How many people did China have in concentration camps 30 years ago? Did China have a dictator for life? Did Chinese citizens have their government video taping there every single action and have technology with facial recognition to know where all their citizens are at all times? The economy in China is better than 30 years ago but that is about it and that isn’t from the CCP. The environment is worse, less personal freedoms.
Except his words about the CCP aren’t incorrect. They are objectively true. What I think gets lost is that very few people in the West dislike people that are Chinese, they dislike the brutal totalitarian government of China. There is a difference.
More and more mainland Chinese are traveling outside of mainland China. However the vast majority are not visiting the West and overall it is a small percentage of Chinese that have ever left China. Still far more than 20 years ago.
That's about it??? Easy for you to say I guess. You don't know how important it is to general population, especially those who had to suffer starving and poverty before.
Well said. I'm actually very proud of what China has done in my life time (I'm 40 years old). The city skylines alone are masterpieces of what humanity can do when it works collectively to improve the world. China has so much to teach the world. Let me repeat that, China has SO much to teach US. But how are we to learn from China when the government confines it's people thru censorship? We're a global economy and therefore a global community now. We need open lines of communication with everyone now because global trade is effecting everyone. Right now, in order to communicate with China, we have to go through a government which makes up the minds for all of China. How is that fair to you? How fair is that to the rest of the world? We are a global family with many rooms and many doors. Right now the Chinese government is shutting that door and the family is struggling to communicate to one another through that door. There's too many misconceptions and too many misunderstandings. We can do better and it starts with the good people of China having the opportunity to share themselves with the world.
The equation of democracy with poverty and chaos is mindblogging. How come all rich and developed countries have democracies then? How come all countries that have top scores in the Happiness Index allow freedom?
I can see where you are coming from. You've gone from starvation to thriving and you don't want to lose that. You won't lose that though. The Chinese government brought China to this point, but the next step is additional freedoms. The reaction the government has had for the request of additional freedoms is to tighten its grip. That's the only problem here. The Chinese government is losing power and they're trying to take it back rather than share that power with the people. The Chinese government will always be important to China just like our governments are important to us around the world. I hope that they will one day see that they can share power and retain the ability to lead its citizens. In Sun Tzu's Art of War, he states that secondary command must be trusted to act on its own instincts when cut off from the general. The secondary command will always have better information because that information is first hand. This is what the Chinese government is missing. It does not trust the good Chinese citizens to make good decisions for themselves. We're saying you do make good decisions, you make them every day and you should have a right to influence the laws that govern you. Bejing is the body and Hong Kong is the hand. They must trust one another in order to insure the best outcome.
In my heart, I believe that I would be safe and have a great time in China. But if I wanted to speak to people about the value of the freedom of speech, I don't think it would go well.
Title probably should be China fans, and not Chinese Fans. I don't think Chinese fans of Taiwan, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong have any beef with Morey or the Rockets.
I can answer you from what I know. Full timeline here. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/hong-kong-protests-timeline/ 1. Does Hong Kong protesters only demand for independence from China from the beginning? The beginning of the protest was just to withdraw the Extradition bill. The first million and 2 million people protest were generally very peaceful. 2. Are Hong Kong protesters violent? Yes and no. After an event in 7/21 where the police colluded with the Triad to let them beat protesters and regular citizens. Protester started to turn violent but they have clear objective. They fight back to people attack them (often Triad attacking citizen with knifes or sticks). They started to fight back the police after 8/31 where the police went into the MTR station to beat up protesters and regular citizens. The shops they damaged were either shops operated by the Triads Fu Kin group or by Maxim's Group where the daughter of the founder went to UN to falsely accuse the protest. Rumored some violent act was done by undercover police. Police admitted that they sent cop dressed as protesters. There was one witness said he saw the bunch of masked people set fire and retreated to a police base and escorted by uniform police. Many reports of police torture and sexual harassment in detention center. Violence escalated from both sides. Live round was fired at point blank range at a protester fighting back with a plastic rod. He was shot in the chest and was in critical condition. He was left on the floor for 5 minutes before they start to check him out. Multiple journalists were intentionally teargas'd, pepper sprayed and verbally attacked by police. One journalist was shot blind by police rubber bullet. Multiple frontline first-aiders were arrested for rioting. In general, you can walk on the street no problem if you avoid the frontline area where protest is going on. Protesters do not attack random citizens unless one starts to provoke them. On the other hand the police will search you or question you just by being there and if you wear black, you have high chance to be questioned. Few days ago the gov passed the anti mask law that only applies to the citizen but not the police. Police will arrest you for wearing mask. As of today the hatred toward police is very bad. EDIT: Adding a point that often protesters, first-aiders and the press were the first one to escort the children and elderly away from the scene when teargas is fired or violence is anticipated. You have to understand that HK has been a very safe and well educated city. It's not like those young people has violent mental issues. They don't want to be there to risk their lives or to be arrested. They wanted to enjoy their summer vacation like the old times. But they feel that they need to speak up for their future because they love their city. The arrested and charged protesters include people with high education. Some are doctors, lawyer, pilot for Cathay Pacific, PHD student and other occupation. The arrested people included children as young as 12 years old, 40% were under age of 18, and even a pregnant lady. It has to be something is very wrong in order to make all these people to come out. 3. Does some Americans have supported Hong Kong protesters is only because their bias or culture difference? Our Congress are supporting HK because we share the value of freedom which is what HK is fighting for. We just announced sanction on Chinese officials who are related to the Concentration Camp. They are also working to pass a bill to sanction HK officials believed to be related to this event who tried to suppress freedom. Other countries around the world are supporting HK in general such as UK, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Ukraine who some of them went through their fight of freedom in recent history. 4. Based on what information you got your conclusions for all of the above questions? From various western media like BBC, Bloomberg, NY Times. HK media like RTHK live feed, Stand News live feed and TVB, etc. China news source like SCMP, Global times, etc. 5. Is there any possibility that the information you've got are not comprehensive or just one-side? Yes it's possible so I tend to trust the live feed most of the time. and comparing video feed from different media. You will see that China media and some pro-China HK media will frame the protesters as violent rioters who beat up innocent people, setting fire and angry, while omitting any police violence and what happened before hand or the whole story. Western media tend to summarize the whole situation from a more neutral stand point. RTHK is a HK gov run broadcast agency and I think they have the one of most informative and neutral reporting. Hope this help you understand the situation. I mentioned this before that the HK movement reminds me about 1989 Tiananmen. A bunch of educated young people voiced their demand for freedom and being suppressed by force. Time will tell how this one will end compared to the history.
You just said yourself "one country two systems." While they may have different systems they're still the same country.
Yes one country and HK is not asking for independence. When you stand with Hong Kong, you stand with fight for freedom.
I've seen a lot of banners and posters from HK pushing for independence. Also saw videos of them burning China's flag.
Well those are a small portion of the protesters. Most know independence is not possible. Protesters on the forum (their portal to communicate and organize events) often asked others to stop promoting independence because this will make other countries who stand with HK look bad. Also China has been accusing foreign influence mainly the CIA behind this movement. This is a leaderless movement so you really can't fully control what everyone's expressing. These are the five official demands, Full withdrawal of the extradition bill - withdrawn in September after 3 months of protest. Independent commission of inquiry into alleged police brutality - gov expressed they will not comply with this. Retracting the classification of protesters as “rioters” - same as above stating conflict with rule of law. Amnesty for arrested protesters - same as above. Dual universal suffrage, meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive - Beijing promised this to HK under Basic Law when British handover HK to China in 1997. Under the law it stated to take 10 years to establish the system but never happened. Edit: #2-4 established before the violence escalated. When 1-2 million people were peacefully protesting in early June and police stepped in to fire teargas and arresting people.
I agree with most of what you said. But 1. It’s gonna take time 2. Many folks are satisfied with the status quo because they don’t know if the changes will be for the better. Democracy may very well make China more prosperous. But it isn’t always the case. Just look at USSR. They fell apart in the name of democracy. Now where are they? Most of the smaller countries fell into oblivion. Can you name all of them? Coz I can’t
