中国 & 香港

[matrixmann]

As protests in Hong Kong became a steady topic in Western media in the recent weeks again:
Let's propose a critical question - what do the protesters actually aim for? Why do they fight China's taking-over of the territory?
All of that what they criticize to happen from China's side of things has been formally recorded in a couple of documents made long time ago between the British government and the PRC as part of returning Hong Kong to China which it once was taken from by them as a colony.
So, with fighting that, who do the protesters think will maintain their province instead and make the laws for it if China's reign is not desired?
So this can only mean targeting a return under the British crown.
Think about it...
People fighting for staying a colony!

Of course they won't mention this in your allegedly peace-, freedom- and democracy-loving Western media - as it's like a recently-created new form of sport to shoot darts at China whenever a possibility shows up to do so (especially for America under Trump).
Talking about a former colony actually wanting to stay a colony (judging by the deeds of the activists on the streets), this would be a very strange topic to report about with a subtle psychological undertone of joy.

Comments

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Of course they are not proposing returning to being a British colony. That is a ridiculous assertion and impossible anyway.

[matrixmann]

"of course"?
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
On one hand, somewhere I caught it that old colonial flags (single ones) have been seen on the events already.

But, not waging that too serious - what the heck is this supposed to be about then?
The protesters don't want what Britain and China once agreed on decades ago, even though it's legitimate and a reconstruction of circumstances as they were before ca. the middle of the 19th century. (There even was a UN resolution before supporting the return of the territory to China.)
Do they want to be a "state" on their own? Forget that, they can't even feed their people on their own... And the harbor can barely drop enough to achieve that too...

So, what is this otherwise about if they don't want any of the integration measures of China (there's fighting about literally anything that China wants to change in HK these days)? This means "we don't want to be part of you". Which is, these days, a breach with all international agreements that have been made about Hongkong's fate.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

No it means they don’t want to be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, which forbids any criticism of it and enforces that with gulags. They are using the old colonial flag partly ironically. They want to keep the rule of law and freedom of speech and to have an elected government. That’s reasonable. Not sure what you mean about HK not ‘surviving on its own’. It always paid its way and fed its residents even when communist China was starving 4 million of its citizens to death. In fact the relationship was the other way around. Trade via HK was a vital source of income for communist China. HK is not West Berlin, it’s more like Singapore.

[matrixmann]

The Communist Party of China exists now for like forever. Mao's successor in fact made the contracts with GB, granting them 50 years of doing a different economical system than the rest of China because he was rather fond of the idea that local areas can do customizations in terms of how they organize their economy, unlike the previous agenda until then which centralizedly wanted to tell everyone from Beijing what they have to do.
So there was plenty of time before to get into trouble with the Communist Party if it simply was about their rule in general.
The general concept of socialism was never dropped, just the course of how it shall look like was changed. So it's actually on the table for long what's supposed to come there.

The problem I have with the argumentation with the "famines" and "letting people starve to death via gulags" in Asia that I have is the Western chain of arguments tends to ignore a couple of facts from that time and mostly looks down from its present situation of overproduction. 1) What did China look like after WWII, after the Japanese occupiers left it? (The Japanese fascists treated everyone like insects and as slave workers which have to supply literally everything to the Japanese territory, much like the German Nazis treated Eastern Europe. With China, Japan even has a long-lasting feud anyway.); 2) Like Russia after the October Revolution, China took the course to move from deepest feudalism into the industrial age. So the overall supply situation with food and goods was like during the Middle Ages here in Europe.; 3) Were the struck in between by bad harvests or extreme climate, independently of the political situation?

As evil as it is, take away the globalized trade from the Western countries, add in some bits of the current climate extremes (like the lack of rains in Central Europe) and quickly the wealthy nations of the West get into a comparable situation.
If they couldn't cover up the losses from their own lands with stuff they import from countries around the globe, they'd be as fucked too.

HK, except from the harbor, must be somewhat a tax haven too as the density of millionaires on the territory is said to be incredibly high. (What can you make an income with as a state otherwise if you're not that large?) Besides that, it's poverty quota is calculated with 20% - nowhere else in China it's so high. - Doesn't really speak for a widespread prosperity.
Other than that, on a territory of 1106 km² it has to supply more than 7 and a half million people, making it ca. six and a half thousand people living on a single square kilometer.
How many ships were they supposed to manage to feed all that people if they wouldn't receive any supply from the mainland anymore? (Territory for growing anything on their own is very limited due to that huge population density.)
Besides that, ships don't transport electricity. Any metropolis without electricity is pretty much dead, thrown back into the Stone Age.
Just a comparison to the data: Luxembourg in Europe is 2.5 times larger than HK territory, but with a population of 600.000+ inhabitants.
And unlike the situation with Crimea, HK has no-one firmly on its hand who's expected to be interested enough in the province to build supply lines from a different mainland to keep the delivery of necessary goods up in order to prevent the people fro starving.

So, from looking at the larger picture, I'd be very careful with such statements/implications that the dwarf will always be able to sustain itself and the giant is too dumb and too full of evil to take care of its citizens...
I'd always ask for the enhanced conditions "How was that possible?".

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Well even during my childhood in Hong Kong there was a big power station there. I’m sure it hasn’t been demolished.

[matrixmann]

Oh, you lived there for a while?

I wouldn't guess they demolished such things...
Even though - and this should apply to a lot of areas of East Asia these days -, with that many people that live there these days, logistics should require a lot of structural planning, otherwise it's gonna end in big misery.
I don't know about which time you speak if you mean the past - just saying, the growth in population adds a bit spice to the matter if it comes down to securing the daily necessary supply.
Might be that I have a wrong imagination about that, but in my understanding, I don't think this task is that easy anymore like it used to be in the past to just cover it all through only one harbor. No matter how big.
(Btw, I don't think in money here - money you can't eat. I think in necessary goods.)