Hong Kong: what next?

Went in Sainsbury's in town today, where you always see Chinese students. Saw about ten wearing facemasks. Presumably in solidarity with Hong Kong. Tomorrow's Chinese middle class.

 

How much of tomorrow's chinese middle class will have been students abroad? Is it in actual fact quite a small proportion?

 

There are 1.2 billion people in China and 7 million in Hong Kong so tomorrow's Chinese middle class isn't the people you saw in face masks, though their parents are obviously wealthy enough to send them abroad to study.

There have been clashes on campuses all over the place between Hong Kong students and those from the mainland.

 

That many? Wow.

 

Really kicking off there eh.

Solidarity with the protesters.. really inspiring to see their courage.

 

not related but kinda but there is a good storyville on tianamen on iplayer at the minute to add a bit of perspective of how ruthless the PRC could be

 

Using dye filled water cannons is a new one on me: Blue dye fired from water cannons – protesters adjust, give cleaning tips

360 degree video of this ( scroll around by dragging):


Seems it has been going on for a while!

 

Just surgical mask type things? Probably more to do with there being colds going around.

There was apparently a bit of a stand off up in Sheffield town centre on national day, but didn't hear about it until later... No language partner this year, and don't talk to friends in China about politics. So somewhat out of the loop.

 

It's directionless though.
Not sure if the American flag waving, burning of the national Chinese flag is sending the wrong message.
Am against the beating up of Chinese folk who the protestors may 'think' are mainlanders.

 

I'd add that 99% of them won't magically turn into democratic activists. It's kind of an absurd idea really... Chinese middle class life is good, in many ways better than it is here. Certainly safer. A bit of exposure to western media and some awkward chats with classmates (which will generally end in 'look, we don't really talk about politics') aren't going to overcome an attachment to a state that has served you and your family well, the confucian element of deference to authority and the effects of an efficient propaganda machine. I don't just mean out and out nationalists (who are also on the rise), just the kind of person who can afford to study in the UK/US etc.

 

Leader of Hong Kong democracy group attacked with hammers

 

More protests in Kowloon today - police fired a massive jet of blue water right at the front of Hong Kong's biggest mosque.



Apparently there wasn't even anyone standing there except a few journalists, people from the mosque, and a handful of protesters making sure people left the mosque alone.

 

The bill has been formally scrapped I see, but too little too late? Hong Kong scraps law that sparked protests
Issues that still remain.......

• For the protests not to be characterised as a "riot"
• Amnesty for arrested protesters
• An independent inquiry into alleged police brutality
• Implementation of complete universal suffrage

 

I think it's way too late for withdrawing the bill to make any difference - withdrawing the bill might have stopped protests in June, and granting two or three of the demands might have worked in July, I can't see the protests ending now unless all five are granted, which is also difficult to see happening, with or without a change in leadership.

 

The police seem to be getting worse week by week - there was an untold number of incidents Saturday after police cancelled two approved rallies after they had already begun. In one, police roughed up a firefighter who objected to his truck being hit with tear gas and pepper-sprayed journalists who were filming then.

 

Thats no surprise really. That cannot let it continue. They started off quite relaxed about the protests and will gradually come down harder on them.

 

Beijing, meanwhile, apparently wants to see the civil service purged of anybody who supports the protests.

 

After rumours of deaths being hushed up, alleged disappearances, and suspicious suicides, we have the first confirmed death of a protester - Chow Tsz-lok, 22, suffered severe brain injuries Sunday after falling from the third floor to second floor of a carpark where police had fired tear gas at protesters and died in hospital Friday morning. There are rumours he was pushed or thrown, and more solid evidence that police delayed an ambulance that was trying to reach the scene and arrested a protester who urged them to let the ambulance through.

Protests have sprung up in multiple locations already and I wouldn't be surprised if it kicks off this weekend like never before.

 

This driver of this bus in Central apparently decided to stop driving and start protesting.

 

Appalling scenes in Hong Kong as another general strike began Monday morning - a cop shot two protesters at point-blank range in Sai Wan Ho - one of them was shot in the stomach, cops handcuffed him instead of giving him first aid. Amid many other incidents, a motorbike cop drove into a crowd of protesters in Kwai Fong.

Watching this video of protesters in Tung Chung chasing off cops brought my anger levels down a tiny bit - the kick to the nuts at 5:06 is a thing of beauty.

 

There is massive disconnect between what Carrie Lam and the pro-Beijing media are saying and what is actually happening - Lam described protesters as people's "enemies" yesterday and vowed that their demands would never be granted, while the media portrays protesters as a dwindling group of black-clad nihilists.

And this is what Central looked like around lunch hour today.

 

At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, university officials negotiated for police and students to both withdraw from a standoff. After 6 minutes, police stormed back in, made violent arrests, then fired a 20-minute barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets. And the cops still expect people to trust them.

 

Mate was there, looked bad

 

Hong Kong pushed to 'brink of total collapse'

statements like this could be the indication that things now need to be ramped up / mainland directly inolved

 

Yep, mainland intervention is starting to look more likely, even though the HK cops have apparently been given almost unlimited authority to crack down violently on protests.

The teachers' unions said it was too dangerous for kids to go to school on Wednesday, the government said it was fine - then carried out widespread searches of students on their way to school.



Tear gas fills the main road in Yuen Long Monday night:

 

Xi’s plan to tighten grip on Hong Kong would kill his Chinese dream

The Fourth Plenum last month seems to have concluded with plans to accelerate Hong Kong's transformation into another Chinese city and finally abolish the 1 Country 2 Systems formula.

It's madness, they can't just force their authority onto Hong Kong the way they can in the mainland. The end result will not just be violence and an exodus of refugees to Taiwan and other countries, but it will also mean China loses access to world financial markets. Xi Jinping is so stupid that he may actually be about to collapse the entire Chinese economy.

I think this has been explained earlier in the thread but to reiterate, the Yuan is not internationally tradeable so to service their growing foreign debt they need foreign currency reserves, most of which they obtain via Hong Kong which is responsible for 2/3s of FDI into China. Cracking down on Hong Kong will destroy it as a financial centre, and in turn China will lose access to foreign currency reserves and be unable to service their debts, ultimately causing their currency to rapidly depreciate. Hyperinflation, a collapse of the property market, and a sovereign debt crisis are approaching and it won't be pretty.

Xi has surrounded himself with yesmen and believes he can simply crush Hong Kong and make it a typical Chinese city, and that the world will accept it, Hong Konger will eventually just get used to it and accept it, and that Hong Kong will remain a financial centre. This isn't going to happen.

Classic hubris of a dictator.

 

This video from Monday night sums up how Hong Kong is being policed right now - a water cannon truck fired at a medicine shop for no reason and the angry shopkeeper threw something at the truck. Another massive jet of water was fired then riot cops ran up, fired a projectile at him at close range, roughed him up, chased away reporters, and took him away.

 

香港中文大學升起中華民國國旗 - 新·品葱

The Republic of China (Taiwanese) flag has been raised by the protestors occupying Chinese University of Hong Kong. This is actually quite a serious escalation and a kind of brinkmanship - it raises the spectre that it may not remain a rebellion of Hong Kong, but rather will begin to undermine the legitimacy of the CCP's claim over Mainland China as well, and it threatens their claim to be the sole representative of Chinese civilisation and ruins their attempts to blur the distinction between their party and "China" and "Chinese people." If the use of the Taiwanese flag by protestors becomes widespread, it is very dangerous brinkmanship as it could foreseeably trigger a sequence of events leading to a Chinese invasion of the island.

Meanwhile, the Global Times, heavily linked to the Communist Party, tweeted today that a curfew will be announced this weekend. The protestors are hunkering down on campus with food supplies and are building fortifications and defenses - including walls, barricades, catapults, petrol bombs, traps, and bows and arrows with flammable cladding, and preparing to face the crackdown.

It seems this weekend will be a climatic battle in which the police attempt to retake the campus. The possibility of the PLA coming out the garrison is higher than ever. Also, the following weekend is the district council elections, which makes "restoring order" and arresting as many people all the more urgent for the authorities.

If it is only police, it is possible that through ingenuity, planning, youthful energy and determination they could rout the police and hold the campus, take the symbolic victory prior to elections and then disperse.

If the PLA come out, then it will likely be a massacre and Hong Kong will be finished.

Looking at pictures like those posted above by Yossarian, at schoolkids being lined up by heavily armed police in the subway, it strikes me that almost every teenager in HK will have had such an experience. That will stick with them. Beijing has lost the young generation of Hong Kong, and even if they crush resistance for now, they will never have the allegiance of Hong Kong people and the city will probably end up as something like a cyberpunk Northern Ireland. Its status as a financial centre is over for sure, and with it, so are China's dreams of being a superpower.

 

This looks pretty cool