The Looming Disaster in Hong Kong

https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/cathay-ceo-refused-to-name-hong-kong-protesters-to-chinese-government-named-himself-instead-and-resigned/ar-AAG6OTo?li=AAAHsb1

It’s been tangentially mentioned in other threads, but there is a looming crackdown in Hong Kong, and I can’t see any cavalry riding in to help.

I’ve never felt so powerless to help my brethren across the sea as I do right now.

What do you all think? Can they succeed? Or will the Tiananmen Butchers deliver another massacre?

If I were to cynically set aside the human death toll, which is something the Chinese Communist Party would never do, how does this calculation work itself out?

Is the value of Hong Kong worth the cost of a massacre?

This is out of my wheelhouse, but using force against Hong Kong would be a huge flex by the CCP. YOOOGE.

How would the world respond?

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That’s the calculation I’m trying to work out. The CCP cannot tolerate open dissent, nor can they easily shrug off a disaster in the financial capital of Asia.

I rather hope that it’s enough to avoid open bloodshed.

It’s also concerning to see anti-Hong Kong protests on the streets of Dublin.

Fun fact, the Chinese language programs of two of our major universities are funded by the CCP.

I’d have a serious problem with the CCP using force against the people of Hong Kong. I’m superficially aware of the lease agreement and subsequent administrative limbo, but I don’t really care about the technicalities of treaties.

This is an invasion looming. This is a communist superstate trying to roll over a freedom-loving and peaceful people who far outshine anything a similarly-sized population in China has managed to achieve.

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I would want China turned into a pariah state. Fat chance of that happening though.

Are they Dubliners or Chinese?

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Both. Here’s a picture of one of the useful idiots of Dublin at the protest:
image

A friend of mine knows this one, he’s apparently an apologist of every nominally communist regime that has ever existed.

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I think it will happen eventually. It might take a few decades or maybe a war, but I don’t think China is built to last in its present form. I’m not betting on an economy and military built on IP theft, corner-cutting and heavy-handed enforcement of nonsense.

What do I know though?

I’m seriously interested if anyone can offer meaningful insight here. This is of great interest to me.

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It’s ironic to see people exercising their right to protest, by protesting against others exercising that right, oh wait they don’t have that right, on behalf of a nation that doesn’t protect that right. Imbeciles.

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Got me, I’m hoping some of the regulars with more CCP experience will chime in.

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That’s an understatement.

IMO, they are overplayed their hand. They should have stopped once the Chief Executive suspended the new legislation they were rallying against.

Not likely. The CCP will just play the waiting game while spinning the narrative that they are “terrorists” disrupting the functioning of HK society. HK citizens will eventually get tired of all the public disruption and economic losses.

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We have to remember that the current China is a pretty developed country. It’s citizens are relatively well off compared to the past. They don’t give a fuck about ideological issues like freedom of speech and the right to protest as long as their lives aren’t affected.

China has achieved such rapid economic progress because of it’s move toward capitalism and the dismantling of the artificial supression of it’s economy prior to the Open Door Policy. However, because of the lingering socialist “black market” culture, the amount of systemic government corruption seen was ridiculous even when compared to the most corrupt countries in other parts of Asia. It reached absurd levels in the mid 2000s. This was blamed, as usual, on “capitalism”. This was something created by the government which could only be rectified by the government since no real free market actually existed.

Xi Jinping scored massive political points by “clamping down” on the systemic corruption that the previous post socialist era incumbants created and enabled, while setting everything up so that people slowly, and willingly gave up their freedom just to see the rich bastards who got rich through the system taken down.

The mindset in China now is that the government created the political and economic stability now that “unchecked capitalism” destroyed, along with the economic progress and increase in individual wealth which was actually due to private enterprise despite the existence of so much corruption.

To fully understand the direction they are heading towards in the next few decades, look at the government of Singapore.

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Bunch of fucking morons lol. Commies are masters at propaganda. People still think of propaganda as massive protraits of dictators on buildings and the masses marching with their Red Books singing patriotic songs. They do not understand that this shit also evolves with the times in different forms of media. That’s why they get fooled.

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You’ve given me a lot to mull over, as always.

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I think I relayed this story to you once before:

When my wife and I were visiting Dublin a few years ago, we took a free walking tour around the city led by a rather disgusting gentleman who was proudly, openly communist … I’m not surprised by the display in Dublin. Also, something I like to remind myself when confronted with useful idiots … they might look like a lot, but proportionally, may not be a very good representative sample of the overall sentiment … they tend to just be loud fools

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Well said. I protest your peaceful protest by telling you I will be using violence if necessary to stop your peaceful protest

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You did indeed!

Nope and there won’t be. Risking a military exchange with China must be considered very carefully, they are not the Taliban. Their reach and their memories are long. Diplomacy is the only option and as we have seen time and time again, they have little patience for that. Who is going to go all in for Hong Kong? It’s hard to imagine, less so if the Chinese go full on mass murder, but I bet they are hedging their bets that they can control the situation and the optics with little outside influence. Who’s going to tangle with them, the EU? lol… Nope, everybody would naturally look towards the U.S.
Regardless of the tariff situation and trade deficits and despite the cheap labor, it would be in the best interest of the U.S. to get our businesses out of there, if only not to support the blood thirsty communist government.
I know trump ‘ordered’ companies out of China, but I am not touting the exact same thing for the exact same reason. I have long held this view that we shouldn’t be doing business with China and it was a great error for Nixon to open up trade with them in the first place.

I think China sucks and I wish them the worst.
Can the Hong Kongees succeed? In the long run, no. I think China is happy to out wait them, dangling the threat of military force I am expecting the crowd to poop-out and go home. Then China will come in quietly and make a few arrests of the bigger names of the movement and have them relocated to a recreational camp somewhere in Northern China.
Will the Chinese massacre them? It’s entirely possible but not the optics the Chinese want to give off. I imagine them waiting out the crowds.
I would like for the protests to succeed, but I am not counting on it.

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