“It is telling that Beijing and Hong Kong are more afraid of their own people than Hong Kong’s British colonial government ever was.”
– Wall Street Journal, editorial comment. ($)
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Samizdata quote of the day – Hong Kong’s slide into darkness editionFebruary 29th, 2024 |
 15 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Hong Kong’s slide into darkness editionLeave a Reply |
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Those citizens of Hong Kong experiencing oppression or persecution by the Chinese or Hong Kong government(s), should be offered asylum. It would obviously bring great economic benefit to Israel to have such entrepreneurial, industrious workers.
Don’t forget, the addition of a large fraction of devout Buddhists, would bring much needed cultural diversity to such a ethnocentric mono-cultural society. Win win, for Israel.
I’ve only spent a couple of weeks in Hong Kong. One would not think that was enough to create an emotional connection with a place. So why am I filled with helpless rage when I think of what the Chinese Communists have done to Hong Kong in the last few years? I had no inkling of what was coming, though funnily enough one of my kids did. I thought that the ChiComs would have sense enough not to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Here’s an article from the Telegraph by Melissa Lawford that makes some of the same points less emotionally: “How Hong Kong turned its back on capitalism – and paid a terrible price”.
and
One thing I did not like about this otherwise excellent article was the references in the title and the article itself to Hong Kong having turned its back on capitalism, as if it did so by choice.
APL said:
Two objections to this: One, allowing an “escape valve” for CCP tyranny is only going to make them a lot more dangerous. My read on the 1848 unrest and the resultant flight of rational centrists Germans to other nations is what led directly to the radicalization of the German state, WWI and WWII. Absent the easy escape of that population, the German state would have been forced to accommodate them and their views, with the accompanying liberalization of said German state, likely reducing the militarization and imperial pretensions.
Or, not. Whatever would have occurred, it would have been different had those Germans stayed in Germany. Allowing their “escape” was a major change-agent that many don’t appreciate. Same with the migration of all the people out of the Third World into the Western democracies… It’s bad for those nations, but it’s far worse for the nations those people fled. The human capital in terms of lost educated people is immense, and it’s a massive misallocation of resources. Imagine the loss to some tropical nation whose doctors and nurses are fleeing to the US, only to find that the only work they can get in the health-care world is sweeping floors and changing bedpans in some nursing home…
The other point, about “Diversity”. I have yet to see that “Diversity” benefit anyone, any where. It’s a shibboleth of the Left, but… Prove to me that it does anything other than create violent dissension and hatred between ethnic groups. Do note the reason that Eastern Europe hasn’t seen the violence and idiocy since WWII that was formerly endemic… And, that the reason boils down to that terrible, terrible “ethnic cleansing” that took place at the end of the war, driving the ethnic Germans back into Germany. No Germans in Sudetenland? No problems…
That’s a lesson you ought to learn. “Diversity” ain’t no virtue. It’s a propaganda campaign point meant to weaken the nations and ethnicities it is directed against. There’s an interesting dichotomy when we regard movement of populations… If it’s a Western white man going to a tropical nation, that’s colonialization and a bad, bad thing. Even if that nation is a primitive hellhole with no real civilization to speak of… But, if a horde of third-world savages show up on the doorstep of a white nation in Europe or the Americas, force their way in, why… That’s just wunnerful, wunnerful “Diversity”, and to be praised to the skies.
All y’all are going to learn the benefits of ethnic cleansing in the next few generations, either as survivor or as victims in your own nations. See Malmo or what we now refer to as Londonistan…
“Diversity”, my ass. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Most people from HK (assuming they are BNO holders) have an almost automatic right to emigrate to the UK, and that’s where the majority are going. My wife (originally from HK) was musing just yesterday why America has made it practically impossible to legally emigrate from HK while making it equally easy to do so via the open border with Mexico. Answer: they wouldn’t vote the right way.
Re Israel and diversity, Israel is already 20% Muslim, with full participation of Muslims in every sector of society, including judges, doctors, military, etc. There is a Christian minority, many Jews are black Ethiopians, and so on. Some people have the idea that Israel isn’t diverse, but it’s very diverse. This is one example of how Israel’s image and the reality can be different, depending on where you get your information.
I continue to believe that the terrible tyranny that is the People’s Republic of China is (alas!) a lot stronger, and that the West is economically (and culturally) a lot weaker than the Wall Street Journal believes – if only they were correct, but I do not believe they are.
As for political prisoners. The Wall Street Journal tends to ignore the UNARMED January 6th protestors (who protested against the blatantly rigged 2020 Presidential election – the British government knows the American election was rigged, although it denies that it knows, which is why British law on elections had been toughened up – to prevent the same thing happening here) – some of these people are still in prison, being tortured and abused, right now.
Hundreds of thousands of people turned up in Washington on January 6th – but of these less than 1% (egged on by agitators working for the FBI – such as Mr Ray Epps) went on to the Capital building (more than 99% did not) – perhaps (perhaps) had those hundreds of thousands people turned up armed, rather than unarmed, this whole corrupt Corporate State might have been removed from the face of the Earth – but that was NOT the road they choose. Perhaps as they are tortured and abused in prison they regret their choice to be unarmed – I do not know.
Meanwhile the Marxist BLM forces, who looted and burned areas of American cities, for month after month in 2020, and killed many people – remain free.
I repeat – the BLM Marxist forces, supported by Mr Joseph Biden and K. Harris (K. Harris organised the bailing out of the few BLM Marxists who were arrested), killed many people – and they were not punished, indeed they were rewarded.
As for the People’s Republic of China tyranny (which has long PAID the people now in power in the United States) good people tell me that this year “The Year of the Dragon” will be the year it finally falls.
I wish I believed that – but sadly I do not. I hope I am mistaken.
Some high officials do not even need to be paid.
For example, John Brennan, Director of the CIA under Barack Obama, was an “ex” supporter of the Communist Party (I know what a person who has really turned against Marxism is like, I have known people who have sincerely changed, and Mr Brennan is not an “ex” Marxist). For him working against “Trump” would be a Progressive duty, he did not need to be paid to do it – although he paid others (with American taxpayer money).
How did we come to this? How did we come to a point when the Federal Government of the United States, the keystone of the Western world, is a mixture of corrupt scum (such as Mr Biden) and Marxist traitors.
When Hong Kong was handed over to China they had a HK$15bn budget surplus, you had to be on HK£1m to be taxed at 15%, the starting thresholds had been increased faster than inflation for several years, property taxes had been reduced for several years, excise duty down, vehicle duty down, alcohol duty down. Place was thriving.
JGH:
Xi is a communist. If communists have to choose between prosperity and control, they always choose control. For them, prosperity is a detail, control is everything.
When Hong Kong was handed back, the CCP government agreed that the island, and Kowloon, would be a Special Administrative Area for 50 years. How long did that actually last? One thing the world has realised is that the Chinese government can not be trusted to keep their word.
Natalie Solent, you express my views on this perfectly. It is the ugly, almost nihilistic wrecking of a strong jurisdiction, and the drive comes from revenge at things that were done, or allegedly done, to China by the British in the opium wars of the 1840s.
Bitterness and revenge are terrible things in certain ways. Arguably, much contemporary “decolonisation” stuff we see in our culture is nothing more than a sort of mad score-settling (although those pushing it aren’t at all related to the victims of whatever bad thing is said to have taken place). We see it in the mockery of traditional masculinity, as if feminism is about supremacy and belittling men, not equality. We can arguably observe this also with how Putin sees the decline of the Soviet Union as something not to be celebrated, but avenged. And on and on.
Hong Kong is a few million people – the PRC tyranny controls about 1.4 Billion People.
The industrial production of the PRC is twice that of the United States.
“Paul – PRC economic figures are fake” – so are United States economic statistics (almost all stats that come out of Washington and New York are distortions or downright lies – Americans know they are getting poorer and poorer – whilst the Corporate media and government liars tell them “the economy is doing well”), so it cancels out.
Bottom line – Chinese industry is much larger than American industry, and only a little of that industry is in Hong Kong. The PRC Communist Party tyranny would not really care if everyone in Hong Kong dropped dead.
“The economy is doing well!” – “Do not be upset if you can not afford the sort of dinner your family is used to – remember breakfast cereal is still, basically, affordable – and you can have that for dinner”.
Not Chinese words – American (elite) words.
It’s been obvious since about 2000 that Beijing wants Hong Kong to be Just Another chinese city. If that means destroying everything about it that makes it what it is, then so be it.
It was obvious even at the time that they would not. Britain returned Hong Kong and Kowloon because we had to, and would be seen as a pariah if we’d tried to hold on to it. The point being that Britain of 1997 was no longer capable of holding the place against China, or at least not without immense support from other countries to do so. The Chinese correctly interpreted this as Britain becoming feeble, as such any agreement was worth the paper it was written on. We can all pretend that international agreements have real force, but in fact it is and always will be the case that real power and the will to use it is the only thing that will hold diplomatic solutions in place.