that has fuck-all to do with the NPT, since that is of absolutely no use in ensuring the former in stead of the latter.
> ...but if we were serious about completely removing the possibility of a Chinese mainland invasion of Taiwan, we could just publicly give Taiwan some nukes.
IIRC, that's one of the PRC's red lines to trigger an invasion.
Also, I'm not sure if Taiwan could get to the point of having a survivable nuclear arsenal that's large enough to guarantee MAD.
China doesn't want war, it wants status. They see the last 200 years as a reversal of the natural order of things, and want China to be top dog again. They literally see themselves as the center of the world: Zhongguo means "central country".
On 1, let's not pretend that short term destruction necessarily leads to long term prosperity. We've "won" most of our recent wars, long term prosperity was not the result.
On 2, there is no conventional war with a nuclear power.
