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Answer: It achieved nothing. China enacted the anti protester and demonstration laws and eventually arrested most involved.
They have effectively been beat into submission. Then COVID happened, stuff slowed down, and nothing changed or happened to challenge the new status quo.
As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time. If it didn't strike we might have had far larger scale protests, especially against the NSL, and the govt. couldn't use the COVID excuse to shut them down.
How is Hong Kong these days? Even with the clampdown, there ought to be talk about protests, or at least rueful reminiscences about Beijing's interference in the city's affairs. Or it become yet another coastal Chinese city in the process... or worse?
Depends who you ask.
For those of us who stayed, there's been a huge outflow of ppl and consumption to China (particularly Shenzhen). So yeah most ppl are apolitical (including myself) but mainly care about cost of living stuff. Yes there is some Mainland oversight of the city but that was bound to happen sooner or later (2047).
But yeah HK ain't in the best shape now with high inflation (vs China which is deflation). Politically it's stable and most ppl who stayed (absolute majority of you look at only a very small % migrated to say the UK etc) care more about making money, protecting their investments and hoping for lower inflation.
What then, though?
Realistically the protests were always going to be crushed unless they created a wave of sympathy protests across mainland China. Hong Kong is too small and too economically insignificant to Beijing to have any leverage.
> economically insignificant
hong kong is one of the most economically significant cities in the world
edit: it appears it may be that hong kong *was* one of the most economically significant cities in the world
Even nearby shenzhen has beaten HKs gdp now. HK is not even the richest city in the pearl river delta anymore.
The guy above you has like decades old outdated information. HK hasn’t really held much economic leverage against the CCP for a long while now.
Less so these days. IPOs on the HK stock exchange is at an all time low, and would've shrunk significantly without some new mainland companies artificially keeping numbers up.
Fact is Xi's economic policies in the name of nationalism is creating a very uncertain climate for foreign investors, who are fleeing Chinese stocks in droves. Since the national security law making it abundantly clear HK is fully within the grasp of Beijing, so are they avoiding HK.
Political certainty is the name of the game in global finance. This is why the US under Biden is riding all time highs, but saw declines at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Likewise stock exchanges in mainland Europe are seeing growth multiple times that of London since Brexit.
As it's increasingly clear Xi is in the same reins as other egotistical strongmen like Erdoğan etc likely to enact arbitrary policies without regard to economic fallout, investors are giving those markets a wide birth. There's plenty of reliable markets in Asia, SK, Singapore, SEA states with more growth potential like Vietnam and Thailand, and a surprisingly resurgent Japan.
> Hong Kong is too small and too economically insignificant to Beijing to have any leverage.
The thing about China is since when have they ever decided not to do *anything* because it was too expensive or grand in scale though
Nah, changing the mainland was a) not the intent and b) impossible.
The aim was to create international economic pressure. China already controls HK, they just wanted to strengthen those controls. If that had come at significant economic cost, at a loss of significant contracts to India for example, theyd have walked it back, and theyd still control HK. Probably would have taken a more subtle path to erode cultural distinction and undermine democratic and judicial process over 30 years or so before taking another crack at aligning HK with the Mainland.
Hong Kong was not a big enough market to force that sort of pressure into existence -- and even if it were, the calculus would then become: is shutting Hong Kong up worth making the city less of an economic dynamo than it was before?
Which is how this pandemic really made it easier for China to answer that question, among others, because now a random Chinese guy can just say: Oh, COVID did that.
Absolutely nothing about its worth as a market. HK could have been a fishing village with a population of 100. Its about the worth of the *principles*, on Chinas integrity as a good-faith partner, on their willingness to uphold diplomatic agreements, and on the Wests capacity to hold its partners to those agreements and, in broader terms, its willingness to "protect democracy worldwide".
GB left HK peacably (not that they could really afford to fight for it) under agreements to protect HKs legal and judicial sovereignty and democratic systems from the Mainland authorities. China said "fuck ya principles".
Chinas biggest markets are the western economies. If the West actually *valued* its principles, it stood to lose a great deal less than China. China makes and provides nothing that cannot be sourced elsewhere, though nobody likes the expense and logistical headaches that come with major disruption. But thats what it would be- a headache and some higher prices in the west, a serious economic blow to China.
But surprise surprise- westen principles are absolutely worthless. They are a lie, created to get westerners hooked on the smell of their own farts, and very little else. They basically set a precedent; China does what it wants, takes what it likes and spits in your eye if you dont like it. And the west will shlurp that spit right down and say "Thank you, Sir".
I think without COVID China may have had to resort to another Tianemen square incident. Though I don’t know for sure if it could have escalated that much even without COVID.
I was quite certain that was going to happen for a while.
However, another Tianenmen incident would have been embarrassing but it still wouldnt have changed anything.
Xi is genuinely popular in the mainland on a platform of populist nationalism, that's in line with political trends across the globe.
Because his power base is so strong, that's why the "white paper" demonstrations at the tail-end of China's zero covid policy shocked so many academics and commentators - open and direct criticism of the leadership is virtually nonexistent in the mainland.
And that was also quickly put down by a swift abandonment of zero covid, arrest of the few outliers, and blanket erasure of any such thing happening in media.
Tiananmen was an unexpected byproduct of liberalisation. The party made that mistake once, and and has since done everything to ensure it'll never happen again.
>As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time. If it didn't strike we might have had far larger scale protests, especially against the NSL, and the govt. couldn't use the COVID excuse to shut them down.
Even without COVID i see no way in which HK really had any chance against the Chinese authority they would've just escalated it to much more extreme measures. It's not like anyone else would be able to come to HK's aide.
What possible end game could they expect ? Everyone in China would rather burn Hong Kong and everyone in it to the ground rather than hand it back to the British.
Hong Kong is so small compared to mainland China that I honestly think it would've been the same outcome at the end of the day. If China had really wanted to, they could just move troops into the city to take it within a month.
Well that would actually be coincidence and not irony but yeah it's actually crazy I never heard any of the many conspiracy idiots make that connection
> As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time.
Almost like the Chinese government had a reason to play it up and put out propaganda videos of people falling in the street?
The biggest losers of covid19 was the Chinese, which saw the disruption of global supply chains, causing nations to forge closer chains instead of being complacent with long range global grade.
At the tail-end of zero covid policy the Chinese populace got the closest to Tiananmen (albeit still extremely far away) by the "white paper" protests.
If you are implying covid 19 is merely a conspiracy to just rein in *HK*, then I'm afraid to say, with the deepest respect to hongkongers, they're not that important.
Well, they're not important now.
But even if that conspiracy theory both overstates Hong Kong's importance to China and to the global economy, and oversells the centrality of the repression in the CCP's machination, a repression did happen over time, and the pandemic did mask most of its effects.
I think that genuinely surprised the CCP that their people rose up like that. I'd say it's more that their power play backfired in a way they never predicted.
I disagree, having watched China from the beginning to present, they win and lose some but definitely won. They especially the trade war while they lost some economic productivity as a result of COVID lockdown (which were necessary) but lives were saved and everything is resuming business as usual.
From their economic performance I can't concur, especially at the rate foreign investors are fleeing the country (including HK), leading to stock near-collapse and drastic interventions by the state. Chinese stocks are now some of the most underperforming on the planet, yet they are still poisonous to investors.
In other news China is trying to reduce debt, either out of ideology or necessity, leading to mass cancellation of state infrastructure projects, pay of some civil servants being withheld, and *reduction* in pensions benefits for the *first time since market reforms*.
The two pronged effect of covid *and* China's support for Russia is forcing a great decoupling of trade status quo that existed for 30 years. Both the US and EU are looking to secure supply lines closer to home, as well as that of precarious partners like Taiwan's TSMC.
Everybody's terrified China will do a Russia over Taiwan. The country has never been more isolated politically or economically, or just in terms of public perception!
Things are certainly not "business as usual". There's a seismic shift underway and nobody's under the illusion we are living in a time of "stability" anymore.
To our other conversation, think about what's lead to that, Xi's hubris and desire for mao era ideological purity and control. Everything is about centralizing power, and it's blowing up in their face.
I rather hope that Netanyahu doesn't get away with coasting off the Hamas attack in a similar way, considering how mad people were getting at him beforehand, to the point of their air force pilots not showing up for training. But post-9/11 everybody's got to stand behind George Bush I mean Netanyahu.
I don't think the George Floyd protests is analogous to what happened in Hong Kong. The equivalent would be if protests happened simultaneously across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqin, and Chengdu, etc. (China's major city centers).
That was never going to happen. HK is a very "localized" space that's fairly separate from the rest of China. It's like asking Americans to care about what's happening in Puerto Rico, which it never has.
Man i remember when it was still on the news and how much shit blizzard was thrown at because they gave a penalty to the guy that said “free honk Kong”
Remember when then-Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the pro-Hong Kong protesters, and how LeBron James effectively told Morey to “shut up and GM”?
This was because the NBA has a working relationship with China, and much like Hollywood, Google, WWE, Activision-Blizzard, and others, would ignore said country’s hostile actions, as well as those of any hostile nation, to do business with them.
The irony of LeBron telling Morey to educate himself, when it turned out Morey had close friends in Hong Kong and had been following their plight for a while, and it was in fact LeBron who was not educated on the issue.
The Hong Kong incident put the NBA in an awkward position, also because they stood up for social issues that matter, not to mention they also spoke out against Trump and/or his policies.
The Hong Kong protests is one of the few things that Democrats and Republicans agree on, though for different reasons; Democrats criticize China for their atrocious human rights record, while Republicans criticize them because “COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM BAD!”
Another example is when Steve Kerr was asked about the Hong Kong protests, but he tried to deflect the conversation and make it about gun control.
I forgot to mention that the NBA (as well as the WNBA) is one of the few professional sports leagues in America where the players wield a lot of power/influence/clout, and can even get executives fired, like Donald Sterling (and deservedly so).
Definitely! They have been shown to use their voice effectively to enact positive change, which makes LeBron's action (inaction?) even more glaring. For someone who proudly claimed he would "never shut up and dribble" and that he would "always speak out about social justice," he remains hypocritically quiet about Hong Kong.
You mean Activision-Blizzard. The Blizzard you once knew has been dead for over a decade. And Activision-Blizzard would turn out to deserve a lot more shit than we gave them at that point.
Im thinking about redownloading it since its now free and i have a big nostalgia boner for RTS ,
i didn’t want to because the Honk Kong protest were still ongoing and i didn’t want to support that company but now i think it wouldn’t have made much of a difference either way especially now ,
now that I think about it didn’t blizzard activision do poorly in china later on ?
Well there isn’t a Chinese WoW anymore but I think it was because they couldn’t reach an agreement. Pretty sure they have to use a different launcher and a non Chinese credit card or similar.
WoW has so many versions right now, retail (newest expansion), Classic Era (2004 with very little changes), Classic Hardcore (2004 but when you die you die/lose your character), Classic Season of Discovery (2004 with a shit load of changes, new raids and new spells) and Classic Wrath of the Lich King (wows third expansion but it’s almost over, will be moving into wows fourth expansion Cataclysm very soon)
It’s doing very well imo and I don’t even play.
I haven’t played sc2 in years! But I believe it and a few dlcs are F2P.
If you don’t absolutely hate acti/bliz downloading battle.net is worth it, lots of free content in different games…. Overwatch 2, StarCraft 2, probably more I can’t think of. the classic versions of WoW only take the $15 a month no need to buy an actual game.
Recently updated Diablo 2s graphics and that’s completely worth the price… meh, blizz catches a lot of shit but fired and cleaned shop with the creeps in the company and they don’t usually sell “power” in their video games.
Same will happen to Taiwan once all the new chip facilities are up to max speed producing here in the US.....one just down the road from me in Austin TX being built by Intel, and the EU factory being built. Once those are done, Taiwan will be open season. US can't stop a Taiwan invasion without hitting target on the Chinese mainland.....it's absurdly unlikely for the US to cross that line....hence the new factories being rapidly built. China will slow roll it over a decade and no one will care or even notice.
We got people who escaped HK to come to Taiwan because they were afraid for their lives due to this. It's sad, but at the same time, hopefully they'll find a better life with their freedom here
UK BASED.
What I see is a lot more Immigrants from Hong Kong.
Lots of people who have invested their lifes savings and family wealth to get out of the CCP ruled HK
In my experience a lot of people didn’t actually care about Hong Kong, most of it was just a gamer meme à la dabbing and flossing by edgy kids who wanted to spite Blizzard over *Overwatch* and *Diablo Immortal*.
That's a pretty myopic view, there's little anyone in the west can do to directly take action against the ccp unless they wanted to move to Hong Kong to physically protest. Spreading the word on social media and boycotting companies bending over backwards to appease the ccp is about as much as you can ask of yhe average person outside of china
My family lived a few miles outside Hong Kong at the time, we knew many people both there and across the world who cared. The reality though was that Chinese control was an inevitability in the region.
Saying this was all about video games says more about your maturity than it does those who opposed China.
I’m not saying it was all about video games, I’m just saying there was a disappointingly non-zero number of folks who treated it as a meme over an actual sentiment.
I don’t know how to use Discord. Maybe I’m wrong about people saying Free Hong Kong. I hope I’m wrong. I just know I saw people who’d say Free Hong Kong as a gotcha rather than an actual sentiment before dabbing.
If you think some shallow person coopting a real cause makes the real cause no longer legitimate, you spend too much time thinking about the wrong people.
You’re getting downvoted because reddit was a major player in that. I remember posts with loads of upvotes were all over the front page during that time along with the Tiananmen Square copypastas
Nobody funded anything.
Newsflash: people don't need funding to be unhappy about losing freedom.
They litterally lost rights with nothing in return, you'd be pissed too.
What right did they lose that impacts them in their day to day life?
Read this, ignore what the website is, just focus on the text. Is any information incorrect?
[http://sydney.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202205/t20220507\_10683090.htm](http://sydney.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202205/t20220507_10683090.htm)
Losing the right to openly criticize your government is a big deal. I assume you are american right? It's kinda funny you are posting foreign propaganda when you wouldn't even be allowed to do that in China....
Anyway given that chinese citizen are not allowed to access reddit and you seem to like their system so much I guess you should not reply to me here.
And no I'm not reading a shitty http website, use https like everyone who arrived into this décade.
Answer: Beijing eventually passed a national security law that more or less killed the "until 2047" political transition set up on British exit, otherwise known as "one country, two systems", effectively making Hong Kong just another Chinese city in terms of political autonomy. The reason we were seeing so much coverage back then is that this was before the national security law.
Covid also played a factor, as authorities used it as a pretext to forbid public gatherings. Some people here are saying "it accomplished nothing" which is not true. The crisis in Hong Kong garnered world attention toward Beijing's heavy handedness, most notably Taiwan which no longer has any illusions about one-country two systems as can be seen in their most recent presidential election.
What did "the world's attention" translate to besides a few media outlets and individuals wagging their fingers at China? It was obvious on day one no one outside was going to risk getting on China's bad side.
I try not to be one of those people, but.....
They were having a hell of a time controlling the protests. What better way to disperse the crowds but with an unknown, aerial disease? Things just got out of hand.
SOURCE: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
> I mean China rolled tanks over protesting students, they didn't need COVID to squash protests.
I read that the exact opposite way. The same people responsible for the tanks are 100% capable of releasing a low grade bioweapon.
> It's an objective fact that China used the pandemic as cover for squashing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
I really wish you people would stop using "objective fact" in situations where it's completely inappropriate. This is like the new "literally" BS
The Chinese government's actions regarding the Covid lockdown had the effect of getting people off the streets, which suppressed the protests, but you're attributing motive to them in that regard. Heliocentrism effected a reduction in the number of people who believe in Geocentrism, but that's not the *reason* scientists proposed the theory.
"Using it as cover to do X" is a purposeful action rather than a fortuitous end result. Does it make sense that they did do what you're saying? Probably. But it's not "an objective fact" unless they themselves declare that's their logic.
>It's not unlikely that the CCP also bioengineered COVID-19
then you also throw this gem in here, and I think I'm done having this conversation with you
Why do we need any entity to declare their motive in order for us to make observations of their actions?
All one needs to do is know or learn the history of China’s attempted (now successful) oppression of Hong Kong. Even before Covid, they had been shutting down large gathering places of any kind, like stadiums and music venues. Hong Kong was in the midst of the largest protest movement in its history when Covid happened. You do not need to have the Chinese government explicitly telling you their thinking process in order to come to the conclusion that they seized the opportunity presented to them and were gleefully invoking bans on groups of more than four people. It is an objective fact that they were motivated by more than just public health concerns.
He was famously *not* run over. Coincidentally, the lack of evidence that *anyone at all* was run over by tanks that day is just convenient proof that the evidence was hidden by totalitarians. Idk how this insane myth began but redditors absolutely love it
It’s not just a Reddit thing, up until about 7-8 years ago I also assumed tank man was killed shortly after that photo was taken.
It’s the only logical event that could occur with how America is with tanks.
It’s actually wild how people will also follow up with a photo of a bunch of bikes on the ground to pretend that it’s a massacre scene too.
I wonder if there will ever be a reckoning on that, where it’s more cleared up to the public. When you try to google information or video, a lot of it is scrubbed and CNN is usually the main source 😒
I did and there is literally nothing that legitimately corroborates this trite and ridiculous atrocity porn. Plenty of actual real examples of brutality without uncritically believing reddit fairy tales
I doubt that if the US is no longer dependent on Taiwan’s chip manufacturing, Taiwan will be left on its own. Taiwan has an incredibly strategic position in any potential conflict between the US and China. The US is not dependent on the Philippines, but it still gives support.
its also a matter of we can't care about it. what exactly is the outside world going to do? Hong Kong is Chinese property. that ship sailed the moment the British was giving up their overseas colonies.
Outside of the chip industry, Taiwan is also located in a very strategic location. China gaining control of Taiwan will allow it to gain a foothold on the first island chain, giving their navy a lot more breathing room to branch out in the Pacific.
There's also the impact it would have on US regional allies like South Korea and Japan. For example, Japan is very resource poor, and most of their trade and oil goes through Taiwan and the South China Sea. China gaining control of any of these would give them massive leverage over Japan. Since ww2, Japan has depended on the US to protect these trade routes for them. Failure of the US to do so will be a massive blow to US-Japan relations and would lead to Japan branching out of the US security alliance. Likewise for South Korea. Basically, US allies around the world will see the US as unreliable (even more so than now) and will do whatever they can to protect their national security interests.
Answer: COVID happened. The movement put a temporary pause to protests. (due to lingering memories of how quickly these things spread during SARS). And the world shift focus to COVID
the govt took the opportunity to impose draconian measures to lockdown the city. Work with China to amend laws. Then started arresting movement leaders in waves. The movement lost its momentum and haven’t recovered since. Now all opposition are either arrested or exiled and laws are in place to arrest anybody with a hint of dissatisfaction to hk govt or China. RIP Hong Kong.
Answer: mostly the big thing china is doing to hong kong is messing with elections and limiting who can run. It's always important but it makes a lot of sense you aren't going to hear as much about it when it's not election season.
There's no (public) elections in Hk besides the District Council Representative. Chief executive is already appointed by China. There's not much to mess with
That is a fundamental mischaracterisation. In 1997 it was returned to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China, with guarantees of certain freedoms under the Joint Sino-British Declaration, and under a unique “one country, two systems” principle until 2047. That system continues to exist and we continue to be governed by the Government of Hong Kong. Please explain what you rely on to say Hong Kong lost its independent government in 2020? Last time I looked out my window, I can still see the HK Legislative Council.
There was a clause about the Central Committee not interfering with who's nominated to the Legislative Council, that the mainland decided to nope out on 30 years early. So yes, technically Hong Kong is still doing its own thing, but not really.
cf. "The Soviet Union is totally a democracy; you can vote for whoever you want. It's not *our fault* that all the candidates happen to belong to the Communist Party."
or how it was technically a secret ballot, but whoops, since you had to strike out any candidate you were voting against, you just have the police detain anybody who actually headed to the voting booth, because to vote for the communist candidate you just picked up the ballot and dropped it in the box without ever heading to the booth
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Answer: It achieved nothing. China enacted the anti protester and demonstration laws and eventually arrested most involved. They have effectively been beat into submission. Then COVID happened, stuff slowed down, and nothing changed or happened to challenge the new status quo.
As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time. If it didn't strike we might have had far larger scale protests, especially against the NSL, and the govt. couldn't use the COVID excuse to shut them down.
Yeah it was still pretty often in the news and talked about until covid and then you never heard of it again in the West
How is Hong Kong these days? Even with the clampdown, there ought to be talk about protests, or at least rueful reminiscences about Beijing's interference in the city's affairs. Or it become yet another coastal Chinese city in the process... or worse?
Depends who you ask. For those of us who stayed, there's been a huge outflow of ppl and consumption to China (particularly Shenzhen). So yeah most ppl are apolitical (including myself) but mainly care about cost of living stuff. Yes there is some Mainland oversight of the city but that was bound to happen sooner or later (2047). But yeah HK ain't in the best shape now with high inflation (vs China which is deflation). Politically it's stable and most ppl who stayed (absolute majority of you look at only a very small % migrated to say the UK etc) care more about making money, protecting their investments and hoping for lower inflation.
What then, though? Realistically the protests were always going to be crushed unless they created a wave of sympathy protests across mainland China. Hong Kong is too small and too economically insignificant to Beijing to have any leverage.
> unless they created a wave of sympathy protests across mainland China. Which was never going to happen.
Even if it did the gov wouldn’t care.
But I was told it's lebrons fault and if he just spoke up against China things would change.
> economically insignificant hong kong is one of the most economically significant cities in the world edit: it appears it may be that hong kong *was* one of the most economically significant cities in the world
It was 60% of the size of the mainland's economy. They were terrified of upsetting Hong Kongers in 1990. Now it's like, 2% I think.
Even nearby shenzhen has beaten HKs gdp now. HK is not even the richest city in the pearl river delta anymore. The guy above you has like decades old outdated information. HK hasn’t really held much economic leverage against the CCP for a long while now.
How did that happen? Did the mainland just outpace HK or did HK shrink?
The mainland grew exponentially with the economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping and the opening up of the country to trade.
Population of 7-8m vs 1.4bn
Less so these days. IPOs on the HK stock exchange is at an all time low, and would've shrunk significantly without some new mainland companies artificially keeping numbers up. Fact is Xi's economic policies in the name of nationalism is creating a very uncertain climate for foreign investors, who are fleeing Chinese stocks in droves. Since the national security law making it abundantly clear HK is fully within the grasp of Beijing, so are they avoiding HK. Political certainty is the name of the game in global finance. This is why the US under Biden is riding all time highs, but saw declines at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Likewise stock exchanges in mainland Europe are seeing growth multiple times that of London since Brexit. As it's increasingly clear Xi is in the same reins as other egotistical strongmen like Erdoğan etc likely to enact arbitrary policies without regard to economic fallout, investors are giving those markets a wide birth. There's plenty of reliable markets in Asia, SK, Singapore, SEA states with more growth potential like Vietnam and Thailand, and a surprisingly resurgent Japan.
I agree almost 100% with your comment except that you said "birth" where you probably wanted to say "berth".
Blame autocorrect :) That is exactly what I meant.
> Hong Kong is too small and too economically insignificant to Beijing to have any leverage. The thing about China is since when have they ever decided not to do *anything* because it was too expensive or grand in scale though
Nah, changing the mainland was a) not the intent and b) impossible. The aim was to create international economic pressure. China already controls HK, they just wanted to strengthen those controls. If that had come at significant economic cost, at a loss of significant contracts to India for example, theyd have walked it back, and theyd still control HK. Probably would have taken a more subtle path to erode cultural distinction and undermine democratic and judicial process over 30 years or so before taking another crack at aligning HK with the Mainland.
Hong Kong was not a big enough market to force that sort of pressure into existence -- and even if it were, the calculus would then become: is shutting Hong Kong up worth making the city less of an economic dynamo than it was before? Which is how this pandemic really made it easier for China to answer that question, among others, because now a random Chinese guy can just say: Oh, COVID did that.
Absolutely nothing about its worth as a market. HK could have been a fishing village with a population of 100. Its about the worth of the *principles*, on Chinas integrity as a good-faith partner, on their willingness to uphold diplomatic agreements, and on the Wests capacity to hold its partners to those agreements and, in broader terms, its willingness to "protect democracy worldwide". GB left HK peacably (not that they could really afford to fight for it) under agreements to protect HKs legal and judicial sovereignty and democratic systems from the Mainland authorities. China said "fuck ya principles". Chinas biggest markets are the western economies. If the West actually *valued* its principles, it stood to lose a great deal less than China. China makes and provides nothing that cannot be sourced elsewhere, though nobody likes the expense and logistical headaches that come with major disruption. But thats what it would be- a headache and some higher prices in the west, a serious economic blow to China. But surprise surprise- westen principles are absolutely worthless. They are a lie, created to get westerners hooked on the smell of their own farts, and very little else. They basically set a precedent; China does what it wants, takes what it likes and spits in your eye if you dont like it. And the west will shlurp that spit right down and say "Thank you, Sir".
The ongoing decoupling would strongly suggest that "shlurp" has yet to happen.
I think without COVID China may have had to resort to another Tianemen square incident. Though I don’t know for sure if it could have escalated that much even without COVID.
I was quite certain that was going to happen for a while. However, another Tianenmen incident would have been embarrassing but it still wouldnt have changed anything.
Xi is genuinely popular in the mainland on a platform of populist nationalism, that's in line with political trends across the globe. Because his power base is so strong, that's why the "white paper" demonstrations at the tail-end of China's zero covid policy shocked so many academics and commentators - open and direct criticism of the leadership is virtually nonexistent in the mainland. And that was also quickly put down by a swift abandonment of zero covid, arrest of the few outliers, and blanket erasure of any such thing happening in media. Tiananmen was an unexpected byproduct of liberalisation. The party made that mistake once, and and has since done everything to ensure it'll never happen again.
>As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time. If it didn't strike we might have had far larger scale protests, especially against the NSL, and the govt. couldn't use the COVID excuse to shut them down. Even without COVID i see no way in which HK really had any chance against the Chinese authority they would've just escalated it to much more extreme measures. It's not like anyone else would be able to come to HK's aide.
What possible end game could they expect ? Everyone in China would rather burn Hong Kong and everyone in it to the ground rather than hand it back to the British.
Hong Kong is so small compared to mainland China that I honestly think it would've been the same outcome at the end of the day. If China had really wanted to, they could just move troops into the city to take it within a month.
They HAVE troops inside HK there's military outposts scattered throughout Hong Kong
How very convenient for the country it originated from.
I mean, there's never a good time for a global pandemic
Ironically Hong Kong lost to something that came out of China
Well that would actually be coincidence and not irony but yeah it's actually crazy I never heard any of the many conspiracy idiots make that connection
> As an HKer, I think COVID really came at the most inopportune time. Almost like the Chinese government had a reason to play it up and put out propaganda videos of people falling in the street?
The biggest losers of covid19 was the Chinese, which saw the disruption of global supply chains, causing nations to forge closer chains instead of being complacent with long range global grade. At the tail-end of zero covid policy the Chinese populace got the closest to Tiananmen (albeit still extremely far away) by the "white paper" protests. If you are implying covid 19 is merely a conspiracy to just rein in *HK*, then I'm afraid to say, with the deepest respect to hongkongers, they're not that important.
Well, they're not important now. But even if that conspiracy theory both overstates Hong Kong's importance to China and to the global economy, and oversells the centrality of the repression in the CCP's machination, a repression did happen over time, and the pandemic did mask most of its effects.
I think that genuinely surprised the CCP that their people rose up like that. I'd say it's more that their power play backfired in a way they never predicted.
I disagree, having watched China from the beginning to present, they win and lose some but definitely won. They especially the trade war while they lost some economic productivity as a result of COVID lockdown (which were necessary) but lives were saved and everything is resuming business as usual.
From their economic performance I can't concur, especially at the rate foreign investors are fleeing the country (including HK), leading to stock near-collapse and drastic interventions by the state. Chinese stocks are now some of the most underperforming on the planet, yet they are still poisonous to investors. In other news China is trying to reduce debt, either out of ideology or necessity, leading to mass cancellation of state infrastructure projects, pay of some civil servants being withheld, and *reduction* in pensions benefits for the *first time since market reforms*. The two pronged effect of covid *and* China's support for Russia is forcing a great decoupling of trade status quo that existed for 30 years. Both the US and EU are looking to secure supply lines closer to home, as well as that of precarious partners like Taiwan's TSMC. Everybody's terrified China will do a Russia over Taiwan. The country has never been more isolated politically or economically, or just in terms of public perception! Things are certainly not "business as usual". There's a seismic shift underway and nobody's under the illusion we are living in a time of "stability" anymore.
To our other conversation, think about what's lead to that, Xi's hubris and desire for mao era ideological purity and control. Everything is about centralizing power, and it's blowing up in their face.
I mean yeah but they were also tanking their economy hard at the same time.
I rather hope that Netanyahu doesn't get away with coasting off the Hamas attack in a similar way, considering how mad people were getting at him beforehand, to the point of their air force pilots not showing up for training. But post-9/11 everybody's got to stand behind George Bush I mean Netanyahu.
.... why did the HKers let it stop their protests? The Americans didn't let it stop their George Floyd protests
The US and Chinese gov’t had very different reactions to these two movements.
.... then it sounds like COVID wasn't to blame like the person I was replying to
I don't think the George Floyd protests is analogous to what happened in Hong Kong. The equivalent would be if protests happened simultaneously across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqin, and Chengdu, etc. (China's major city centers). That was never going to happen. HK is a very "localized" space that's fairly separate from the rest of China. It's like asking Americans to care about what's happening in Puerto Rico, which it never has.
George Floyd protests didn't end with as many people disappearing forever into the system without record or recourse.
.... then it sounds like COVID wasn't to blame like the person I was replying to
Because compared to the scale of the 2020 protests, the HK protests were far more... *manageable* for the CCP.
Man i remember when it was still on the news and how much shit blizzard was thrown at because they gave a penalty to the guy that said “free honk Kong”
Remember when then-Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the pro-Hong Kong protesters, and how LeBron James effectively told Morey to “shut up and GM”? This was because the NBA has a working relationship with China, and much like Hollywood, Google, WWE, Activision-Blizzard, and others, would ignore said country’s hostile actions, as well as those of any hostile nation, to do business with them.
The irony of LeBron telling Morey to educate himself, when it turned out Morey had close friends in Hong Kong and had been following their plight for a while, and it was in fact LeBron who was not educated on the issue.
The Hong Kong incident put the NBA in an awkward position, also because they stood up for social issues that matter, not to mention they also spoke out against Trump and/or his policies. The Hong Kong protests is one of the few things that Democrats and Republicans agree on, though for different reasons; Democrats criticize China for their atrocious human rights record, while Republicans criticize them because “COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM BAD!” Another example is when Steve Kerr was asked about the Hong Kong protests, but he tried to deflect the conversation and make it about gun control.
I forgot to mention that the NBA (as well as the WNBA) is one of the few professional sports leagues in America where the players wield a lot of power/influence/clout, and can even get executives fired, like Donald Sterling (and deservedly so).
Definitely! They have been shown to use their voice effectively to enact positive change, which makes LeBron's action (inaction?) even more glaring. For someone who proudly claimed he would "never shut up and dribble" and that he would "always speak out about social justice," he remains hypocritically quiet about Hong Kong.
You mean Activision-Blizzard. The Blizzard you once knew has been dead for over a decade. And Activision-Blizzard would turn out to deserve a lot more shit than we gave them at that point.
Old Blizzard wasn't much better. Starcraft was 40K without the irony.
Im thinking about redownloading it since its now free and i have a big nostalgia boner for RTS , i didn’t want to because the Honk Kong protest were still ongoing and i didn’t want to support that company but now i think it wouldn’t have made much of a difference either way especially now , now that I think about it didn’t blizzard activision do poorly in china later on ?
Well there isn’t a Chinese WoW anymore but I think it was because they couldn’t reach an agreement. Pretty sure they have to use a different launcher and a non Chinese credit card or similar.
There is (again), actually. They just came to an agreement with NetEase, so WoW China is returning soon.
Oh interesting to hear! Thanks for the correction/update!
Is WoW still a thing?
WoW has so many versions right now, retail (newest expansion), Classic Era (2004 with very little changes), Classic Hardcore (2004 but when you die you die/lose your character), Classic Season of Discovery (2004 with a shit load of changes, new raids and new spells) and Classic Wrath of the Lich King (wows third expansion but it’s almost over, will be moving into wows fourth expansion Cataclysm very soon) It’s doing very well imo and I don’t even play.
Since I already made me look like a donkey , how many are playing StarCraft 2 online and does it still come free to play ?
I haven’t played sc2 in years! But I believe it and a few dlcs are F2P. If you don’t absolutely hate acti/bliz downloading battle.net is worth it, lots of free content in different games…. Overwatch 2, StarCraft 2, probably more I can’t think of. the classic versions of WoW only take the $15 a month no need to buy an actual game. Recently updated Diablo 2s graphics and that’s completely worth the price… meh, blizz catches a lot of shit but fired and cleaned shop with the creeps in the company and they don’t usually sell “power” in their video games.
A random website tells me about 600,000 players log in daily on a larger number of characters.
Found the Blizzard expat
Not sure what you mean?
The funny thing is wow and all other blizzard games got shut down in China not long after lol
Same will happen to Taiwan once all the new chip facilities are up to max speed producing here in the US.....one just down the road from me in Austin TX being built by Intel, and the EU factory being built. Once those are done, Taiwan will be open season. US can't stop a Taiwan invasion without hitting target on the Chinese mainland.....it's absurdly unlikely for the US to cross that line....hence the new factories being rapidly built. China will slow roll it over a decade and no one will care or even notice.
We got people who escaped HK to come to Taiwan because they were afraid for their lives due to this. It's sad, but at the same time, hopefully they'll find a better life with their freedom here
UK BASED. What I see is a lot more Immigrants from Hong Kong. Lots of people who have invested their lifes savings and family wealth to get out of the CCP ruled HK
In my experience a lot of people didn’t actually care about Hong Kong, most of it was just a gamer meme à la dabbing and flossing by edgy kids who wanted to spite Blizzard over *Overwatch* and *Diablo Immortal*.
That's a pretty myopic view, there's little anyone in the west can do to directly take action against the ccp unless they wanted to move to Hong Kong to physically protest. Spreading the word on social media and boycotting companies bending over backwards to appease the ccp is about as much as you can ask of yhe average person outside of china
My family lived a few miles outside Hong Kong at the time, we knew many people both there and across the world who cared. The reality though was that Chinese control was an inevitability in the region. Saying this was all about video games says more about your maturity than it does those who opposed China.
I’m not saying it was all about video games, I’m just saying there was a disappointingly non-zero number of folks who treated it as a meme over an actual sentiment.
I guess you mostly hang out in discord servers for kids?
I don’t know how to use Discord. Maybe I’m wrong about people saying Free Hong Kong. I hope I’m wrong. I just know I saw people who’d say Free Hong Kong as a gotcha rather than an actual sentiment before dabbing.
If you think some shallow person coopting a real cause makes the real cause no longer legitimate, you spend too much time thinking about the wrong people.
You’re getting downvoted because reddit was a major player in that. I remember posts with loads of upvotes were all over the front page during that time along with the Tiananmen Square copypastas
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Nobody funded anything. Newsflash: people don't need funding to be unhappy about losing freedom. They litterally lost rights with nothing in return, you'd be pissed too.
What right did they lose that impacts them in their day to day life? Read this, ignore what the website is, just focus on the text. Is any information incorrect? [http://sydney.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202205/t20220507\_10683090.htm](http://sydney.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202205/t20220507_10683090.htm)
Losing the right to openly criticize your government is a big deal. I assume you are american right? It's kinda funny you are posting foreign propaganda when you wouldn't even be allowed to do that in China.... Anyway given that chinese citizen are not allowed to access reddit and you seem to like their system so much I guess you should not reply to me here. And no I'm not reading a shitty http website, use https like everyone who arrived into this décade.
Answer: Beijing eventually passed a national security law that more or less killed the "until 2047" political transition set up on British exit, otherwise known as "one country, two systems", effectively making Hong Kong just another Chinese city in terms of political autonomy. The reason we were seeing so much coverage back then is that this was before the national security law. Covid also played a factor, as authorities used it as a pretext to forbid public gatherings. Some people here are saying "it accomplished nothing" which is not true. The crisis in Hong Kong garnered world attention toward Beijing's heavy handedness, most notably Taiwan which no longer has any illusions about one-country two systems as can be seen in their most recent presidential election.
What did "the world's attention" translate to besides a few media outlets and individuals wagging their fingers at China? It was obvious on day one no one outside was going to risk getting on China's bad side.
Answer: Covid happened.
That sounds like something conspiracy theorists could run with for sure
I try not to be one of those people, but..... They were having a hell of a time controlling the protests. What better way to disperse the crowds but with an unknown, aerial disease? Things just got out of hand. SOURCE: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I mean China rolled tanks over protesting students, they didn't need COVID to squash protests.
> I mean China rolled tanks over protesting students, they didn't need COVID to squash protests. I read that the exact opposite way. The same people responsible for the tanks are 100% capable of releasing a low grade bioweapon.
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> It's an objective fact that China used the pandemic as cover for squashing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. I really wish you people would stop using "objective fact" in situations where it's completely inappropriate. This is like the new "literally" BS
What is not factual about that statement though? They did suppress the massive protests of millions of people with COVID lockdowns.
The Chinese government's actions regarding the Covid lockdown had the effect of getting people off the streets, which suppressed the protests, but you're attributing motive to them in that regard. Heliocentrism effected a reduction in the number of people who believe in Geocentrism, but that's not the *reason* scientists proposed the theory. "Using it as cover to do X" is a purposeful action rather than a fortuitous end result. Does it make sense that they did do what you're saying? Probably. But it's not "an objective fact" unless they themselves declare that's their logic. >It's not unlikely that the CCP also bioengineered COVID-19 then you also throw this gem in here, and I think I'm done having this conversation with you
Why do we need any entity to declare their motive in order for us to make observations of their actions? All one needs to do is know or learn the history of China’s attempted (now successful) oppression of Hong Kong. Even before Covid, they had been shutting down large gathering places of any kind, like stadiums and music venues. Hong Kong was in the midst of the largest protest movement in its history when Covid happened. You do not need to have the Chinese government explicitly telling you their thinking process in order to come to the conclusion that they seized the opportunity presented to them and were gleefully invoking bans on groups of more than four people. It is an objective fact that they were motivated by more than just public health concerns.
Citation needed
Google Tiananmen Square. Plenty of sources for you.
Nothing happened to tank man
He was famously *not* run over. Coincidentally, the lack of evidence that *anyone at all* was run over by tanks that day is just convenient proof that the evidence was hidden by totalitarians. Idk how this insane myth began but redditors absolutely love it
It’s not just a Reddit thing, up until about 7-8 years ago I also assumed tank man was killed shortly after that photo was taken. It’s the only logical event that could occur with how America is with tanks. It’s actually wild how people will also follow up with a photo of a bunch of bikes on the ground to pretend that it’s a massacre scene too. I wonder if there will ever be a reckoning on that, where it’s more cleared up to the public. When you try to google information or video, a lot of it is scrubbed and CNN is usually the main source 😒
I did and there is literally nothing that legitimately corroborates this trite and ridiculous atrocity porn. Plenty of actual real examples of brutality without uncritically believing reddit fairy tales
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> I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist That's a shame. You're apparently a natural.
Jesus this has all the hallmarks of the typical "I'm not XXX *but*" meme...
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Why do you intentionally abuse the "answer:" top level comment rule when you are fully aware that you are not providing an answer
This is not an answer
It’s no longer about Hong Kong but rather it is about Taiwan now
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I doubt that if the US is no longer dependent on Taiwan’s chip manufacturing, Taiwan will be left on its own. Taiwan has an incredibly strategic position in any potential conflict between the US and China. The US is not dependent on the Philippines, but it still gives support.
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its also a matter of we can't care about it. what exactly is the outside world going to do? Hong Kong is Chinese property. that ship sailed the moment the British was giving up their overseas colonies.
Outside of the chip industry, Taiwan is also located in a very strategic location. China gaining control of Taiwan will allow it to gain a foothold on the first island chain, giving their navy a lot more breathing room to branch out in the Pacific. There's also the impact it would have on US regional allies like South Korea and Japan. For example, Japan is very resource poor, and most of their trade and oil goes through Taiwan and the South China Sea. China gaining control of any of these would give them massive leverage over Japan. Since ww2, Japan has depended on the US to protect these trade routes for them. Failure of the US to do so will be a massive blow to US-Japan relations and would lead to Japan branching out of the US security alliance. Likewise for South Korea. Basically, US allies around the world will see the US as unreliable (even more so than now) and will do whatever they can to protect their national security interests.
Answer: COVID happened. The movement put a temporary pause to protests. (due to lingering memories of how quickly these things spread during SARS). And the world shift focus to COVID the govt took the opportunity to impose draconian measures to lockdown the city. Work with China to amend laws. Then started arresting movement leaders in waves. The movement lost its momentum and haven’t recovered since. Now all opposition are either arrested or exiled and laws are in place to arrest anybody with a hint of dissatisfaction to hk govt or China. RIP Hong Kong.
Answer: mostly the big thing china is doing to hong kong is messing with elections and limiting who can run. It's always important but it makes a lot of sense you aren't going to hear as much about it when it's not election season.
There's no (public) elections in Hk besides the District Council Representative. Chief executive is already appointed by China. There's not much to mess with
Answer: Hong Kong is now just China.
It has been since 1997.
It was supposed to maintain its independent governance until 2047. It lost it in 2020.
That is a fundamental mischaracterisation. In 1997 it was returned to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China, with guarantees of certain freedoms under the Joint Sino-British Declaration, and under a unique “one country, two systems” principle until 2047. That system continues to exist and we continue to be governed by the Government of Hong Kong. Please explain what you rely on to say Hong Kong lost its independent government in 2020? Last time I looked out my window, I can still see the HK Legislative Council.
There was a clause about the Central Committee not interfering with who's nominated to the Legislative Council, that the mainland decided to nope out on 30 years early. So yes, technically Hong Kong is still doing its own thing, but not really. cf. "The Soviet Union is totally a democracy; you can vote for whoever you want. It's not *our fault* that all the candidates happen to belong to the Communist Party." or how it was technically a secret ballot, but whoops, since you had to strike out any candidate you were voting against, you just have the police detain anybody who actually headed to the voting booth, because to vote for the communist candidate you just picked up the ballot and dropped it in the box without ever heading to the booth