Hong Kong
 

I fully expect Beijing to move the army into HK to put the democracy movement down. It is born of fear that the protest will spread into the mainland if Beijing shows weakness.

Beijing's may provide short term gratification of quelling the protest. However long term Beijing will rue the day as HK will lose its economic magic as the talent and capital will go elsewhere. Call it killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Poor short sighted leadership in Beijing.

Power and control over everything else. That’s what we are seeing on full display. 2019 China, when it really comes down to it, isn’t much different than 1959 China.

I dated a Chinese woman in college - both her parents were Dr's in China and they made it out in the early 1970's.

The stories were incredible, very similar to this book, which I recommend.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1565698995.jpg

I agree with Tabs.

Weird

I'll check that out.

They basically have three choices.

Wait it out and hope for the best. Current method. They will ride this horse till it collapses.
Martial Law and military intervention Like Tabs says, bad in the long term for their future vision.
Make concessions. They are hard headed sob's so this seems unlikely. But you never know. They might realize a little give allows a better path to their long term plans.

I expect China to make a military move based on claims of terrorist activities. If not the Army, maybe goon squads to intimidate - or military disguised as that. It would be nice if HK turned out to be the one in a million chance to be the leak in the dike, but it's fate is to be unavoidably absorbed into the Chinese borg.

Democracies are messy institutions that eventually fail. If the Chinese were smart they would look to the Augustus Caesar model of authorianism. Augustus gave a modicum of power to the Roman Senate making them feel like they were part of the decision making process in administering the empire and more importantly freedom of speech to the people so that they felt free enough to vent dissatisfaction when they felt slighted.

They is nothing worse to spread discontent with a regime than to repress people with a heavy hand from venting their emotions about situations. If the regime does not listen let alone respond to complaints about the system..people will grow sullen and uncooperative as they will feel they do not have a stake in the system. That it is not working for their benefit, but is working against them.

China crushing dissent mercilessly is about as surprising as that pedophile guy turning up dead

I suspect China will move in an put down the protest just like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

In a generation the Chinese people have largely forgotten the event. It is denied in their history.

Hong Kong will likely have the same thing happen. The talent and money will go to Singapore, or South Korea.

And it begins...

https://abcnews.go.com/International/riot-police-storm-hong-kong-airport-day-cancellations/story?id=64941993

What a mess. We were just there three weeks ago. It was a Sunday evening near the Central district as were were having dinner sitting near the street by a large glass wall, the protesters staring pouring into the streets by the thousand. the narrow streets filled up quickly so we high tailed outta there going to the way with kids in tow. I didn't see any destruction of public properties or anything like that so that was good before we left. Nuts

I asked my tour guide about the protest in Tiananmen Square as were were standing there waiting to get into the Forbidden City, She leans over slightly and wispier, "We don't talk about that here".

I think the talent has been going for some time. The early ones left in 97 and many return to make their fortunes with western citizenship in hand and leave when the crap hits the fan. Such a beautiful city, its a shame that it will be communist China in 30 years

With the exception of Hong Kong and Taiwan, China has never had a representative democracy.

Main land china went from Qing to basically a military takeover to civil war, to Japanese occupation, back to civil war and to Communist take over. The Communist rule was probably not too different than another Dynasty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynastic_cycle

The cycle appears as follows:

A new ruler unites China, founds a new dynasty, and gains the Mandate of Heaven
China, under the new dynasty, achieves prosperity.

The population increases.

Corruption becomes rampant in the imperial court, and the empire begins to enter decline and instability.

A natural disaster wipes out farm land. The disaster normally would not have been a problem; however, together with the Corruption and overpopulation, it causes famine.

The famine causes the population to rebel and a civil war ensues.

The ruler loses the Mandate of Heaven.

The population decreases because of the violence.

China goes through a warring states period.

One state emerges victorious.

The state starts a new empire.

The empire gains the Mandate of Heaven.

(The cycle repeats itself.)

My business shows tell me that China is on the edge of a recession.

Cracking down on Hong Kong could cause a year long strike,

Im afraid bejing May be willing to eat the economic chaos rather than let the peasants get defiant.


If china’s Economy goes down it will hurt us. Unless you own property in Vancouver.

You know the govt. sucks when an Asian area says "Bring Back the Brits"



My best wishes to the long suffering Chinese people

I got talking to a guy from Ohio as we were cruising down the gorge on the Yangtze River. We were both in awl at the amount of buildings that are going up throughout China. They had just come out of Tibet, we started from Beijing and traveled around into the interior by high speed trains stopping to see all the points of interest. I am not talking about one tall building but a cluster of 20-30 of them all going up at the same time at different parts of their small to large cities. Not only that, there are many, many clusters of these construction project going up all at the same damn time. Where's all that money coming from? So, my guide told me that that all are private money. Some borrow mass amounts from banks, and many of those banks backed by the gov. We are their biggest trade partners, 50% still? If our economy goes south, or weakens, they are fooked. I realized they no longer farm, so there will be a lot of hungry people if we stop selling grain to them. They will be in a world of hurt for sure. They crawled themselves out of a hole from years of suffering and they are headed that way again if they aren't careful. Trying to rule the world again, too soon.

There are entire cities there empty of people, spooky

https://www.businessinsider.com/these-chinese-cities-are-ghost-towns-2016-2

They built em after 09 to keep people employed.

Going to be interesting. Pretty obvious that the people of Hong Kong are not happy with the current state. I'm with Tabs...