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The Protests in Hong Kong
Surfpossum
A nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
A nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
I want to stay informed about this topic but my main way of staying informed about things is these threads but there wasn't one1 for this so!
This is what prompted me to start thinking about this more:
https://thisamericanlife.org/686/umbrellas-up
Particularly Act One, the prologue, and Act Six. In Act One, a couple of younger folks describe what it feels like to be the transitional generation between the older one, which largely doesn't seem to have a problem with the creeping authoritarianism or won't be around to see its effects, and the younger one, which won't have a memory of what things were like before. They seem largely resigned to the fact that they will fail, but that they need to protest to try and make a mark in history so that future generations will know they tried.
It was... quite moving. I'm not very clear on the politics of the whole thing (tho this seems like a decent primer), but it feels important somehow. There have been protests with millions of demonstrators, mass arrests numbering in the thousands, police using live ammunition, demonstrators building barricades and burning stuff, escalations to violent confrontations, several protesters killed, it goes on and on.
Anyway! You've probably heard people getting mad at Blizzard, and it's due to this. Corporations are being pressured to do stuff like ban players or remove apps or lose access to the Chinese market.
On the flip side, some companies are also taking actions against the Chinese government:
So, uh, aside from being happy that Destiny 2 is no longer on battlenet, how should I feel about things? Should we be boycotting more stuff? Is this something we should be expecting our politicians to weigh in on? Do I just hit post now?
Notes:
1. Specifically for this, anyway. There's been discussion of it in the East Asia thread.
This is what prompted me to start thinking about this more:
https://thisamericanlife.org/686/umbrellas-up
Particularly Act One, the prologue, and Act Six. In Act One, a couple of younger folks describe what it feels like to be the transitional generation between the older one, which largely doesn't seem to have a problem with the creeping authoritarianism or won't be around to see its effects, and the younger one, which won't have a memory of what things were like before. They seem largely resigned to the fact that they will fail, but that they need to protest to try and make a mark in history so that future generations will know they tried.
It was... quite moving. I'm not very clear on the politics of the whole thing (tho this seems like a decent primer), but it feels important somehow. There have been protests with millions of demonstrators, mass arrests numbering in the thousands, police using live ammunition, demonstrators building barricades and burning stuff, escalations to violent confrontations, several protesters killed, it goes on and on.
Anyway! You've probably heard people getting mad at Blizzard, and it's due to this. Corporations are being pressured to do stuff like ban players or remove apps or lose access to the Chinese market.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768373843/analysis-the-long-arm-of-china-and-free-speechA single tweet by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong unleashed massive retaliation from China that put the team and the entire NBA on notice. China's state TV cut off preseason games and ominously announced it would "immediately investigate all co-operation and exchanges involving the NBA." Tencent, a major Chinese social media company with a reported $1.5 billion streaming deal with the NBA, said it will no longer stream Rockets games, even though the team is immensely popular in China.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768841864/after-china-objects-apple-removes-app-used-by-hong-kong-protestersApple has removed from its App Store a smartphone app used by Hong Kong pro-democracy activists to crowdsource the location of protesters and police, after Chinese state media suggested the tech giant was aiding "rioters."
Apple initially rejected the app last week, saying that it "encourages an activity that is not legal," and allows users to "evade law enforcement," according to its developers.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/08/768245386/blizzard-entertainment-bans-esports-player-after-pro-hong-kong-commentsBlitzchung wore a gas mask and dark goggles during that interview last Sunday, evoking the gear activists have worn during months of street protests. Toward the end of the segment, he shouted the popular protest chant, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!"
Hong Kong Bans Face Masks At Public Assemblies
ASIA
Hong Kong Bans Face Masks At Public Assemblies
In an announcement released Tuesday, Blizzard Entertainment said the player's statement violated a tournament rule that prohibits any acts that "brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image [sic]."
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768679277/fifa-disciplines-hong-kong-football-association-after-chinese-national-anthem-prFIFA fined the Hong Kong Football Association Wednesday after fans protested the Chinese national anthem at a World Cup qualifying game against Iran. The Hong Kong and China national teams are separate, but FIFA plays the Chinese anthem because Hong Kong is considered an administrative region of China.
On the flip side, some companies are also taking actions against the Chinese government:
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/23/753626357/youtube-channels-suspended-for-coordinated-influence-campaign-against-hong-kongGoogle has suspended 210 YouTube channels it says were being used as part of a "coordinated" campaign to influence public opinion about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The move follows Twitter's suspension earlier this week of nearly 1,000 accounts for violating the company's "platform manipulation policies" it said were tied to Chinese state actors trying to undermine the Hong Kong protests. Facebook said it was also taking down several pages and accounts for "coordinated inauthentic behavior as part of a small network that originated in China and focused on Hong Kong."
So, uh, aside from being happy that Destiny 2 is no longer on battlenet, how should I feel about things? Should we be boycotting more stuff? Is this something we should be expecting our politicians to weigh in on? Do I just hit post now?
Notes:
1. Specifically for this, anyway. There's been discussion of it in the East Asia thread.
+26
Posts
I currently don't have the bandwidth to follow their protests closely at all. Which is really missing out, I think. I hear they're doing innovative stuff. And they deserve it, for nothing else than being human.
China just has no reason to capitulate that I can see.
The only hope they have is that their protests become infectious and other young people in china, especially wealthy young people, take up their cause. Beyond that, they can hope for a resurgent left wing movement in the US which reforges strength into the pan Pacific pact to force china back to a softly softly approach.
Chinas demographic crisis may soon force them to allow extensive immigration, exposing mainland china populations to new viewpoints and perhaps again forcing the government to take a more gentle approach.
It's hard not to feel helpless and cynical about the plight of the Hong Kong protestors (my family is from there and even if I've never visited personally, I do feel a kinship with HK). I mean, aside from Taiwan, who else is willing to back their corner?
The U.S. won't do anything to help no matter how much the protesters plead for our aid. It's just not going to happen, not with the orange shitgibbon currently occupying the White House (he'll just say, "Not our problem; let them fight it out like kids," anyway).
The HK economy is in full recession due to the unrest but the fact of the matter is that it's not nearly as important or relevant to China's GDP as it would've been 20+ years ago. So China has no need to capitulate or negotiate any terms with the protestors to stop.
Yeah, the reports of police brutality sucks hard but it's sad that I can only say that it's good that China hasn't yet sent in PLA troops and tanks into HK to quell the rebellion only because the optics of it would look terrible on the world stage, especially in this day and age of social media and smart phone cameras to document it all.
Honestly, if I had the resources to do a large scale international campaign I'd be trying to help people emigrate outside of Honk Kong because they are just so genuinely screwed. Even in a more stable world few nations would be willing to take serious punitive action to help Hong Kong, and even if they were, I'm not sure that wouldn't just motivate the CCP to "solve" the problem quicker.
China is becoming explicitly more authoritarian every year and there's no indication that trend is gonna reverse in the foreseeable future. In a bad sort of way, the best that distinct entities like Hong Kong or China's northern or western territories might hope for is if China were to go through a major economic recession, because that *might* make them more willing to compromise with different groups or at least be less willing to spend so much suppressing them.
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That's certainly a theory that exiswhat the fuck are you talking about
China is chock full of nightmare fuel.
Here are some links articles in spoilers. Won't be discussing this further as it's not the main point of of this thread, only a potential outcome.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-organ-harvesting/un-urged-to-investigate-organ-harvesting-in-china-idUSKBN1W92FL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China
Steam / Origin & Wii U: Heatwave111 / FC: 4227-1965-3206 / Battle.net: Heatwave#11356
The US Foreign Policy thread (I think) had a page or so on this, but here's a fairly solid story on the subject.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes
I think assuming that ANYthing will “force” the Chinese government to do a single fucking thing short of open revolt is desperately naive. Corporations like Blizzard have maneuvered themselves into this unenviable position by relying on the notion that their involvement in the Chinese economy and demand for the rule of law would force China to liberalize, but the wealth they have helped bring to the nation have only allowed the Chinese government to argue that their rule is legitimate on the basis of competence, a position I have seen touted (mostly by the rich) quite a bit over the last decade or so.
Edit: additionally, in my admittedly anecdotal experience with Chinese young people, their commitment to Chinese Nationalism are an example Trump and his supporters look up to.
Deng got away with openly murdering hundreds(read, thousands) of patriotic Chinese communists in '89. It's not like the PRC's stopped being fascist in the intervening time.
jfc that's depressing.
My first girlfriend, a Chinese national, told me that this is the demographic that leaves China permanently, and that the Communist Party's attitude for such an exodus is "good riddance."
Which works oh so great for the US states where the young people flee in droves. The effects will be slower for a large nation like China but they won't escape the consequences for very long.
I doubt any large US company cared if their efforts would liberalize China or not.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
While I think policy makers and think tank people and the like might have bought into the whole "capitalism will liberalize China", the actual enactors of that defacto western policy were and still are only thinking about the money. Blizzard or movie studios or the NBA or whomever has no interest in anything but making fat stacks.
Believe it or not, liberalizing China has a pretty direct impact on bottom lines. They care because it means graft and predicting the outcomes of legal issues costs them money, and is less predictable in a system as opaque and accountless as China.
Not in the “this is good for the people” sense, certainly not, in the “exactly how much money can we reliably make here” sense.
Again, this is what liberalization means. Relying on (comparatively) liberal legal structures to protect their intellectual property, profits, and asses from going to jail.
Won't that end up as a brain drain on the country?
Kind of like the one Trump is starting in America by making the lives of international students and scholars hell, so they take their degrees and leave America.
Where will all the brains end up?
To me its also a little bizarre this issue has kicked up so much dirt. Yes HK losing freedom is a problem, but the bigger problem is the larger mainland populus not having that freedom in the first place. Companies bowing to China's wishes to censor is a problem, but the bigger problem is all the wealth and stability they pump in to legitimate and support the CPP while bowing to their protectionist practices and thought policing of products.
What all democratic countries need to ask themselves is if they are so worried about China as a growing geopolitical threat, is why they continue to trade with them rather than carrying out a concerted economic isolation like Russia is suffering from. I suspect the answer constists of a huge economic downturn given how integral China is to the world economy, but prioritizing those economic boons is likely the wrong choice in the long term. And you certainly can't expect most companies to make this choice, you have to put pressure on governments to make it happen.
Why is it bizarre that people are concerned about people in Hong Kong fighting against losing their freedoms in a very visible manner? The reasons why this sets off a large reaction seem extremely obvious.
And most of Russia's suffering is not because of a deliberate policy of economic isolation. The Russian economy has kinda sucked all along. And was never as economically powerful or integrated as China.
I do think the larger point rahkeesh is making here, that pressuring companies maybe isn’t the best strategy here, has something to it, but I rather prefer to do both. Exposing companies for behaving counter to their public expressed values (“every voice matters, in Blizzard’s case”), and punishing them for it is perfectly reasonable in this case, but it should definitely be accompanied by pressure on governments to punish China for its treatment of its citizens.
Protesters are getting executed by police in broad daylight, being shot like it's nothing.
And the police are raiding the university, which is the internet data center. If the police successfully raid it, Hong Kong will have China's Great Firewall filtering and censoring them. This would make it harder for the resistance to get organized, and could even out many of the students, leading to more executions. The last part there is the fear anyway.
Do you have any news links? I've been following the BBC coverage on this, and while it looks bad, the only serious injuries reported was someone set on fire (yikes) and one protestor shot by the police during an altercation.
Which honestly is a good example of why the standard police forces shouldn't be armed. Pulling out a gun and then wrestling with people is only going to end with someone getting shot, it's idiotic.
edit: So I went back to make sure I got my facts right, and I could have sworn an earlier version of the article described it as the protestor was trying to grab the gun (or the police claiming that the protestor was trying to grab the gun), and that's no longer there.
The video itself does show the protestor making a move towards it, but to me it looked like he was just trying to push it away.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
So I read up on that, and it turns out the story originated in the Epoch Times. Not that anyone should want to be taken as a political prisoner by the PRC.
Whether or not that story originated in the Epoch Times, you do always have the old Kilgour-Matas report. And the Chinese government backtracking on the acceptability of organs from Death Row Inmates.
So as far as sketchy ass organ harvesting.... yeah there is some sketchy shit going on.
Stay safe HK protesters. You're up against a nightmarish regime.
Unfortunately the TPP that would have functionally put pressure on China was killed and almost everyone feasible to win the WH were/are publicly against it. So there doesn't seem to be any reasonable hope for help from the US given our effective withdrawal from the region post-Obama even in the medium (2-4 years) term.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Like with TTIP across the Atlantic.
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I believe the idea is that it would allow the US to apply pressure by threat of concerted action by the trade bloc.
Edit: Of course this doesn't work as well when there's a new dictator who cares about self-aggrandizement there.
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Specifically getting China to change it's policy WRT to Hong Kong, Tibet or Taiwan is impossible if we want to continue doing business with them. I would argue it would be much easier to advocate for a free Tibet or Taiwan long before you could make an argument for Hong Kong autonomy. There's at least some standing of Tibet and Taiwan being distinctly separate nations from China.
Hong Kong is a city in China.
I don't think there's any chance at influencing a country to treat a specific city in any particular way. You might more broadly make human rights violations become unprofitable and Hong Kong could hold out and make this whole thing a spotlight on the injustices that the Chinese government more discreetly visit on it's citizens every day everywhere else in their territory. I still don't think they're staying independent / autonomous. The best case is China has to adjust it's behavior to treat everyone less shitty and Hong Kong eventually loses autonomy even then.
Sanctioning Iran has not significantly altered its political trajectory, and done measurable damage to its people. Nationalist as the most publicly visible Chinese seem to be, I do not think pushing them to the brink of starvation or slapping tools out of their hands is a good solution, nor do I think it would be effective in bringing about a change in the government or its behavior with respect to territory it claims as its own.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
I don't know why people keep assuming sanctions have to hurt everyone. There is such a thing as targeting the people in power (see: Russia).
I don't expect China's government to change any time soon when the guy at the top has all but crowned himself emperor. Truthfully that may be related to the situation.
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I can't really add a lot to that, but I felt I had to share it with you guys. This is getting so far beyond scary.
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