Hong-Kong Protests

SinoSoldier said:

The Star Market is failing at the moment.
If you were launching an IPO for your startup, would you rather choose an exchange that is volatile and hinged upon the outcomes of an ongoing trade war or one that is immune to such conflicts and pegged to the USD?

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You called a six months new stock exchange board a failure when it has listed a dozens of companies and raised billions of dollars. Most Chinese companies prefer listing in China. The reason they didn't do so in the past it is due to the restrictions by the Chinese government for not allowing unprofitable companies to be listed in Shanghai Exchange but the Star Market Board doesn't have that restriction.

Most small and medium Chinese innovative companies don't care about volatile or the trade war or pegged to the USD. There are over 100 Chinese companies asked to be listed in the Star which are lot of than the combine of SEHK or NYSE or NASQ.

vincent said:

majority of the people KILLED or forced into suicides by the Red Guards are average folks who had nothing to do with politics! Cultural Revolution was anarchy in large scale.

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The English proverb says history is written by the victors. In China, however, history is written by the intellectuals.

As another poster pointed out earlier in this thread, the Cultural Revolution was actually beneficial to the vast majority of the rural population. However, since the CR overwhelming persecuted the intellectuals, it is now seen as an unmitigated disaster. However, that is a claim not born out by actual data, as both China's economic strength and average life expectancy increased during those 10 years.

You're not the only one here who grew up with horror stories of the CR, because the fact that we are on this forum means we most likely come from intellectual families. However, the experience of our families are not representative of the experience of the rest of the country at the time.

The CR was not a necessary evil, instead, it was an inevitable product of China's socio-political environment at that particular time. Many people see the CR as Mao wielding tyrannical power, when the closer truth is that the CR was Mao's rebellion against the CCP itself.

Mao saved the CCP from annihilation and, under his leadership, the CCP succeeded in taking over the entire country. In any prior century, Mao would have been the founding emperor of a new dynasty, his authority unquestioned, and his legacy enshrined by his descendants after his death. That was the way China operated for thousands of years. Instead, after the disaster of the GLF, the CCP removed Mao from power. Mao reacted by launching the CR.

The CR was a clash between China's imperial past and its modern political system. It was a lesson that shaped virtually every Chinese leader after Mao. Puyi may have been nominally the last emperor of China, but in reality, that title belongs to Mao Zedong.

solarz said:

As another poster pointed out earlier in this thread, the Cultural Revolution was actually beneficial to the vast majority of the rural population. However, since the CR overwhelming persecuted the intellectuals, it is now seen as an unmitigated disaster. However, that is a claim not born out by actual data, as both China's economic strength and average life expectancy increased during those 10 years.

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after the Great Leap Forward, of course the life expectancy and the economy increased

manqiangrexue said:

No, the entire time, I understand what you mean. No shower water = stinky. Right? That's the full extent. I understand, ok? Read everything from that context. No strawman, I'm not accusing you of wanting to kill people from water deprivation. From now on, read "water deprivation," or "no water" as "no shower water = stinky" LOL If I write it any other way, treat it as an abbreviation. No strawman here for sure.

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Okay, but next time be clearer.

Are you familiar with the concept of white flight? In economics, it is a social phenomenon that occurs whenever people of color or lower economic status start to move in to a formerly white upper class neighborhood and the result is that the property prices drop and all the white/upper class people move out and abandon their homes even for low prices. That's traditionally what happens when the neighborhood you live in goes to shit. You don't start begging people to make it better; you move.

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If there is no prospect of improvement, people move out. However, China's government has an excellent track record of improvement. I think most Hong Kongers would prefer to ask for help from Beijing -- and stay in the homes in which they have invested so much. Especially if their request for help would instantly make the water, electricity, and food very abundant. (Remember, we are talking hypothetically, in the unlikely case of independence.)

Nutrient said:

If there is no prospect of improvement, people move out. However, China's government has an excellent track record of improvement. I think most Hong Kongers would prefer to ask for help from Beijing -- and stay in the homes in which they have invested so much. Especially if their request for help would instantly make the water, electricity, and food very abundant. (Remember, we are talking hypothetically, in the unlikely case of independence.)

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Once again, that's what you think but in the real world, the phenomenon I just explained shows that people usually just sell their houses and go. And also, what percentage of Hong Kong's population own expensive houses? "Asking for help" probably can only mean voting out all anti-China politicians and replacing them with pro-Beijing ones, but if the people who own expensive houses do not represent a majority of the population in Hong Kong, they won't be able to do it. This is all especially true if they already declared independence.

Lastly, independence of Hong Kong is something that is not tolerable for even one second to any Chinese patriot. There is no long-term strategy or game to play to try to force them to continue. Every moment that people who declared Hong Kong independence are alive is a dire insult to every Chinese person. If that happens, there is only one option regardless of consequences and that is having the PLA storm Hong Kong like the LAPD storming a bank robber with no hostages and no ammo.

I love this nonsense about how important Hong Kong is to China as if Hong Kong can hold China hostage... Like Hong Kong would survive without China? Without China what is Hong Kong good for. A place where Westerners can hide their money? Hong Kong is in a recession. China ain't. Shouldn't China be in a recession because Hong Kong is that important? If China were in a recession, we wouldn't hear how there's a connection?

Anyone else notice the relative light opinion piece coverage of the election results in western MSM?

That is telling because there is no way they would not have been preparing opinion pieces and blanket coverage.

But other then report the result and very limited superficial analysis, which is largely just a rehash of their pre-election articles, there is surprisingly little new content.

I think that is telling, as I would bet good money most MSM expected the rioters to loose, and so their pre-prepared post-election reporting opinion pieces would have been largely focused on discrediting the election results as ‘fixed’ by Beijing. Which they obviously cannot use now, hence the dearth of opinion piece coverage, as they scrambled to write new opinion pieces.

You can see elements of that in the limited reporting there have been, as a piece on BBC radio 4 I listened to on my commute put a big emphasis on reporting how ordinary people flooded the public viewing galleries to watch the count being done as they were worried about the integrity of the count. Which is probably the only part of their pre-work the report could use. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how that would have been a launchpad to discredit the results had it gone the other way.

Its a bloody nose to Carrie Lam and no mistake, but probably as much to do with her woeful handling of the situation and the other deeper seated problems in HK as anything else.
I cannot pretend to know the details of the Pan Democratic movement or how true the implied link between them all and the Protest movement really is.
Happy to be educated on this.
Still the time always comes when a protest movement achieves office and at that point the responsibility for sorting it out becomes theirs. It will be interesting to hear how they all respond if fresh disorder breaks out again.

The biggest problem I see is national security. Right now, Beijing is in the unenviable position of having apparent/titular control, but lacking control in key areas that really matter, such as regulation of the media, education, immigration, etc. Right now, CIA spooks can waltz into HK at will, spread propaganda, foment color revolution, etc. and there is little Beijing can do. I hope Beijing has a solution for this and fast pronto.

KYli said:

The problem is not about the votes. The problem is that the HK people have spoken. And they are supporting the rioters which gave the rioters legitimacy. That would embolden and encourage the rioters to take extreme measures. Either the central government caves or they would face months or even years of unrest in HK.

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Most of their supporters are probably not business owners. They are happy enough to have a job and are likely not in the least concerned about his boss not making as much profit. They are too much in a frenzy now to see what would happen in a few years' time when his company could close down and he loses his job, which would be his own making.