It's kind of fascinating how important the defacing of the national insignia is in the reporting in China.<p>An authoritarian government like China's has no real mandate - they have no right to be running the country and no legitimacy that can be claimed. They're a bunch of men that the army listens to. They have the guns and the power and that's it. With such a government, symbols and flags are the proxies for legitimacy. I don't know whether the translation is faithful, but the vandalism was actually translated to the English word "desecrate". That's some powerful language for wooden sign.
It's pretty surreal watching this conflict play out. I'm still shocked this is happening on the international stage and other nations are unwilling to take sides in the conflict.<p>I wonder what happens when the tension comes to a precipice and China sends in security forces to "maintain the peace". I hope for Hong Kong and the global economy's sake, it doesn't come to that. Although it seems like that's exactly what the Chinese state government is gearing up for.
China is really betting on the media coverage helping the pro-China side. They control the narrative and the discussion in official channels but that doesn't mean they control everything. Hong Kong is insular enough that they could become something like Taiwan, de facto independent. I don't see major revolution in Beijing happening anytime soon.
Don't underestimate the power of these state media. In China the government has almost complete control of every single media channels - social media, TV, radio and even chat apps. They can install whatever they wants into people's mind and the people won't notice a thing.
There's a lot of negative things that can be said about president Trump, but I for one am glad he's taken economic action against China. It seems like most Nations have resigned themselves to let China become the preeminent super power, which is very troubling to me; to let a nation with legitimate concentration camps, prisoner organ harvesting, and a general lack of moral compass become the most powerful country in the world is a bad idea to me.