https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Pray tell me, how exactly do you see international law intervening in Chinese crimes, so that it won't look like ops in Venezuela (at minimum)? Issuing a strongly worded letter and Xi would comply?
That's just what they told you to justify taking their oil
Even if it hadn't violated a ratified treaty (it did violate several, starting with the UN Charter and OAS Charter), it would still violate international law; the US has recognized (among other places, in the London Charter of 1945 establishing the International Military Tribunal) that the crime of aggressive war exists independently of the crime of waging war in violation of international treaties.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/americas/south-america/v...
E.g. at least 2 children were executed by Maduro for protesting against him, along with at least hundreds of adults. Mass political arrests by masked men have been common since Chavez came to power, there have been executions of entire families. Torture of prisoners. It goes on and on and on and on, and all of it violates the core of international law: the Geneva convention.
Maduro's violations of international treaties include attacks on neighboring states (Maduro's "war on terror" (yes, really) included raids on Columbian territory, plus his promise to attack Guyana). Maduro's violations of international treaties includes, ironically, abducting foreign nationals.
And before you say "but ICE". First, this started more than a decade before ICE, it is actually about far more people than ICE, and with ICE there is at least the allegation that those people violated US law (immigration law). So no, it is not the same. ICE comes disturbingly close, true, but this is still a LOT worse.
So what is your point? Obviously Venezuela since more than a decade did not respect international law. Is your point that since international law exists, Venezuela should have been attacked way sooner, in fact as soon as it became clear what Chavez was doing? Or do you argue that US/Trump's attack is fine since international law can be ignored anyway?
Including Maduro's abduction I think it's very easy to argue that the US behavior is much more in line with international law than Venezuela's. So what is your point?
I mean, what reasoning, exactly, leads to your conclusion that Venezuela/Maduro is the victim here? Or should I put it differently and state the obvious: that your reasoning only makes sense if it defends the idea that Maduro's regime is allowed to kill and attack, and the US is not.
It's all horrible and shocking to say the least. And it makes people question whether our actions are justified or the outright thuggery of a wanna-be dictator.
Next time Putin will kidnap Zelenskyy with the exact same reasoning.
Don’t forget that the US don’t put him on trial for what he did to the people of Venezuela but some bogus crimes.
Putin DID do that. He ordered him kidnapped. And it wasn't international law stopping him, it was the Ukrainian army and apparently some regular Ukrainians.
Putin has tried to kidnap him at least twice, and sent out murder squads for him probably several dozen times now.
Putin did not face consequences for this, in fact a number of countries that profess to respect international law protected him against International law: South Africa, China, Mongolia, Belarus, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Azerbeidjan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and India.
Also, as I pointed out, "international law" didn't stop Maduro from committing warcrimes, he also sent out murder squads that even killed children, it didn't stop Putin from doing the same. Nothing at all changed for international law at all.
The only thing victimized is people's illusions about international law. Maduro is himself a war criminal! So using international law grounded arguments to protect him ... fuck that, even if you're technically right.
The point of international law isn’t protection but to distinguish wrong from right.
What do you think why even Putin made some bogus claims why his actions are justified?
In which war did Maduro commit war crimes?
> So using international law grounded arguments to protect him ... fuck that, even if you're technically right.
Law protects also criminals to a certain degree because the alternative is anarchy, chaos and global wars.
International war was a lesson learned from the world wars.
Seems like we need to learn again the hard way.
Tue right way of doing those things is rarely the glorious, it’s bureaucratic
> The point of international law isn’t protection but to distinguish wrong from right.
It is actually explicitly stated in almost all international law (mostly except human rights/Geneva convention, which would be the one Maduro violated and Trump didn't) that the ONLY point of international law is international cooperation. International law is completely voluntary for states and consists of individual treaties you can join ... or not join. Don't join or decide to leave? That bit of international law doesn't apply to you anymore.
> What do you think why even Putin made some bogus claims why his actions are justified?
Because Putin always does that. Even decades back, when he was backing gangsters, he did that. I'm sure at one point it was necessary, and now the guy is 73. His habits won't change anymore. Besides, his idol, the Soviet Union, also did that.
> In which war did Maduro commit war crimes?
No war required for that. Besides what even is a war? One of the older "international law" treaties which nobody remembers that a war is only a war when declared by at least one state. Very few declared wars in the last decades. Israel-Palestine? Not declared (according to hamas that's just how things are forever and Israel just defended I guess). Sudan? Not declared. The 123818th conflict between India and Pakistan? Not declared. Iran-Israel? Iran-Syria? Iran-Lebanon? (more like Iran-everyone) Turkey-Kurdistan? You get the picture. The only war that was declared was Russia attacking Ukraine.
> Law protects also criminals to a certain degree because the alternative is anarchy, chaos and global wars.
Unless you mean an extremely minimal degree law does not protect criminals against the state. And any amount of force that is required to get a criminal to stop is legally justified essentially everywhere. In fact, in the countries most humans alive live in, no law protects you against the state, criminal or innocent.
> International war was a lesson learned from the world wars.
Actually the history goes back quite a bit further than that. And if you consider international law is just treaties between countries/factions then ... The most famous bit of international law, the convention of Geneva, was a lesson learned in the holocaust.
> Seems like we need to learn again the hard way.
Why? "We"? Venezuela was not respecting international law before this happened. Neither was Russia. Neither was ...
> Tue right way of doing those things is rarely the glorious, it’s bureaucratic
I doubt Ukraine, or any other actual victims of war crimes will agree on that one. For instance, international law is clear that hamas must surrender to Israel, and obviously they should deliver anyone that had anything to do with taking hostages to the ICC (since both hamas and the PA signed the Rome treaty). The ICC doesn't even want that to happen. Could you explain how this can be achieved in a bureaucratic way?
The reason you rarely see people cite the exact provision is that it's pointless to cite, because the US foreign policy establishment does not care and will not be swayed by persuasive arguments about their treaty obligations.
"There was a lot of death on the other side, unfortunately. But a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday trying to protect him," Trump said.[0]
[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-officials-reveal-new-detail...
My original point is very much meant to counter absurd hypotheticals like these. No other sovereign nation on Earth at the current point in time would ever dare to "liberate" China, because this is no longer the 19th century, and so China is no longer weak.
Soft power may buy you hearts and minds; Japan and South Korea are good examples of that in Asia. But hard power is what truly matters at the end of the day when it comes to asserting your geopolitical interests, and that's clearly the philosophy China has decided to operate under.
The U.S. is clearly not oblivious to this reality either. Even if we grant your moral arguments that Maduro was a horrible dictator deserving his fate, the fact that Trump and his administration chose to act when it was geopolitically and domestically convenient strongly suggests that "taking out the big bad Latino dictator for the sake of humanity" was not the primary motivation.
My comment on U.S. actions against Venezuela was not a condemnation, but rather just a factual example. Russia's military actions against Ukraine is no different. Nor China's actions towards Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.
Actually they killed whole bunch of people. And according to POTUS they're currently running the country so cut the bullshit please.
Clearly, a weasel take on the "two wrongs make a right" doctrine. According to that new take two wrongs can be good and bad simultaneously, there is no easy clear answer, so any additional wrongs mustn't be called "wrongs", they must be called "maybe-rights".
Very clever.../s
The US shifted from "China is an economic power we should worry about" to "China is a military power we should worry about", but to me it seems to be a recent mind shift serving the current administration narrative.
As a European, I don't think there is much hostility against China here. Sure, people don't like the overall humanitarian situation with Uyghurs; and there are the usual issues with lobbying, intelligence, and currency manipulation, but overall the general public sentiment is rather neutral I would say.
Nut sure about adversary. As for strategic competitor - this is normal state of affairs. Countries do compete and it is healthy
youll get cheaper EVs though I guess
You’ll get cheaper oil though I guess?
That depends on how cowardly the rest of the world acts if/when the time comes.
- War is logistics and you're talking about trying to get involved in a war, that would necessitate supply lines thousands of miles long, between two countries that are separated by 80 miles.
- China is extremely technologically advanced with the largest military in the world, by a wide margin.
- China is the at-scale manufacturing king of the world. In a shift to a war economy, nobody would be able to come even remotely close to competing. They parallel the US in WW2 in a number of ways.
- China is a nuclear power, meaning getting involved is going to be Ukraine style indirect aid to try to avoid direct conflict and nuclear escalation.
- Any attempt to engage in things like sanctions would likely hurt the sanctioners significantly more than China.
- The "rest of the world" you're referring to is the anglosphere, EU, and a few oddballs like Japan or South Korea. This makes up less than 15% of the world, and declining.
- War fatigue is real. The US really wanted to invade Syria, but no matter how hard we beat the war drums, people just weren't down with it. I think this is because people saw major echoes of Iraq at the time, and Taiwan will have a far louder echo of Ukraine. This isn't a show many people will be enthusiastic about rerunning.
* Being close to the front lines is as much of a liability as an asset. China's ports and shipbuilding facilities will be bombed out, the US' will not.
* This will be a naval and air war. You can't march troops across the strait, and as we've seen in Ukraine, flying them is a no-go either.
* China hasn't fought a war within the living memory of anyone of fighting age.
* You have a weird way of trying to diminish what represents most of the economic power of the world. Let's also add the Philippines and Vietnam to those "oddballs". China will be alone. And don't forget that China's population is shrinking.
* War fatigue is not an issue here when it comes to Taiwan. Adventurism in Venezuela was emboldening. We'll see what happens with Iran. I live in the generally pacifist part of the US, and I think most folks would demand that we intervene.
The most likely start to hostilities will be if China declares a blockade. Someone in the US will call their bluff - with warships. If China starts shooting, we're in a war. Moral outrage is an (often unfortunate) American trait.
I think this one is particularly important. IIRC, it's usually phrased something like "if the USA sends aircraft carriers across the pacific, then China has an unsinkable aircraft carrier 80 miles away: the mainland". It's a huge home turf advantage.
The USA seems to have a very low appetite for helping allies against bullies at present too. And no appetite for taking US soldier casualties.
Or how weary of not having access to TSMC the rest of the world is.
The choice is between possible nuclear war, or, the 5090s are more expensive and sometimes Americans can't buy them when the PRC is punishing the west for something.
so is taiwan.
> The other players will be Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Australia so the
i can ensure you Vietnam and SK wont. and we want Japan to join so much. Aus is like a bonus maybe
In the end, if a war happens, it will be idiotic again, from an economical point of view and from a humanitarian point of view. Economically, of course it will cost huge amount of resources to conquer Taiwan, and it will only disturb trade and what is already established on Taiwan. From a humanitarian point of view, of course many people will die.
The smartest China could do, would be to return to a soft power approach, and continue to develop mainland China, to continue to rival and even surpass Taiwan/Taipei. There are many young people, who don't have the walls in their minds, that the older population has. They don't want war, they want their freedom, and they want a high living standard. All this would be theoretically possible, if China didn't let ideology rule, but instead went for the economically best route, which is most certainly not an invasion.
Well, go figure, if you run military "exercises" at the doorstep of your neighbor, people are not gonna like you very much, duh. But there was a time before more recent escalations, when lots of young Taiwanese people did not think too badly about being part of China. That's why I said that the smartest move would be (or would have been) to continue an approach of soft power and development, to rival life in Taiwan. Give the people comfort and high living standard, and they are less likely to dislike you.
Every one gets that far away countries across the world can’t put military bases right next to Europe or the US. However when it comes to China, that is not only acceptable but it’s the anti-cowardly move to support outsider aggressors.
Indeed, Japan and Korea and the Philippines have American military bases on them.
You mentioned Taiwan, curious why? It has no American military bases. Perhaps of all the countries in the region, it's the most sovereign in that sense.
What's with this Americentric geopolitical analysis?
Anyway take up your grievances with the KMT, don't worry, they're about to come crying back into the CPC's arms begging for a shred of political power now that their regime has been overthrown for 30 years, and their efforts to sell Taiwan to the CPC in exchange for a teaspoon of political legitimacy are failing spectacularly.
They are finally off the terrorist list a few years ago, but for a long time the US policy was to feign outrage but then declare anyone using any teeth to push back against China as a terrorist.
I'm pretty confident that most women in Xinjiang are pretty happy that that group was smeared out. You can think Xinjiang and Uyghurs shouldn't be oppressed without supporting actual, unironic terrorist groups who want total theocratic control and full on jihad. I'm more amazed they're removed from the terrorist list. Seems like a weird political decision.
That still doesn't establish it as the distinguishing factor as to why the US declared them as terrorist. I fought in the YPG in the Syrian Civil War, an ally of the USA. Guess what, there were those who looked 13,14,15 usually because the Syrian government or ISIS had incapacitated their parents somehow. Mostly they were way back as token guards at training outposts but I also saw some near the front. The YPG also had to ally with a bunch of nasty theocratic arab militias to survive, in fact, that's why the SDF/YPG just got largely wiped out because the consolidation of the rebels in Damascus resulted in their arab allies turning their back. (In fact, Wikipedia page says IS is opponent of Uyghur militia). And I won't even get into the fact that the YPG and PKK are ideologically and pragmatically incredibly similar, yet PKK is magically a terrorist and the YPG is a brave US ally, one gets the blame anytime a Kurdish person does something horrible against innocent people and one doesn't.
As sister poster alludes, the US has never had an issue allying with "terrorists" when it suits their goals. Especially when fighting against USSR.
So knowing that this isn't the distinguishing factor, can you point to any other present-day armed group in or of China that has credible potential for an armed political uprising that hasn't been declared a terrorist? There might be one, I just don't know who they are, but I am very interested to read about them.
To me it looks like the difference is that they were a credible threat of violence against China, not that they have slaughtered innocent people which the USA and China has done as have many of US allies.
You might disagree on whether HKers' freedoms are truly being abridged or whether you care, but the questions you posed weren't complete enough on their own.
Demand its return based on what principles ? How did the UK gain control of Hong Kong
Would the UK be able to go to war with China over HK ?
in the words of Dave Chappell - hello UN, if you got problems, bring ya army! oh you ain't no army
UK “taking back” HK is also very imaginative , like white people dreaming of recolonizing Asia in 21st century? Good luck.
These words are thought-terminating cliches. Relevant link for HN today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
What does that have to do with "wokeness"?
And on both topics, it is the same group of anti-American traitors openly trashing our values, both domestically and internationally, while abusing the cloak of "conservatism" to obscure what they actually stand for. So no, there is really no conflict when criticizing both.
(you are of course free to prioritize other values like non-intervention and come to a different answer for yourself on this topic. the point is there is no conflict for the two positions you contrast. and this used to be a pretty popular stance, actually)
If a good outcome is to happen - it needs to be driven and supported domestically.
> The woke mob has never been so confused
I'm confused what you mean by "woke" here. Is opposing violation of international law "woke"?
People can say that the Western world should do more to promote democracy in China (or not financially enable China to suppress its people) while at the same time saying that invading a country and kidnapping its leader is not the way to solve a similar problem.
We can agree on the treatment of HK being far from ideal, and I would go as far as saying, that even economically for China itself, it was not good to handle the matter as they did. That is where their ideology shows. HK was an economical hub. In recent times though many businesses left and more are unwilling to invest. This is the economical downside, that could simply have been avoided by not doing what they did. The question should be asked "Why not just leave it as it is, since it is working well, economically?" But they had to mess with it. Another downside is international reputation damage of course. China has achieved many great things in the past decades and now has cities more modern and convenient than most of what you find in Europe. Their one problem remains ideology. That they sometimes feel the need to do things, that are not economically sound, for the sake of ideology.
However, I can't agree with anyone arguing, that HK should not be part of China, like some people do in the comments here. It's a separate matter from policies implemented. Of course I wish for HKers to keep their freedoms. Who doesn't. Of course I wish China would not implement policies, that endanger the freedom of its people. But territorial? Nope, HK always was bound to become a part of China.
What I can say more from visiting HK twice is, that they still got Internet (uncensored), in contrast to other parts of China. Every week I am speaking with someone from HK, using Signal, which is not practical for anyone from (most?) other parts of China. When traveling in China, I used a HK eSIM, to have reliable and uncensored Internet. I hope that these aspects still remain intact for a long time, or that the rest of China will open up. At some point they should have the confidence in their own economy to compete on global scale.
Why so? Do you think Monaco should be part of France? Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia? A lot of big countries respect the sovereignty of neighboring smaller countries, although that is unfortunately becoming less true now.
It isn't about colonialism. I have never seen anyone seriously argue it should go back to the British. It is about a framework to ensure they maintain their rights. It would be great if that looked like expanded rights for all of China but it can also look like some degree of sovereignty, which was in place for quite some time.
Monaco is already 90% part of France. There was an agreement until recently that Monaco would become French if the Princeship went extinct. By law the Prime Minister and the Police has to be French. France also handles their defense etc. It's very conditional sovereignty, the deal being that they can be a tax heaven if they want to, but not to France and Italy.
> Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia?
AFAIK they've been expelled from Malaysia after independence.
I'm not trying to disprove your point, just that it's fluid and fragile. Sovereignty itself has only been conceptually defined with the Treaties of Westphalia, it's recent and quintessentially Western.
I think the Westphalia thing is somewhat overblown there were lots of sovereignty analogs throughout human history all over the world before that.
Then you should read more of the comments here, and you will have that completely new experience.
I am genuinely lost in your argument. You start against colonialism then justify Hong-Kong being reintegrated to China because they would have taken it by force anyway which is pretty much the same thing as colonialism.
You then pivot to arguing HK was always going to be part of China for a reason I find unclear. Hong-Kong was never part of the PRC before the handover so I don't really see the appeal to continuity.
Have you considered that people are not arguing for colonialism but actually against any form of coercitive control?
Giving back HK might have been the only sensible move back then, and it might have bought HKers time and avoided a more open conflict, that wouldn't have ended well for HK.
At least Wikipedia disagrees with your sentiment, that HK was never part of China. Well, technically you said "PRC", maybe even intentionally, and you could take some weird position of claiming, that nothing inside China is part of China, because it was a different entity before PRC. But then so do many countries all over the world lose any claim to their territory. Germany, after second world war, France after French revolution, most prominently the US, after its founding ... Historically, HK was a grab of land by the UK. Granted, they built something nice up there, but only after the despicable acts they committed historically in the region. If we get into what the UK did historically in the region, it will not lead to a moral high ground.
Just an FYI.
That's the 2nd paragraph in the article. In my experience, articles that have to go to this extent to really convince the reader that the court is so above rapproach have an agenda. And gee, coming from a CCP state media outlet, I wonder what that agenda could be...
> CGTN is the English-language news channel of state-run China Global Television Network, based in Beijing, China. It is one of several channels provided by China Global Television Network, the international division of Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.
[1] https://allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index
Otherwise you get 20 years in prison.
Top quality stuff.
In a somewhat related vein, there are entirely too many "anti-colonialists" in what is now fashionably called The Global South who, when push comes to shove, reveal themselves to be actually kind of okay with colonialism as long as it's not perpetrated against them. When a colonialist war of aggression is perpetrated against these white folks called "Ukrainians", and perpetrated by Russia, a country they really rather like, then what's a little colonialism between friends? Heck, Russia shows up with a colonialist militia to prop up dictators and mine for diamonds and gold all over the Sahel and it's like, heck yeah, thank for your kicking out the French. Really interesting logic.
My opinion, they're mostly middle class westerners that grew up in a cradle of empire, sucking from the teat of exploitative resource extraction. Then when they stopped seeing the benefits of imperialism as their country fell into late stage capitalism and eating itself alive, they turn their resentment against capitalism and correctly identify it as what's ailing their society, but somehow completely fall for the propaganda that there are socialist countries on this planet that are "fighting capitalism." They do nothing to challenge their deeply rooted western arrogance or imperialist savior complex, and begin lecturing people from smaller nations that actually, it's not imperialism when a country with a red flag does it.
Or, to put it another way: they're really anti-Americans.
It's interesting to see the exaggerated responses to Trump. Objectively, he's less authoritarian than say the PRC, but he's unlocked a lot of probably pre-existing resentment in US allies (probably derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...), and gotten a much stronger and more vicious response.
I mean, if you're mad about what happened to that 5 year old immigrant with the hat in Minneapolis, what you you think about what's happening to kids in Xinjiang and Tibet (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/09/world/asia/ti...)?
> Gyal Lo, a Tibetan education researcher, became alarmed by the boarding schools in 2016, when he saw that his two preschool-aged grandnieces, who were attending one in his hometown in northwestern China, preferred to speak Mandarin, not Tibetan.
> When the grandnieces, then ages 4 and 5, went home on the weekend, he said in an interview, they appeared withdrawn and spoke awkwardly in Tibetan with their parents, much changed from when he saw them in the previous year. Now they behaved “like strangers in their own home,” he said.
> “I said to my brother, ‘What if you don’t send them to the boarding school?’” Gyal Lo said. “He said he had no choice.”
> Gyal Lo set out to investigate the changes that families were going through as the schools expanded across Tibetan regions in China. Over the next three years he visited dozens of such schools, and saw that many Tibetan students spoke little of their mother tongue and were sometimes only able to see their parents once every several weeks or even months.
It's much worse and more systematic.
Annexing Greenland, even if it did happen, is objectively not nearly as terrible as the genocide of Uygurs or murdering tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. You just don't expect it from America, that's all. But no worries, give us time, the rest of us are re-calibrating our expectations and next time we won't be nearly so comically shocked.
I mean, that's a rationalization for feelings, but I don't explains the responses. Isn't Canada pursing closer relations with China because Trump, for instance? That's like deciding to ally with Magneto because Professor X fell short of your expectations.
If you have a moment, I invite you to take a peek at my blog, website (see "Values"), or comment history, and let me know in what ways I'm fascist. Should be quite easy for you, if I'm one of the most fascist people in existence.
or for a more popular opinion from most chinese people: you guys have guns, what are you waiting for?
And if you don't believe that, how does a peasant army stand up to the USA military?
it failed doesn't means we forget it and dont want it anymore. we still think of him all the time and wish we can try again. we are not commusim, but we are still the closet one. and we still have the biggest chance to become one. so i hope USA people can have someone like him, and live a better life, not pathetic enough to compare their living standard to a developing country like china.
Developing country for 70 years huh? Maybe if you keep working 996 while living in a tiny apartment you rent from a Beijing Billionaire, the PRC will finally become an industrialized nation.
i personally like him, as long as he is not our leader
> What's your alternative suggestion?
Good question. For starters, the common saying about "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results" applies here, which you seem to at least entertain.
What I would do is try and figure out exactly how and why people protest some things and not others. What spurns them on to stand in negative weather with snow and windchill standing for Cause A but not Cause B, C, or D?
My theory is essentially manipulation. The trolley problem is interesting to apply here. Why are some causes (lives, because people are dying every day across many conflicts) worth protesting and others simply don't matter?
If this theory has any value (probably not, but maybe) what should be done about it? I posit trump is a symptom. Focusing on the symptom is why harris lost. "I'm not him!" didn't work as a platform. Protesting against the symptom is like slapping a cold cloth on a fevered person instead of treating the infection causing the fever. It might even work for a half hour or so, a little, maybe.
What is the root cause of all this? How did we get here? I posit, and hold your breath for this one: money and power. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I cannot figure out how the stock market is at ATHs, unknown hundreds of billions are sloshing around for "AI" and I have friends making over 130k/yr trying to figure out how to pay their electric bills. How does that happen? How do we fix THAT?
I don't think protesting trump fixes that. If anything, it emboldens him. "Oh you don't want me to stop hitting you? You mean like this hit (punches you in the face) or this one (punches you in the stomach)? Ok, so not the face?" [Proceeds to punch you in the stomach]
Follow the money. Figure out the inception of these causes people get off their couch to protest. Fix that. These epstein files might have been a good start. Find the other 100 epsteins, they're out there. Blow the whole up for real.
> I don't think protesting trump fixes that. If anything, it emboldens him. "Oh you don't want me to stop hitting you? You mean like this hit (punches you in the face) or this one (punches you in the stomach)? Ok, so not the face?" [Proceeds to punch you in the stomach]
i like this part very much.
The actions of the State always align with the needs of those who hold the most power in that State.
It doesn't matter if you follow the law or not if someone powerful decides your existence is inconvenient.
They weren't fighting for anything. They were unhappy. And people like Lai and others whipped them up and sent their anger in a direction. And a lot of those kids went to jail.
When they could have taken that energy and put it towards building a better tomorrow. In a place with so many opportunities and changing so fast, they bet it all on traditional education when they could have adopted the entrepreneurial spirit of their ancestral geneartions. Their violence only played into the hands of the Central Government to yield all the pretext it needed to enact the very things the "protesters" thought they were against.
> The sentence "signifies the total destruction of the Hong Kong legal system and the end of justice", Sebastien said.
Hong Kong was facing imperialist takeover by the PRC. The people in Hong Kong naively thought they could maintain some measure of self determination through public appeal and law - tools that don't work in the PRC. The CPC is founded on complicity shedding the blood of enemies of the Party, that's the only language it speaks and its default fallback tool.
If the Hong Kong protests had continued into insurgency, the CPC would have simply sent in the PLA and massacred people. It would create some legal justification afterwards, of course.
In Taiwan, I think we haven't fully reckoned with the reality of dealing with Imperialists. See: Venezuela. If an imperialist country wants to have its way with you, there's basically nothing you can do from a military, political, or legal standpoint to stop it. Non-statist strategies are needed.
You could go the way of Mao but I think in the modern era a peasant army simply can't stand up to waves of drones and high accuracy targeted missile strikes. And besides, Mao's revolution became exactly the thing it was meant to overthrow: a capitalist, imperialist, stratified society. This will probably be the same fate of any successful violent revolution (see The Anarchist Cookbook by Keith McHenry for further examples). Anyway, never fight imperialists on their own grounds.
I don't know if anything short term could have prevented the PRC's takeover of Hong Kong, but protesting was basically pointless. That time should have been spent setting up alternative channels of communication, alternative means of resource distribution, and perhaps infiltration of same into the territory of the PRC to destabilize the legitimacy of the CPC there.
As for violence, clearly, there is no comparison between the violence of the protesters and the violence of the Chinese government. The CCP is literally responsible for tens of millions of deaths. How can people focus on entrepreneurship when they’re facing the loss of basic freedoms and the threat of mass detention and death?
Are you arguing that it's legitimate to put a 78 years old from a former democratic city forcefully reintegrated to another state in jail for 20 years because he is saying that the will of the people should be heard?
You think he wasn't condemned because he expressed pro-democracy view and this is not a speech issue?
I would like to read it rather than vague call for nuance.
He isn’t demanding any will of the people. Unlike the EU, US, etc, Chinese people are actually happy with their democratic China. In no way in Europe or US can a city claim they want “democratic” independence and go completely against the rest of the country on the side of recent protests and meddling by outside state depts. They would correctly be viewed as traitors and agitators.