Do people in Hong Kong, a huge number of whom have been actively protesting in recent days, believe they will be free - free in their personal lives, and free from China’s hand - indefinitely or just until 2047 when the agreement made with the UK expires? According to that Wikipedia article, at least, the expectation is that China will permit “Hong Kong’s previous capitalist system and its way of life (to) remain unchanged” only until that time. I assume even the protestors accept that their way of life must end in 28 years.
If China now cracks down in a Tiananmenesque way on the protestors there, would any other nation dare intervene? I doubt militarily, but there are other forms of war and Trump would love it if China was sanctioned a la Iran, or if China’s customers felt compelled to find new suppliers.
My WAG is that the vast majority of Hong Kongers know that Beijing doesn’t even plan to wait until then to “do its thing” - it’s been “doing its thing” ever since 1997, gradually. It’s not like Hong Kongers are free now and suddenly won’t be anymore in 2047 - their freedoms have been, and continuously will be, eroded.
It’s not the difference between a frog suddenly going from cold to water, it’s an increase of a degree at a time.
I don’t know a lot about it, but my impression is the UK has basically taken a hands off approach (if I’m wrong someone please correct me).
A lot of nations in the region do not like China’s influence. Individually they are weak but together they’d be strong. Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, southeast asia, etc. combined have a GDP of maybe 12 trillion at least.
I’m secretly hoping the protests have the effect of letting mainland China know that unified protest can be effective. If China backs down, then the world sees that unified protest can work against an authoritarian regime. So I really hope the world stands behind Hong Kong, but with Chinas economic clout I doubt that happens sadly.
The residents of Hong Kong should push as much as possible right now, while they still have some leverage and some strength. From what I read, many know that this is an incremental thing and that if they knuckle under now, the next transgression will be larger and swifter, something too big to be overcome. China will try that anyway, but HK residents have a chance to get a real tactical victory here, not just a short delay in a long loss. IMO. YMMV.
Hong Kongese are pissed. They know they are fucked and trying to get the best deal they can.
The UK sold HK down the proverbial river. Long story short, the UK could have put HK on the path to democracy post WW2, and instead treated it like a colony. When it got closer to the 1997 handover and formulation of the Basic Law, the UK suddenly started making noises on democracy and self-rule. The Chinese basically said “you didn’t do jack for a couple of decades, so nuh-uh”
The Hong Kongese have a mutually unintelligible language apart for Mandarin (so do a lot of other Chinese), although the written language is reasonably similar). They have their own culture or call it sub-culture that is very distinct from Mainland China. They have always been at the outer reaches of the Empire.
It’s been an international port and city since the British came in. There is bi-lingual education. Quite different from even current day leading Chinese international cities such as Shanghai.
On the face of it, being able to extradite criminals to face justice for crimes committed abroad seems pretty commonsense. That said, there is a great fear based on evidence that if there was extradition to China it could easily be corrupted to involve business and political disputes. There have been a number of high profile cases of publishers and a billionaire disappearing.
I lived in HK in the 80’s and again in the 90’s. They are Chinese but they are not. They were a UK colony, but never British. They want to keep their language and culture. They only need to look to Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchurians and Uighurs to know they will be overwhelmed. It may be Horatio at the Bridge, but up to 20% of Hong Kong citizens are taking to largely peaceful protest to take a stand. Salute.
The protesters in Hong Kong are appealing to the leaders of the G20 nations to “liberate” them. I find this very interesting.
Now that Trump’s USA seems to have abandoned being the champion of any ‘freedom’ that doesn’t benefit it directly, freedom-loving people must place their hopes elsewhere. The European Union, Japan, and Canada (among others) are being asked to re-light the torch that Trump pissed on.
It’s also more than a tad ironic that among the entreaties placed by the protesters were appeals to Russia. Hey, it may work. I can see Putin seizing the chance to support democracy (so long as it’s outside of Russia), thereby allowing himself and his countrymen the chance to spout platitudes, appear progressive, and curry favour with the Don.
The language transition has already started and there is no stopping it. About seventy percent of the K-12 schools already have switched to teaching classes in Mandarin rather than Cantonese. Many older Hong Kongese understand Mandarin, but cannot speak it or cannot speak it well. By the time those in school now reach adulthood and have children of their own, Mandarin will be the spoken language of Hong Kong even at home. Gramma and Grandpa will stay speak Cantonese to each other, but that generation will soon pass.
I was going to say doubtful, but really the answer is no.
Definitely not militarily. I guess we shall see if any nation (including the US) breaches China’s self proclaimed moratorium on talking about the Hong Kong protests at the G-20 this weekend. I’m…not sanguine this will happen. I hope it does, though. The people of Hong Kong deserve to have a voice.
I think the people of Hong Kong know they are screwed. China has been pushing things to tear down the one party, two systems thing for years now. It’s just that most people haven’t been paying attention. They have, basically, infiltrated and even colonized large swaths of Hong Kong, the government and every other part of it. They have worked to erode the freedoms and rights of the people of Hong Kong and, I guess the word would be normalize it with respect to the mainland. Mainland China doesn’t want the example of two separate systems, though honestly in some ways it would work best for them wrt any sort of idea they have to bring Taiwan back into the fold. But I don’t think they look at it that way.
So, whether it happens now or in 2047, eventually Hong Kong will basically just be exactly like the mainland. And there isn’t a lot anyone can do about that, short of the CCP collapsing.
Yep, the language transition isn’t limited to HK. It’s true for other major cities in China like Shanghai. Strange concept. On one hand, it is changing the very core of a local culture for 1.3 billion commonality, on the other hand, there are 1.3 billion people that for the first time in recorded history have a common spoken language.
In the 1980’s, most of China outside of the big cities didn’t really understand nor speak Mandarin. It is astounding just how fast a TV in every village has changed Mandarin skills and at the same time unavoidably declined local culture. I certainly remember being in villages across SW China and struggling to find locals that could understand, much less speak Mandarin. And this was in Han Chinese areas - forget the minority areas where the native language is not a “dialect” but a separate language family. Now, even those minority areas got their TV experience.
Same thing happened to the Chinese in Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek and his Mandarin speaking marauders invaded the country in 1949. He had the local leaders of the country slaughtered and forced the education of the children to be done in Mandarin. However, Taiwanese is still hanging on as an “at home” language even today.
Taiwanese is hanging on but at the same time disappearing. It was great when Lee Teng-hui (spelling?) held his first press conference as President of Taiwan, he did it in Taiwanese. While Taiwanese language has had a bit of a resurgence in the last decade or so, I can remember Taiwanese families in the 1980’s in Taipei speaking Mandarin in the home because studies showed that kids in Mandarin speaking households did better academically. Ancedotal for sure. Caveated that one would expect kids in Mandarin speaking homes to excel in Mandarin education.
I don’t know when it ended, but certainly in parts of Taiwan thru the 1980’s, Taiwanese speaking kids in schools were fined, had corporal punishment and humiliated for speaking Taiwanese. This included kids who effectively had never been exposed to Mandarin before entering kindergarten/first grade.
Be that as it may, back to Hong Kong. Cantonese is fading but not sure how many generations it will take before it becomes a minority language in the home and on the streets to Mandarin. Again, if I harken back to my first time in HK in the early 1980’s, finding Mandarin speakers was difficult. Now probably anyone under 40 maybe 50 can speak passable Mandarin. Some sound quite polished and some with a thick accent.
Protesters have stormed and occupied the Legislative Council building. :eek: This is going to end very badly. I think Beijing is going to use this as pretext deny further reforms and possible roll back Hong Kong’s autonomy. If Lam is forced out of office it’ll be because Beijing is exasperated with her failure to control to situation, not a victory for the pro-democracy camp.
I greatly fear this will end badly. I predict a massive crackdown with or without bloodshed. China will do as it likes with Hong Kong and that will be that.
China will do as it wants; aye. But they don’t have to do it loudly or quickly or in a showy manner to make their point. They can do it slowly, quietly; one facially-recognized protestor at a time.
ETA: They are even setting the stage right now, with the Chinese government officials decrying the violence… violence which the Chinese government will use at the first opportunity to permanently silence their opponents.