But you’re talking two different things. Sure, businesses will want China as a market - a place to sell their products. But seeing China as an investment opportunity is different. That’s putting your money into China in the hopes that you will be able to get more money back out at some point in the future. That requires a much higher level of confidence in the stability of the government and its ongoing willingness to abide by laws and contracts.
Any car company would be willing to sell a thousand cars to country, take the money, and walk away. But building a car factory means you have to have trust. You don’t want to build your factory and then have the country nationalize it on you.
You are conflating economic reform with political reform. The economic landscape had opened up enormously. The political landscape had not. Leaders have realized the interfering with daily life stuff is expensive and counterproductive and have backed off in most cases, but the actual political structure had not changed much at all.
My personal take is that the Chinese government has not become capitalist even though China has an increasingly capitalist economy. The government doesn’t see capitalism as a goal the way governments do in most western countries. They see the capitalist economy more as an asset. It’s something the Chinese government sees as useful because it’s producing resources for them. In a sense, the Chinese government sees capitalism the way the Saudi government sees oil. It’s valuable but it’s something that serves them not something they serve.
One of the most fascinating things about this to me is that it seems fairly clean and clear case of regression from strongly democratic society to a more authoritarian one.
I understand there are complications based on China’s relaxing policies noted above, but it’ll be interesting to see in the future how the Hong Kong society evolves as its freedoms are slowly removed rather than increased.
I’m labouring under the assumption (right or wrong) that one follows the other. More economic freedom leads to more political freedom in the long run. The reverse also being true. And 2047 is a long way away. That’s at least a full generation away from new leadership and I’m inclined to think the new leadership will be more progressive politically as well as economically.
This is closer to what I mean. The Chinese government is not going to turn their golden goose into foie gras. I see something more like the cormorantswho fish with a collar around their necks so the handler can keep the big fish.
Sure it does. Why would you buy property in HK, or invest in a company there if you think the HK government or private HK businesses may be doing the bidding of the Chinese government instead of concentrating on making a profit? Yes, greed doesn’t have a memory, but investors don’t want to accept the risk of dealing with a social instability and government interference without greater reward.
Ah yes. That is not a great assumption. Indeed, we have cases where at least some people believe a strong hand has been essential to prosperity (say, Singapore) and plenty of fairly free places that are financial basket cases. The truth is we don’t have a large enough sample size to know the ins and outs of prosperity and freedom. But thus far China hasn’t made many moves toward a democratic system and I don’t see why they would suddenly change course.
A good analogy. But it would be a mistake for the cormorant to start thinking the fisherman regards it as a junior partner in the business. The fisherman has no more regard for the cormorant than he does for the fish. The fisherman sees the bird as valuable but only because it’s serving his interests by catching fish for him. If the situation were to change, the fisherman wouldn’t hesitate to eat the bird.
If Chinese businessmen start thinking Chinese government officials place a high value on them and they can demand a share of political power, they’ll discover that they’re just cormorants to those officials.
I heard a news report that the protestors are planning to take over government buildings if their demand for the Hong Kong Chief Executive to step down isn’t met. That would give the Chinese government the excuse they need to crack down on them violently.
Say what you want about China’s crackdown on Tianeman Square. No matter how authoritarian, brutal, and repressive it made the Chinese government look, it worked. It got the protests to stop and the leaders were subsequently jailed and/or killed. I fear for those protestors.
If the alternative is to have uprisings all over the Mainland, the goose gets it. The Times article on this notes that the leadership of China do not want to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union.
Financial centers are a lot easier to move than big factories. If the bigwigs feel at risk, or cannot get top level employees, or feel that they are losing money because censorship of their internet traffic is costing them precious microseconds in doing trades, they are out of there.
The compromise would seem to be sacrificing the current leadership of Hong Kong in the hope that some of the protesters will feel they’ve accomplished something and go home.
Which the Chinese leadership has not seemed to care too much about in the past.
I do not know if you can really use “strongly democratic” to describe Hong Kong in the period immediately before and after the transfer. It was socially and economically “open”, but the political system was ***not ***at the service of the will of the people.
Which past? Certainly, back when Tiananmen happened, they didn’t care. But in the last 5-8 years, I think there’s been a general feeling across the world that it’s better to not harp on China’s doing unduly since they were headed the right direction economically besides also growing as a sizeable market to invest in. For example, the most we ever did when they got overly annoying about trying to hack every big American business was to issue a polite letter asking them to be a little less obvious about it. For the most part, no one has actually tried to rebuke China in any significant way, and probably a large part of that is because we know that countries which run on “face” are actually very concerned with their image - so much so that you really need to save any rebuke whatsoever as a nuclear option.
If you can do something to diminish the view of China, globally, and don’t provide a way for China to sweep it under the rug - e.g. by declaring the protesters as “terrorists” - I think it’s very possible that you could push them towards a compromise. But you would need to be ever so gentle about how you bring them to the table. Arguing over “human rights” isn’t the right way. China loses out by recognizing that humans have basic rights, since that could encourage people in the mainland. But if you make it a purely legal/financial issue, I think you might be able to get the to accept talking about it.
BBC TV is reporting they say the Chief Exec has until the end of today to resign or else they’ll move in.
My heart’s with the protesters, but the smart money’s on Beijing on this one. And the authorities are getting so nervous that they’re inspecting pigeon anuses now.
I’m not arrogant enough to make predictions, especially since I know almost nothing about Hong Kong.
For the past few decades, Beijing has been able to tell its people, “Don’t question our power or our authority, EVER. Do what we tell you to do. So long as you agree to that, we’ll avoid being TOO oppressive or heavy-handed, and we’ll promise you greater prosperity than you’ve ever known.”
MOST Chinese citizens have found that a fair proposition (indeed, millions of people throughout the world would probably go for such an agreement, provided the government actually delivered on the prosperity). After all, most mainland CHinese had never known prosperity OR freedom until quite recently.
The difference with Hong Kong, of course, is that unlike most mainlanders, the people of Hong Kong have long been USED to having BOTH freedom and prosperity. Beijing CAN’T promise the people of Hong Kong anything they haven’t already enjoyed for a long time.
So, how can Beijing get Hong Kong in line? I’m not sure, but I see only two possibilities:
Crack down hard on Hong Kong. Brute force often works.
Play the nationalist card. There COULD still be an untapped sense of nationalism and patriotism among the Chinese of Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong leader has made a last-minute concession to hold talks with the protesters but insists he will not step down. It wouldn’t make much difference at all if he did step down, because he’d just be replaced by another Beijing man.