Hong Kong mourns the end of its way of life

What has happened to Hong Kong is a strong <i>canary-in-the-coal-mine</i> indicator for other Chinese territorial disputes [i].<p>With Hong Kong it was somewhat inevitable but I can&#x27;t help but imagine how different it would be if the US and EU&#x2F;Britain (as leads) would have strongly denounced their approach. I suspect in a decade from now the West will be lamenting how Hong Kong was the right opportunity to stifle China&#x27;s ambition.<p>[i] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;quicktake&#x2F;territorial-disputes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;quicktake&#x2F;territorial-disputes</a>

The rest of the world needs to wake up and realize that China is not messing around. There will be a long list of Hong Kong’s if we continue to look the other way to authoritarian regimes.

I&#x27;ve been boycotting Chinese goods whenever possible (it helps that I don&#x27;t really buy electronics) because of Hong Kong. I regret not having started back when our professor urged us to do so roughly a decade ago. One time, we had officials from Chinese universities visit ours and he made sure to have big &quot;free Tibet&quot; patches on his jacket and backpack while always hanging around said officials. He was quite the character.

I suspect we will see China attempt to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later now.<p>In particular I’ve suspected for awhile that China desperately wants to “own” Taiwan Semiconductor ($TSM) since they’ve been trying to build up their own domestic chip business for awhile and $TSM is the gold standard in chip manufacturing.

Greg Egan wrote a novel called Quarantine (which I liked quite a bit) that introduced New Hong Kong, a mega city built in Australia ahead of the British return of Hong Kong.

Does anyone here have an informed opinion on what will happen to Taiwan?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Rsirg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Rsirg</a>

I wonder how long before services like Facebook is banned in HK under the new Security law. One interesting thing to see is whether Facebook would comply with censorship requests to appease the PRC. If not, could this be the single largest decline in users for Facebook?

Truly sad. When HK was handed back to China in 1999, did we know this is inevitable?

I was taught to prepare for globalization in most of my business classes in college. The world was now flat so you must prepare. We must be willing to compete and allow free trade as the internet (specifically the www) has opened the entire world up.<p>But what’s really happened is that the internet has given new powers to governments to regulate and control the people. While I would love to talk about how big and bad the CCP is (they are both of those adjectives and many more) I would be in remiss if I didn’t look at my own country (US) and see that we have been guilty of creating false narratives on free trade.<p>It’s sad to me that we lack Political leadership in our country. That’s one thing that China does not lack. Both governments are propagated by lies. But the difference is that the Chinese people have suffered greatly and now (on average) are suffering less. So they may be willing (as a whole) to turn a blind eye to situations like HK and what’s happening to the Uighur people.

I think we all agree that none of us would want to live under CCP.<p>So the real question is what or who is going to stop them from expanding? Asians have a higher IQ, they have the human numbers and natural resources.<p>The only thing I can imagine stopping them is that they will be composed of too many regions that want to split. But as long as they can maintain a strong grip, I don&#x27;t think anything can split off.<p>There is no world power that can or wants to face them head on, and it will only get worse when they grow bigger (which they will).<p>Maybe I&#x27;m pessimistic, or maybe just realistic?

The problem for Xi with respect HK and Taiwan is that plenty of mainland tourists will visit and learn from the locals how much they prefer democracy. These values will then seep back into the mainland and the CCP wants to maintain the fiction that democracy doesn&#x27;t work for Chinese culture. Letting HK continue on for 30 more years might become uncontrable in China.

What would be wrong with One Country, One System?

From a simpletons perspective, I don&#x27;t understand why we get to have a say of how a country reclaims its former territory. Especially from Westerners(not even land connected) who have no claim whatsoever. Why do we have a negative outlook on our former empires colonizing the world while at the same time doing everything possible to retain profits&#x2F;power from these bad things we shouldn&#x27;t be doing? Very hypocritical to simpletons. Someone is shutting off our outpost, ofcourse we won&#x27;t let it go without kicking and screaming to get everyones attention to what?

This &quot;way of life&quot; was unsustainable anyway, because of the property prices and the de facto feudal system with the tycoons on top. You can rage at the red flag all you want, but ideology has nothing to do with it. HK life was almost unbearable before all this.

&quot;Way of life&quot;? Way to trivialize their loss of freedom and autonomy and <i>habeas corpus</i>.

The circumstances of Britain&#x27;s original forced takeover and colonization of Hong Kong in the Opium Wars are the greater evil to me. Righting that wrong after so long was always going to be painful.<p>By analogy: a violent drug-dealer shoots you, robs you, and then kidnaps your child at gunpoint. Years later, you manage to have the child returned, but in the interim they have been taught by their captor to hate you and resist rejoining their family. What do you do?

I don&#x27;t know about you, but I see echoes of the US view in Vietnam that we were saving the country from some unspeakable evil that was expanding dangerously year by year. When we were 8000 miles away, looking at things just as symbols and not knowing whether that meant good or bad for the people actually living it day to day.<p>That got us into some trouble, I seem to recall.<p>Is this not similar? I worry this has a certain path written on it, with our good intentions paving the way.

Isn&#x27;t that an uber-wealthy city with the biggest concentration of billionaires? With so much wealth you &#x27;d think they &#x27;d have a say on what china wants to do with them. But maybe they just go along?

Love how when the same restrictions are imposed in the USA, everyone starts talking about &quot;doing the right thing&quot;