Tag: China

The Hong Kong government backs down

Hong Kong authorities officially withdrew the extradition bill that has sparked months-long massive protests and violent riots across the city. The city’s security chief John Lee announced that the bill was effectively withdrawn on Wednesday. In response, several opposition lawmakers tried to heckle Lee’s speech, demanding his resignation.

The bill, which would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong, China’s self-governing territory, to mainland China triggered massive protests in summer. Protesters and human rights campaigners feared that Beijing may use the legislation to target dissidents.

My guess is that this is a smart tactical move by the Chinese government to defang what had become an entry point by the CIA and the NGOs attempting to transform the organic protests into a Color Revolution. It surgically removes the nominal basis for the protests, thereby removing the moral high ground – such as it is – from the protests if they continue.

I don’t see this as being much of a victory for the protesters, though. I understand the fears concerning extradition being applied to dissidents, but is it really good news that murderers can continue to live in Hong Kong without fear of even being arrested, much less charged and convicted, for their crimes? It seems to me a compromise that limited extradition to being applied to those suspected of murder would be reasonable and serve the interests of both the mainland and the SAR.

An update on the Hong Kong situation from a mainlander:

I wanted to send this to you last week but the outside internet has been completely inaccessible in China for the past two weeks because of the National Day holiday. They do this every year but it’s particularly bad this year.

A few days ago the ENTIRE Hong Kong metro system was closed because the “protesters” went on a rampage in response to a new law making it illegal to wear a mask in public. Every single metro station. Imagine if that had happened in a major American city of ten million people, what the police and the National Guard would do.

Pat Buchanan has an article in which he states, “The people of Hong Kong, who are surely being cheered by many on the mainland of China …” All respect to Pat Buchanan but he doesn’t understand this situation at all.

There is mutual hatred between Hong Kong and mainland people. NO ONE on the mainland is cheering the Hong Kong protesters. They think Hong Kong people are a bunch of spoiled brats who are now wrecking their own city and being used by the West because they think they’re better than mainland people. And Hong Kong people, meanwhile, think they ARE better than mainland people because they’ve had the benefit of a hundred years of imposed quasi-Western civilization and the result is a more well-mannered people and a more orderly society in a higher-quality environment.

But Hong Kong has been going downhill for decades now, due to various reasons that are not reducible to a simple statement, and the mainland has been in the ascendancy. But regardless, if Beijing sends in the troops, (which I don’t think they will do because the bad PR outweighs any other benefit; they’ll probably just let Hong Kong burn because they don’t really need it) I assure you that the vast majority of mainland Chinese will applaud this decision and love their government even more, seeing it as just desserts for a bunch of spoiled traitors, i.e. Chinese who don’t want to be Chinese and who collude with the yang guizi (foreign devils).

The global media would of course use any move by Beijing as a way to paint China as the new Nazis. You can see this narrative already developing and being pushed by Bannon and others, as well as the Hong Kong protesters themselves, who are quite obviously trying to provoke a violent response. But for the mainland Chinese, it would only solidify their sense of “us against the world.” My fear is that the people who want the next big war are actively pushing in this direction. I hope that Trump and Xi Jinping really are friendly, because they’re increasingly looking like Kennedy and Khrushchev.

The rise of Xi Jinping to supreme leadership may explain the recent and dramatic shift against China on the part of the Learned Elders of Wye. Given its proven value as a predictive model, the entire Wikileaks report on Xi by an academic acquaintance from his youth is well worth reading.

23. Xi knows how very corrupt China is and is repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such “moral evils” as drugs and prostitution, the professor stated. The professor speculated that if Xi were to become the Party General Secretary, he would likely aggressively attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of the new moneyed class. 

And that is exactly what Xi has done, with a serious commitment to an anti-corruption campaign that has taken many by surprise. It may astonish Western readers to know that the Chinese government is now extremely popular with the people. Unlike the Western countries, in which various corporations and other organizations are reliably deemed to big to fail – which really means they are too corrupt to be permitted to fail – Xi has led a magnificently ruthless campaign against corruption in China on a scale that is absolutely unthinkable in the West.

To put it in perspective, imagine if President Trump had had both Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton arrested and jailed, as well as two Supreme Court justices, two-thirds of the DNC, half the RNC, and numerous FBI, CIA, and IRS employees. That’s effectively what Xi has already done since 2012.

Upon taking office, Xi vowed to crack down on “tigers and flies”, that is, high-level officials and local civil servants alike. Most of the officials investigated were removed from office and faced accusations of bribery and abuse of power, although the range of alleged abuses varied widely. As of 2016, the campaign has ‘netted’ over 120 high-ranking officials, including about a dozen high-ranking military officers, several senior executives of state-owned companies, and four national leaders. More than 100,000 people have been indicted for corruption. The campaign is part of a much wider drive to clean up malfeasance within party ranks and shore up party unity. It has become an emblematic feature of Xi Jinping’s political brand.

Now THAT is what actually draining the swamp looks like. The greatest political mind of the 20th century, Lee Kuan Yew, described Xi as “a man of great breadth” and said he would “put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons.” While there are certainly reasons to doubt the assumption that the 21st century will be the Chinese century, the fact that 1.6 billion people now have a leader of this reported rectitude and capability should not be discounted.

I’ve admired Xi since he publicly shot down Mark Zuckerberg’s public attempt to put him on the spot by asking Xi to name his child in 2015. This is clearly not a man who permits himself to be manipulated by anyone, for any reason.