In retrospect, it was pretty naive to think China would allow Hong Kong's autonomous status to persist. If nothing else it would give people in other areas of China the possible hope that they could attain a similar status. It's also a clear message to the Taiwanese what will happen if the PRC gets control of their island.
The agreement with China was signed by Thatcher. That's long ago, mid-1980s. At the time, they were naively certain that increased economic liberalization and increased market economic activity in China would lead to political freedom as well. (Same about 1990s Russia: the west hoped a new economic system would lead to political freedom. Wishful thinking?)
> they were naively certain that increased economic liberalization and increased market economic activity in China would lead to political freedom as well.
Thatcher was a lot of things but naive certainly wasn't one of them. The Western powers simply wanted to become closer to China for economic and geopolitical reasons, but need an excuse to back away from the Red Scare. "Bringing Democracy" is the oldest page of the manufacturing consent playbook. It's honestly embarrassing of how well it works (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya).
I think the real story was that China would take Hong Kong by force if there was no agreement, and by agreeing to a peaceful transfer Thatcher could make the transition more civilized.
Looking back, I think it worked quite well for as long as it did.
Deng Xiaoping famously told Thatcher that China could take Hong Kong in a day when Thatcher tried to work out how the UK can hang onto HK island (HK island was signed over to the UK in perpetuity while other parts of HK was a 99 years lease, IIRC). I think Thatcher did make the most of a weak hand. HK is definitely better off in a peaceful hand over than China taking it by force. I think a lot of us former Hong Kongers wished the autonomy had endured at least for the 50 years that was promised but we also knew there was no force behind that promise.
I also don't fault the British too much for a lack of true democracy after I read the unclassified diplomatic cables re: what Zhou Enlai said about taking 'positive action' (ie: invasion) if HK ever got self-rule, at least we got 1-man-1-vote. It sucks, but the British couldn't even defend Singapore from the Japanese.
I'd be curious to know what the Americans thought about all this. In a parallel universe it's part of the American sphere of influence, like Taiwan. A better universe.
I seem to remember some musings in 80s about a "Greater China" that unified Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore into confederation. Probably a pipe dream but interesting idea.
Including Singapore in that list is unusual. Singapore is not culturally East Asian, despite having a majority Chinese population. Unlike Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, it also has no history as a Chinese territory.
Also not known to most is that Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the US all have larger Chinese populations than Singapore.
(though this seems a little focused on export controls)
but I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in whatever meetings American diplomats had with one another and with the various other parties (Hong Kong, China, and Britain).
It sounds like the US was pretty hands-off at the time, though. Maybe that's just the official position, but it's surprising. I suppose 90s optimism could have caused this behavior...
Now I imagine what would have happened instead, say, under an Eisenhower administration, with John Foster Dulles as secretary of state.... It's hard to say: They were much more aggressive (e.g. Iran, Korea, ...), but they were also trying to get the British out of places (the Suez Crisis, the subtext of The Quiet American, ...). At this point it all just becomes alternate history though...
Practically, Britain should just offer citizenship to Hong Kongers...
I wish there were freedom of movement within AUKUS + ASEAN (+ OAS?), as a block, like there is within the EU... Instead it's almost like the neo-empire has hukous. Which sucks. Just come out as an empire and let subjects get some benefits, like the freedom to live anywhere... Or, I don't know, maybe that would just result in Americanization of the world, which would be kind of tragic... Hmm... Well anyway, at least invite Hong Kongers in; it's the least you can do...
Hm, actually CUKCs used to be a thing (unfortunate acronym now in 2022):
(Sounds like the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 should be repealed.)
Maybe this can all just be done in a bilateral way instead... Problem is, western countries have no incentive to bargain for looser visa regulations that let their people leave...
Still, it's nice to imagine a world where a person from Hong Kong or London or New York could freely move to any of the other cities...
Hm, maybe the collapse of national legitimacy and the rise of sanctuary cities (somewhat overhyped) paired with something more prosaic like sister cities could do this... Why can't a mayor have a foreign policy? Eric Adams or Sadiq Khan: "Hong Kongers are welcome here!" Hm...
How would such a league of city-states defend itself though? I mean, this is the problem in Hong Kong to begin with...
Hm...
Maybe we just need Mr. Lee's franchises... Make it real, people... If Mark Zuckerberg can get 15,000 engineers to try to build the Metaverse, surely we can raise an army to construct good things from cyberpunk...
> Practically, Britain should just offer citizenship to Hong Kongers...
Well, if the UK wanted to, they would have done it before 1997 but they chose to give the majority a chance to apply for a BNO passport which was literally a slap in the face. No right to live and work in the UK when you are a 'British National Overseas'.
Even when they let BNO passport holders apply for the right to live and work in the UK recently, they could pick and choose who they wanted to let in.
Not only that but the UK in the 80’s had no choice. There was no way the UK could project power to actually keep HK or force China to follow the agreement.
I would regard it more as a “pull out” than anything. Set up HK the best you can than wash your hands of it.
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it also worked in several cases! South Korea was a high-profile success of this strategy, for instance, with a successful transition to democracy in the 90s.
This is kind of memory-holed, possibly because South Korea was a US ally long before it was a democracy, and "west aligned" tended to trump "democratic" a lot.
West-aligned still trumps democratic. The West generally doesn't have a problem with authoritarianism but rather with competition or obstruction of their economic goals. When the opposite is true they will gladly turn a blind eye to any number of atrocities.
See here: Saudi-Arabia, Oman, UAE, Philippines, Egypt (military junta), Turkey, etc.
If being friendly with an authoritarian state yields economic or military geographical advantage then that overrides any ideological hang-ups involved.
Brought about by a very bloody decade-long struggle for democracy led by student activists. That transition to democracy in Korea was written and paid for in blood. Successful? Yes. With high costs? Also yes. And they’re still dealing with the fallout.
I wouldn’t say it’s a huge success because South Korea and the United States are still spending a lot to keep others away from interfering with their Democracy. Without huge military spending, cybersecurity, and education, it can quickly get influenced by China or attacked by North Korea.
Also Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and much of Latin America had capitalist dictatorships before democracy. But I don't think it was free markets that led to democracy in those cases so much as it was US political influence.
The US overthrew the democratic government of Sukarno and killed up to 3 million Indonesians funding the terrorist movements and proxy wars till the US backed military took over as “saviors”. The CIA considered this a successful playbook and named it as the Jakarta Method.
They attack democracies that they don’t like labeling them autocratic and dictatorships. Then install their military juntas. See numerous examples like Chile, Ethiopia, Iran etc.
Stephen Kinzer has written extensively on this in the book Overthrow:
After reading a bit about the issue, I think it's not accurate to describe Sukarno's government as "democratic", though clearly it was far less oppressive than Suharto's US-backed military dictatorship.
Yes, different variations of that also happened throughout much of South and Central America. They installed capitalist dictatorships to open the countries' markets to US products and establish capitalism, then (in many cases, though obviously not in Iran) pressured those dictatorships to cede power to democracy. I don't think capitalism alone would have destabilized dictatorship as a form of government.
It was a combination of pressure from above and below: US pressure, but also a newly middle-class population starting to raise hell. In most of those countries, protests and civil unrest presaged the transition to democracy--and suppressing it would cost the government their US support, so the easiest thing to do was to just give in.
Sorry, but in Latin America, US pressure was to create the dictatorships, not to remove them. US helped to create them, and supported the torture and chasing of dissidents.
They did, yes, and then (as ertian described) they also exerted pressure to get the dictatorships to hold democratic elections, as long as that wouldn't imperil US access to markets.
Sure, in some countries and time periods. I'm not in any way saying the US has a flawless record. I'm just saying that US pressure was not the only reason why countries transitioned to democracy: it was a combination of popular and international (largely US) pressure. When one or the other was missing, the transition generally never happened.
I'm confused about Indonesia ("reformasi"). You wrote <<US political influence>>. Can you explain how this worked in the context of Indonesia? As I understand, one of the major catalysts of Indonesian democratic reform was the Asian currency crisis.
Naive or not, there wasn't really an alternative for Britain anyway. China had made it clear that they wanted HK back, and would get it back one way or the other. The best they could do was sign an agreement that offered as much protection to the city for as long as possible and then hope things would change in China over time.
So China was too powerful to ignore their threats? Even today don't you think there is an alternative to handing stuff over to threats of military violence?
In your view how is it different from today's situation where China might declare the same thing about Taiwan?
There are a couple things that make the Hong Kong situation more complicated.
* by 1997 (handover date) Britain lacked a colonial empire from which it could assist in a defense of Hong Kong, and of the overseas posts it did have, the regiments were fairly small. Sending a large military force all the way from Britain itself would take too long in any sort of conflict. Taiwan has always come with the implicit security guarantee of the United States, which maintains a very active presence in the Pacific.
* the PLA has the law of numbers on their side, not only due to part 1 but because of how large their army is in general, and the border between Hong Kong and the rest of China is a fairly small river. The PLA generally lacks the amphibious capacity to do a land invasion of Taiwan.
* the New Territories in Hong Kong, unlike the rest of it, were signed over in a 99 year lease. 1997 was the end of those 99 years. The New Territories are a mountainous area with a good deal of Hong Kong's postwar population and also its major water supplies; without it and bordering a hostile China, Hong Kong would quickly cease to be a functioning city. Holding onto the territories wouldn't last a very long time due to parts 1 and 2, and unlike Taiwan where international law depends on who you think China is, the UK would clearly be in the wrong by violating the 99 year lease unilaterally.
>Even today don't you think there is an alternative to handing stuff over to threats of military violence?
The alternative is war.
>today's situation where China might declare the same thing about Taiwan?
And everyone pretty much agrees the alternative is war.
Calling for war in times of peace from your couch is a very easy thing do; but it's not something to be taken lightly. There's no telling how quickly this appetite for war against our 3rd largest trading partner will dry up once we start having to deal with the economic fallout.
In Russia, it actually did that in the 90s, but it lasted for less that a decade.
A big part of it is that the "democrats" (which was a catch-all term for all Western-minded liberals) favored a quick reset of the vestigial planned economy into a free market-based one; words like "shock therapy" were thrown around. The idea was that any inconveniences would be temporary, and more than made up for when the transition is complete.
The immediate result, however, was a significant drop in quality of life for the majority of the population, with a corresponding rise in crime. And because the "democrats" were the ones spearheading the efforts, they carried the reputational hit. This gave people like Putin the opportunity to ride to power on "strong hand" policies that were supposed to fix all that.
I grew up in Russia during that era, and remember the rhetoric then. One thing I'd say the West did very wrong was to let organizations like the IMF run wild, pushing for their (austerity-centric) ideological view of the economy through loans. Then again, from what I've read later, it wouldn't be the first or the last time they messed up a country they were supposed to help.
The baffling thing to me is how anyone thought rapid privatization was a good idea. Going from an economic system where the only way to become personally wealthy is via crime and corruption to auctioning off a country's core infrastructure can only lead to criminals ending up absurdly rich.
Keep in mind that those people were coming from late Soviet stagnation with empty shelves and shoddy quality for anything that was available. One of the ideas floated around at the time is that, because all property in the country was everyone's, it was, in practice, no-one's; people stole what they could, and didn't care if something was a waste. So, the theory went, what you need is owners with vested interest in that property, to put it to good use and avoid waste.
Like all simple economic theories, it looked good on paper, and convincing to the crowd. Then it turned out that the new owners were largely the same people who were in charge in Soviet days, except for a few talented and lucky grifters who made their way from the very bottom to the very top.
It was a good idea in that it made a lot of people very very rich. Some folks such as the Clinton's got their fingers in both the Russian pie as well as other minor ones (in terms of wealth extracted, not effect) like Haiti.
Its been awhile since I've read up on that part of Russia, so I could very well be wrong. But it seemed like Russia was doomed from the beginning because almost at the onset, control was pretty much consolidated into Oligarchs.
It was true, but the oligarchs back then didn't constitute a single ruling party. It was more like Ukraine in 2000-10s, where you had several guys who are jockeying for power, controlling various political parties to contest elections, owning mass media outlets for propaganda etc. It's not your typical ordered Western liberal democracy, but at least so long as they fight, they have to pander to the people, occasionally; and the media, while not truly free, is sufficiently diverse to produce some semblance of truth in aggregate.
(Side note: Zelensky's "Servant of the People" is available on Netflix with decent subtitles, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone in the West who wants to understand the historical trajectory of former Soviet republics - Russia and Belarus especially, of course. What I found interesting is that, while it was targeted at contemporary Ukrainians in 2015-2019, the world that it depicts was very familiar to me from my memories of 1990s in Russia, aside from uniquely local issues like the languages.)
The difference is that one of Russian oligarchs decided to make a new political puppet with a "strong man" image. He was very successful, but then the puppet decided that it can make it on its own - and did so.
China was already experimenting with capitalism since the late 70s- and China had a diaspora from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to help them.
Russia had nothing.
Totally agree. It would've been much smarter to allow Russia to slowly transition into Democratic Socialism or something like that (whatever the Russian people voted for), with critical industries retained by the state and a welfare system kept in place.
The experience in de-communisting Russia was also a key reason why China chose to liberalize only their economy, while keeping a firm one party grip on political power.
What happened to Russia post "liberalization" in the 90s was very influential on Chinese elite's views on liberalizing. Russia basically got shafted and fed on by a combination of politicians & Western consultants.
It surely feels like dark times, but it's even darker now when democracy in the US is under threat. Belief in democracy abroad or at home seems to have gone away and in its place there is cynicism, implicit "might makes right" and political tribalism.
> Same about 1990s Russia: the west hoped a new economic system would lead to political freedom. Wishful thinking?
> The exact same kind of thinking the led US to invade Irak.
Encouraging (maybe there's a better word to use) a different way of running a foreign economy to bring about political change is not the exact same kind of thinking as overthrowing a foreign government to bring about political change. Yeah, there is the belief that political change needs to happen, but in practice these things are very different.
Doesn't feel like that long ago since that same line of thinking is still applied to China today. Read enough and you'll be convinced of the imminent collapse of China any day now.
> Read enough and you'll be convinced of the imminent collapse of China any day now.
Those arguments always sound like straw men though: they are designed because they are easy to tear down. China is...weird. You can't really take anything at face value, good or bad. And I say that having lived there for 9 years. E.g. sometimes a ghost mall or district is one waiting to be populated, otherwise times it's just waiting to be torn down (either way positive GDP is generated).
They'll be wrong until the moment they're right. The USSR looked similarly durable in the 1980s, and the few voices saying it was rotten at the core and on the verge of collapse were waved off.
I had first hand reports from the field in the 1980's that the soviet union was falling apart socially and economically. Friend was a Russian studies major, spent two years in the soviet union. Another friend also spent six months there. And one of the board members of my old old company was in the oil and gas business and traveled to Russian a lot.
What political freedom have markets provides the west except in the form of wishful thinking?
The US is getting more fascist in observable ways. Suspension habeas corpus in GWs time, pepper spraying college students in 2008 for a seated protest in Cali, to no abortion rights, and the political snowflakes in both parties calling for each other’s heads, kids in cages and yet everyone tucks their chin and goes on, inequality and taxation without holistic demographic representation; SCOTUS Justices openly demanding the public just accept things it does not like.
Keep complaining about Russia and China, USians. Virtue signaling while actually operating as moral relativists is creating the culture you talk to be against in your own backyard.
Thatcher was dealt a bad hand. When the British wanted Hong Kong they in their Western mindset considered that "99 years" was the same as "forever".
Consider that the UK only barely managed to defend the Falklands.
Thatcher saved her and her country's face in the negotiations which is the main job of any politician.
She also thought by closing out heavy industry she could break the unions. And then companies would open new factories in Britain out competing Europe on labor costs.
Wishful thinking, but common at the time. Gorbachev had the same aspirations when it came to communism spreading from Russia to other countries. Of course the West had other plans. In retrospect I think the failure wrt China is that the integration didn't go far enough, most likely because China started to threaten the economic hegemony of the U.S.
Western countries have been complicit specially the US in derailing many democracies for it own purposes. HongKong plight is just the excuse needed to malign China they dont really give a f*k about peoples freedom or democracy case in point current Pakistan causi military take over of a democratic government with support from US. Or the turning a blind eye to growing fascism in India but as long as its a country they can use against China it is okay. It is okay to support fascist kings and generals as long as they tow your line otherwise they are unacceptable and those countries need democracies. But democracies that do not toe your line need to be destroyed.
Regarding Taiwan, that doesn’t make sense to me. It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly. Showing that annexation means loss of freedoms incentivizes Taiwan to hold out and gives them something to fight for.
I think the CCP’s strategy is much simpler. They don’t expect Taiwan to be annexed any time soon, they just want to quell dissent in China. I believe popular opinion among Mainlanders is that HK citizens are spoiled drama queens (negative sentiment) so a display of force is a way of showing internally that HK - once a far more prosperous part of China, that saw itself as superior/gave mainlanders an inferiority complex - is now subservient to China. Basically a demonstration that China is a rising power (internally)
>It would be smarter to let HK persist to convince Taiwan there is no threat to re-unification so that they move towards annexation willingly.
It's a display of strength, in my opinion. "Struggle all you want, but in the end we will have our way with you." I'm not a geopolitical expert or anything but I fully expect China to take Taiwan by force while the West is busy with Russia. I'm fairly certain that we couldn't effectively sanction both China _and_ Russia
If it did happen, it'd probably be the worst war we've seen, full stop.
The US is still giving out Purple Hearts medals meant for the land invasion of Japan, which was expected to be horrific in terms of casualties due to the terrain. In this context, the US actually investigated and totally gave up on the idea of a land invasion of Taiwan, because the geography is so much worse; there are very few flat beaches from which to do an amphibious D-day style landing, and all of them are a few km away from mountains from which to rain down artillery.
I can't imagine it going any better than Russia's invasion. Taiwan is all mountains, there's a sea in between with 13 beaches where they can land and China's military has no experience whatsoever. It would literally be shooting fish in a barrel for the Taiwanese army.
Is strategy even involved? The CCP often displays an impressive ability of actually following through with strategy, but I'd be surprised if this capability didn't have any glaring blind spots. Chances are these changes are nothing more than a series of purely tactical decisions, either without any strategical thought or perhaps even despite considerations not unlike yours. Might have been frog in boiling water for the perpetrators as much as for the victims.
Of course there is a strategy, and not only from the CCP side. It's a power struggle to retain vs. subvert power between the Chinese state and the Western sphere of influence in East Asia. The battle lines have shifted from one outlying area of containment to another, from Korea (war, 1950-1953), Taiwan (war, 1950's), Vietnam (war, 1960's), Tibet (rebellion, 1959-1973), a detente after Nixon, back to color revolution in the late 80's (Tiananmen), Tibet again (rebellion, late 1980's), and Xinjiang (terrorism, 1990's to 2000's), Taiwan (1996), Tibet again (2008), Hong Kong (color revolution, 2003 to 2020), back to Xinjiang again (2018 to now), and in a major way, Taiwan (2016 to now).
It's funny people think these are all random occurrences or all the doing of the CCP. During the detente, even the Dalai Lama suddenly went to the "Middle Way" and shut up for 15 years.
HK is one of my favourite cities but one thing that I do not like about HK is how its citizens of Chinese descent (not all of course) think that they are superior to people in the Mainland. They try to make the differentiation by identifying themselves as Hongkongers (香港人) and not Chinese.
When they are outside of Hong Kong and have to fill in their ethnicity on application forms etc, no country has 'Hongkonger' as an ethnicity or even nationality.
My friends of Chinese descent born in the UK with parents from HK identify their ethnicity as Chinese. I really don't understand the minds of these Hongkongers sometimes..
Taiwan, the Republic of China, will never peacefully 'surrender' to the communists. So there is no prospect of peaceful reunification as long as the CCP holds power on the mainland.
The CCP/PRC knows that very well so there is no point for them to allow HK to persist, especially considering that this could give ideas on the mainland ("if HK can have this, why can't we?")
(Also, no-one ever talks about Macao, but it's the same as HK)
There were two main reasons they may have let Hong Kong be somewhat independent. One is a message to Taiwan that quasi reunification is in the cards, and they can totally trust China enough to become a semiautonomous district. The second is that it was handy to have a place with Western friendly rules to coordinate international trade.
Taiwans history with China spans ~400 years. The Ming Dynasty pushed out the dutch and had some settlements, but this was at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
After the Qing Dynasty took over they did nothing with Taiwan. The Qing Dynasty called Taiwan a ball of mud in the sea not worth the effort of China. There was some people who travelled and setup in Taiwan but ultimately the Qing Dynasty never controlled Taiwan and was in constant conflict with the locals.
In 1887 they decided to call Taiwan a Provience in order to defer Japan from attacking. During this time they tried a little bit to build Taiwan, but again, ultimately not controling the Island.
When Japan attacked, they threw their hands in the air and ceeded to Japan. Japan wasn't even convinced that China controlled Taiwan, and China convinced Japan they did by saying there are other countries where the governments cannot control the indigenous people.
Japan took over and ruled with an iron fist.
After the war the US handed Taiwan to KMT as temporary administer the Island until the fate of the Island had been decided. This part has never happened and is why the US is ambigious on the status of Taiwan.
So no. The populations were NEVER unified in any way.
The mainland originally let Hong Kong be because it was almost their only outlet for trade while China was closed in the 50s-early 80s. It lost that purpose as China opened up. Macau has always been the place to launder money away from Mainland China, the casinos were convenient for that until Xi cracked down.
Did the West control the world and could it do anything to stop China? It's something organic that can't really be controlled once the technologies are there for a global technology (edit: I mean a global economy), I think.
Chinese strategy was/is to become the worlds factory. China successfully manipulated the west's biggest weakness. It created a situation where every individual is incentivized to do the wrong thing (set up factories in china) and the only solution is collective action via regulation. Through it's success, it has cemented itself as a single point of failure in the worlds supply chain. China now has a knob to turn up the pain on anyone who defies it or attempts to hold it accountable.
A government has an obligation to protect national security. Letting another country be a single point of failure in your supply chain is a major failure of national security and ability to self determine. The government failed to regulate IP transfers and failed to restrict businesses from behavior that, while individually harmless, is collectively harmful.
The US governments failure to regulate very much ceded power directly to China.
Add to that the unequal trade agreements of china practicing protectionism while America does not and the result is a stunning American foreign policy failure.
The prevailing idea was that the west thought an economically successful china would liberalize, and therefore this ceding of power was ok and a net benefit. I think the violation of Hong Kong and Xi's wolf warrior diplomacy has been the turning point where the west now understands that China is an ideological enemy with a zero sum ideology.
If the technology was the only thing that mattered you would expect India to be on par with the PRC in terms of GDP and growth.
We invested specifically and heavily into the PRC, and there’s a case to be made that that was a mistake as long as the CCP was the exclusive dominant political party within the PRC because right now, it’s still that. Not that a democratic China is necessarily a friendly China, but it’s at least one we wouldn’t have to trade against our liberal values to trade with.
It is still autonomous. Nothing has really changed.
I lived in HK during the protests. There is a big gap between what was being reported in the western media (which I assume you consumed) and what was actually true.
I live in HK since I was born and is still in HK now, I agree that there are gaps between the western media and the reality, but I think they are not far from the truth.
I was not involved in political activities at all, but still went out to protest for the first (and last, currently) time in 2019. The situation escalated quickly, and for reasons that I cannot understand, some protesters started to act violently, which we know from history that the CCP will not compromise and protestors have no chance of winning the fight... And then there is the national security law, using the pandemic as an excuse to ban every protests, etc. People either leave or become silent.
Actually I am not sure why I would want to write this, perhaps I just wanted to say something like this for a long time but was too afraid to. Some of the protesters were illogical at the time, so saying that their action is naive and will only worsen the situation may cause me trouble. Writing these now may trigger the police, although I don't think they will arrest me due to this alone.
Thank you for your reply. I agree with it. I am non-native, but I lived in HK for many years during the protests. (Frankly speaking, I am a die-hard social liberal!)
I also lived in Hongkong during the last rounds of protests. One of the comments I frequently heard from foreigners from stable, highly-functioning democracies: "I cannot condone (support) violence during political protests." On the surface, it sounds great -- very pithy (short, succint)! Then, I thought a long time about it. Peaceful protests mostly do not work in non-democracies (dictatorships). For me, this is the reason why transition to democracy in Taiwan, (South) Korea, and Indonesia was so violent. (OMG: Go and read about Korea. It reads like a civil war. Protesters stole automatic weapons from police stations to used against the police. It was crazy!)
If readers are unfamiliar with the transition to democracy for these three countries, or the current state of affairs, I strongly recommend a "rabbit hole" deep-dive on Wiki. You will be impressed! And when you observe these three democracies from afar, you will be further impressed by their passion to create a great society that is governed by the people. People in their 50s sound like high school students from highly functioning democracies when they discuss government affairs. It is very inspiring!
A different angle: When you live in a highly functioning democracy, protests of any size always capture the attentions of politicians (members of parliment, etc.). Why? Because they represent the people, and they can lose the next election if they do not listen. In low functioning/non-democracies, protests can be ignored and protesters arrested / beaten / gassed. Why? Because accountability is so low.
I will never forget walking through a Hongkong wet market to buy groceries (veg, fish, etc.) and being tear-gassed by the HK riot police. Yes, I regularly attended protests, but on that day, I was simply shopping for a weekend meal. Their annoucements were only in Cantonese. The domestic helpers (Indos and Fils) in the market were terrified. It was an all-out assault on humanity. I sent careful documentation of the event and evidence to the police, but my complaint was entirely ignored. I knew this would happen, but still, I filed my complaint.
At the peak of the 2019 protests, there were unjustified, daily beatings by police of protesters. An unimaginable amount of mobile phone video footage was captured, but not a single HK police officer ever faced the court system for their appalling behaviour. They was an incident on the HK metro where police officers boarded a train to confront protesters peacefully delaying service. It was a particularly grotest display of police brutality. They swung metal batons at unarmed civilians causing so much harm. (These YouTube videos were later used in Taiwan election adverts!) It does not mean that every protester was innocent, but you will never win peacefully against a dictatorship. Sadly, violence is required. (See Burma / Myanmar!)
At some point, HK gov't pledged to create an international council to help them decide how to handle arrests on both sides. Once the foreigners selected saw the total lack of accountability, 100% of them resigned from the board. It was a collassal embarassment to the still paper-thin democratic system in HK.
Yes, it is hard to win peacefully against a dictatorship, but I don't think the chance of winning via violence is high either. I am kind of gave up at that point, not hoping for something better, just wish that the situation would not worsen too much.
To be honest, I think technology is increasing the power imbalance between the public and the ruler. We have AI for surveillance system that can track the activity of every single citizen. The media and social media can overload most of the people with useless information, distracting them from the important issues. Advanced weapons so people have no chance in winning the fight if the authority don't care about casualties.
That's the wrong thinking. During the BLM protests, there were almost certainly people who went too far, or took advantage of the chaos to create mayhem. They were not plants by the conservative right, it's just a natural thing that happens, people are unreliable like that.
During the HK protests, I can imagine the same thing happening. Actually, in only a few cases where a strong leader and organization is involved (MLK, Gandhi, etc...) can protests be largely peaceful and more effective (not giving the other side an excuse to crackdown without losing face, and even these movements weren't perfect).
I like your post, and I feel the same. If 100K protesters show up to protest about a police killing (BLM, et al), but 5 misbehave, does that mean all 100K are bad people? Of course, no. I would say exactly the same about the police. I write this as someone who respects the work that police do to secure our communities, but I also strongly support the BLM protests against grotestque police brutality against black and brown people in the United States.
Of course in a large crowd there's going to be a violent minority - that's just statistics.
Yet, planted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur are a well documented and widely used tactic. It has proven to be effective in many cases to justify a reaction in the eyes of public opinion.
A planted agent definitely in the realm of possibility, but it is just more likely that some kids took a chance to get angry, violent, and cause chaos. Some combination could also have happened (e.g. a plant takes advantage of enraging people who are already closed to being enraged). In all cases, better leadership and some practiced discipline that comes with that could have helped avoided the problems.
You can't run for the local legislature unless you are approved. They stop some people from leaving at the airport if they protested. They arrest you for minor acts of resistance like the color of your shirt. They removed statues that were commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. If you are a westerner then maybe you can keep living your life though.
You're simply not being serious. In the US you can commemorate any massacre that happened in the US. In Hong Kong you're no longer allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.
In parts of USA you are forbidden from glorifying the biggest separatist crisis, the Civil War. The US government actively destroys monuments to the separatist side of the civil war.
You can absolutely glorify the south in the civil war, and people do it. You can even do things that most consider abhorrent, you can glorify slavery if you want, speak positively about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. You can glorify the assassination of any US president who was assassinated in fact. Some people won't like it, but you can do it and no state goons are going to come disappear you in the night. It is not illegal anywhere in the US.
Do any of those things publicly in the average US city and let me know how that works out for your career (and therefore ability to afford housing and healthcare).
The government allowing you to celebrate slavery doesn’t mean fellow citizens are obliged to employ you. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from repercussions.
Complete nonsense. Authority is necessary to guarantee human rights when you are dealing with groups of more than ~1000 people. Anarchy at that scale leads to massive human rights violations.
Americans/Anglos are historically inept at governance and concluded that all governments are inept and evil.
If de jure, than neither USA nor PRC are authoritarian because both have multiple political parties.
If de facto, than both USA and PRC or authoritarian. USA in particular is governed by an unelected establishment of NatSec/Finance/Oil elites; an oligarchy in the purest sense. Who elected Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan to orchestrate the Ukraine wedge?
In the US elected representatives in a few places have decided to remove statues of proponents of slavery, after significant public pressure. This is not happening to statues commemorating deaths of soldiers or protestors. And nothing stops you from waving a confederate flag and "celebrating your heritage" if that is your belief system. Actually, the state-funded police department would at least pretend to send officers to separate you from counter-protesters and attempt to make sure both sides are protected. This seems quite different from removing statues commemorating student protests (that went bloody due to state violence)
On the contrary, an equally important base principle of the modern democracies coming out of the Enlightenment is that the minority should be protected from the "tyranny of the majority"[1]. Don't get me wrong, it is easy to agree with you that the majority of the Chinese people might enjoy the strong-arm stability provided by their totalitarian government, but there is no way around the fact that minority opinions in China frequently get brutally stomped out, while minority opinions in (flawed) democracies like the US have many (imperfect) protections.
I have relatives in Russia. There is a big gap between how they see the current world and how it's reported in the western media. For them Russia is the last really independent and free country in the world.
If we interpret this to mean independent and free to set its own foreign policy, independent of conformance to the global rules-based order, then I think it’s true. There is pride in answering to no-one. Unfortunately they appear to be using that freedom to trample on the freedom of other countries.
To be clear, this isn’t the “I can do what I want” kind of freedom, this is the “my country can do what it wants” kind of freedom, right? Because if we’re talking about personal freedom, then can you help me understand how they square it with an admitted dictatorship and a (reputation for a) culture of “don’t make trouble, just endure it”?
Not the parent poster, but yes, I also have relatives in Russia (for a double helping of irony, some of them are ethnic Ukrainians who have fully drunk the Russian kool-aid), and yes, you are pretty much correct. They don't like to talk about domestic problems, but will happily talk your ear off about how under Putin, the south^w^wRussia will rise again on the international stage.
Yes, western Russia. For them (and I'm afraid that for majority) there isn't much difference - they are getting their income from state and the only problem they really see is that some things are becoming suddenly much more expensive. But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times. Disappearing McDonalds, Ikea etc are just signs that USA controls the world and are lame attempts to damage Russia.
If one ever wanted to know what's happening in the mind of a frog that is being boiled slowly, this is probably the closest approximation. These people don't understand where the country is going, and when it gets there, they will not be able to recognize what events led to that place, allowing politicians to perpetuate the same nonsensical lies all over again. It sounds dramatic, but I believe the country is doomed and on its way down it will take its neighbors with it.
> But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times
I’ve seen this stated before but it seems very confusing. Widespread poverty sucks. There’s no way people are fine with returning to it because they saw it decades ago. Surely nobody thinks that’s ok?
It's complicated (surprise). But much of it comes from deep russian culture - there has been no private ownership concept. The tsar is the only owner of everything and gives or takes if he decides to do so. It doesn't matter how rich and/or powerful you are. People are just used to it that rulers sometimes give and sometimes take all back. "Lost everything? It's normal, life goes on."
I don’t see how that could possibly be true in western russia. Eastern Russia, sure. They’re poor and under the government boot for the memorable past. But western Russia? Like Moscow? There’s no way people still feel like that.
I'm not trying to be mean, but, perhaps your relatives are watching too much state TV. I also have relatives in there, and, unfortunately, a lot among the elder generation are irreversibly brainwashed.
The US is far from blameless about our actions in the world, but that doesn't excuse the attack on their own citizens in Russia or China. To see the ultimate difference between the US and China and Russia, make a public comment criticizing the government in public, on TV, in the newspaper. In the US, I don't lose my job, the police don't come to my house, I am not ostracized by my neighbor. Maybe I'm encouraged to write editorials to expand on my ideas or even run for office. Whether I'm supporting the current leader or government or the opposition candidate from a previous election, I'm still free. In China or Russia you are not. No one monitored my high school teachers via camera to see if they reported anything that was against the party rule.
I too lived in HK during the protests. The protests were both about lofty things like political self-determination and about mundane things like access to housing.
Since the protests, their politics is completely controlled by the mainland; their last bits of wiggle room removed. I remember clearly the lead up to and results of the 2019 district election, with its unprecedented turnout and results. I'm curious what you feel the gap was since I rarely read western media about the protests while I lived there.
I've seen how local media manipulates things here in Latin America, so I'm not surprised from the inside it looked good, looking from the outside it seems like the democracy was eroded / destroyed, with Cuban-style elections where the candidates are appointed by the Chinese government.
