I do hope China have learnt this valuable lesson. If I was China, I would now start reform of:
Journalist.: requited license issued by authority
Judicial: agovernment appointments of judges
Religious establishement: required government approval!
Education: All teaching staff required governmental checks.
In addition, I would have patriotic education where all educational establishement must teach love fir counyry and respect the values of the nation and the flag!
Now, before anyone here starting to get foams around their mouth, and call me a dictator, and conjure up images of 1984 orwellian vision of China.
The lists above are actually requirements in the UK and US system.
Only today, I saw Trump rally his troups in Ohio, and he said to cheering crowds. "we will teach our childrens to respect the constitution and the flag", after he said the rights to bear arms!
The issue with HK has always been a mixture of too generous granting of rights, and insufficient political will to safeguard its democracy to make sure it isn’t perverted by hostile foreign powers.
Unfortunately the excessive freedoms already granted cannot be easily rolled back until 2047. But what China can and is doing is hitting the money behind the riots, both foreign and domestic.
It should be made clear in no uncertain terms that for any oligarchs to work against Chinese national interests will see not only their own businesses specifically targeted for economic punishment, but the whole industry.
So the other oligarchs have the choice of either working together to obliterate the business interests of the offending oligarch, or are their own fortunes obliterated alongside them.
This is much easier in HK than elsewhere because of the overbearing role property plays in HK economics. Property are fixed assets, and extremely difficult and time consuming to liquidate and relocate, especially in a big way.
In many respects, HK property prices are desperately overdue for a massive downward correction, and local government also needs massive tax reforms to reduce the overwhelming reliance of public finances on land sales.
That makes HK oligarchs very vulnerable to a systematic property price crash, because most of their wealth is on paper only, so falls in property prices can see their wealth massively reduced almost overnight.
Such a move would also be interesting in that it would drive a wedge between the overwhelmingly young rioters who have no property, and the oligarchs and middle classes who have property.
Once it is established that support for rioters = huge falls in property prices, I can see much more resistance to the rioters from both the oligarchs and general public. That will then be a turning point to setting HK on a proper and right direction.