China's middle class is exploding and ours is shrinking by the day (the next recession will make it even worse). That's where we're losing the battle.
What are you talking about? Every country has some sort of control over immigrants. No country in the world would want to receive 150 poor, unskilled immigrants every single day. But in Hong Kong's case, HK govt doesn't have any say over who to come over. There's no background check on the arrivals. There's no rating system. The decision is completely up to the Chinese Central Government. Feel free to call me whatever you want to call me. I stand firm on my position. Hong Kong needs some sort of control over immigrants especially given Hong Kong's geographical size limitation. It needs to cap the number of immigrants. I guess if we have a properly elected parliament and leader then we won't have to resort to violent protest. Yes, attacking Mainland shoppers is ugly, I admit. But you don't live in Hong Kong. You don't understand what our lives are like. There was a town bordering Mainland China where all those mainland students who don't even live in Hong Kong took away the majority of the school places there to a point that the local HK students there have no school to attend. Is it fair? Can you imagine living in a place where there's a severe shortage of daily necessities? The residents there have protested against the policy for years and the government keeps ignoring until the protest got ugly and start putting a cap on the number of visitors. THEY WERE DESPERATE. Democracy and freedom won't solve all the problems we have here, I agree. But there's one thing I am certain: THIS CURRENT SYSTEM DOESN'T ****ING WORK. THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS WHY WE FIND OURSELVES IN SUCH CHAOS. Democracy can't be worse than this.
as a colony, HKers never had the freedom to vote, no? The HK Governor was hand-picked by the Brits except for that, HK was the the last bastion of capitalism, as per Miilton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics. case in point, Chinese billionaires like Jack Ma, founder of China's internet behemoth, Alibaba
Just because we never had democracy during colonial era so we shouldn't have it forever? Great logic. Btw it was the Chinese government who throttled Governor Mark Young and Governor Patten's democratic reforms by threatening to invade. Otherwise Hong Kong would have been democratic long time ago.
by the same token, you can't claim that HK used to be the freest place in the world, when its citizens never had the freedom to vote. my position has also been, China has been screwing out BIG TIME in HKSAR, HKSAR's constitution, The Baisc Law, was written by the PRC, who needs to uphold it.
I didn't say it was the freest place in the world. I said it was the freest place in Asia and it truly was back when Taiwan and Korea still weren't democratic.
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1477433-20190829.htm?spTabChangeable=0 At least 50 PLA tanks were seen crossing the border into Hong Kong today, Xinhua said it was just regular troop rotation.
It must be all the left-wing people you mentioned that are supposedly supporting China against the protestors but nobody other than you has seen.
I haven’t checked this thread but it looks like it took off. I’ll try to respond in detail when I get the chance. Just skimming though through this thread shows how again how complicated the situation in Hong Kong is. I will repeat again it is a mistake to look at Hong Kong through US partisan lens and it outsiders try to make Hong Kong a battlefield in a global ideological war that is one of the surest routes to making it a bloodbath. The best thing for the people of Hong Kong is to keep it about the people of HK and to present it as their right to self determination. The propaganda of the PRC is that this is foreign driven and the more that other countries get involve the more likely the PRC will crackdown. As I’ve said before there is a treaty and basic law if the PRC honors it in full a lot of this would be solved. It will even benefit the PRC as HK will continue to be a place where both foreign companies and Chinese companies can be based with the understanding that HK will have little interference from the CCP. Besides that if the PRC ever wants Taiwan to rejoin they should honor the letter and spirit of the one country two systems. Taiwan will never rejoin the mainland as long as they see the PRC interfering in HK affairs. Finally we need to remember that there are actual people in HK for many of you who look through it in ideological lenses HK is the bastion of the west standing up to the evil commies. Or for those of you who look at HK as the imperialist wedge trying to divide China remember there are real costs here and many of us actually have skin and blood in this situation.
China views the people and country as one. Love the people, love the country. USA views the people and country as 2 different animals. Freedom of the people, who can choose how they treat their country. This is the basic premise of the countries. If you understood China view, you would see how religion (who some believe is meant to brainwash the weak) and who's view do not align with the Country views. Every single action done by China follows this view. The firewall is designed to prevent the citizens from learning "Don't love your country, but seek out personal wealth". It is a form of control but is this any different than Move theaters not selling tickets to R-Rated moves to kids? There are plenty of ways around the firewall, using VPN, when i am there, i can 100% get to all my information if i pay $9 a month for VPN.. any Chinese Citizen can do that if they choose to do it but many don't do it because they don't see their government as a Dictatorship. All governments have problems, there are definitely internal Chinese people who do not like their own governments. But is this any different than people in the USA who can't stand our current president. I encourage people to Visit the local people, you will notice in general many are happy, don't really care about the trade war, don't understand why Hong Kong doesn't embrace their love of their Chinese history. Many Chinese think it's funny how the Hong Kong people want to be "Dogs to UK again". Because they are taught early to love their country. Loving your country isn't a crime, it's not like North Korea, where the leader is god. Everyone knows XI can be replaced, but almost everyone loves XI because XI is making the Chinese strong. Also Chinese don't want to overtake anyone through War, look at their history. Little aggression, most of it has been defensive by nature. However what drives China is the mentality of it's history. Small country like Japan, managed to conquer China UK conquering China south coast with a few ships and taking Hong Kong Their military mentality is protect the nation, secure the borders to prevent another foreign country to overtake China with aggression. This is what drives them to build army and adopt a "Don't shoot nuke first policy'. and When they say they don't want western influence, they mean "We don't want to learn the bad values that come from western influence, but they are more than happy to learn the good parts of western influence". There are western influences everywhere in China (clothing, eating, entertainment). Anyway I try my best to explain their views in a non-bias way. Not defending them. But i appreciate every cultures views. USA is still the best, however it is slowly losing it's place. A lot of in-fighting, groups are divided, if your a Muslim you have a bomb, if your Chinese you steal and spit, if your Black you must be poor, If your Mexican you must be poor or selling drugs. So many views in America, very little focus on fixing things for the "American people"
Imagine if USA has 1.6 billion people and using Democracy. After traveling so much and talking to so many people. I will 100% agree, China cannot run it's country if it adopted Democracy like USA. It would look like India (who is trying to adopt Democracy but they still have a caste system).......
I don't care about what people in the mainland think. But the people of Hong Kong have made their voice clear. We want democracy and it was what the PRC promised us before the handover.
I understand China fully and the difference. I also find your posts a bit ignorant and condescending. You act as though you know why the fire wall exists. To protect them right? Freedom is dangerous under this thesis. You are giving them a free pass with this thinking. And then you say religion is brain washing, but you ignore the firewall and the brain washing of the communist state. Communism and its philosophies are for the weak and foolish, and it seeks to be the core ideology. There is no room for religion or competing philosophies like valuing the individual and its freedoms. So it squashes it. You would do well to check yourself on how friendly and open you are to something as totalitarian as China and its communist government.
