• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Chinese forces gathering at Hong Kong border, White House officials monitoring escalation

I pray things do not escalate to violence.
 
Rexedgar said:
Hong Kong isn’t technically an island anymore. How many bridges to the mainland are there now?.
Click to expand...

There aren't any bridges from Hong Kong Island to the mainland.
 
Tunnels. But anyway, it's largely beside the point as 80 percent of HKs population is not on the Island.
 
Carjosse said:
A brutal dictatorship acting like a brutal dictatorship, what a surprise. This is why we need to distance ourselves from China.
Click to expand...

China will stumble and lurch its way into the 20th century. We will prod the regime via diplomacy and economic ties. Saudi Arabia is a similar situation. It's foolish for us to relinquish influence just because we object to the regime's tyranny.
 
Beijing is chomping at the bit to use troops in Hong Kong.

The demonstrators' penetrating the central govenment's party buildings in HKG is unacceptable to the Dictator-Tyrants of the Party in Beijing. To the Party Boyz in Beijing the demonstrations are challenging the authority of the central government and party. They are right of course. And good on the demonstrators.

However, the local HKG government and city elites are aghast at the thought of the PLA HKG garrison releasing the troops into the city. HKG officials who are beholden to Beijing are nonetheless issuing statements daily that the local government can handle the situation, which it can't. HKG local authorities have lost credibility massively throughout HKG because of the extradition bill it had to withdraw and bury. HKG Party leaders and officials know Beijing will lose the city to Singapore if the Boyz release the PLA.

Taiwan Pres. Tsai Ing-wen the lady lawyer (Cornell) is offering asylum and refuge to HKG citizens who may need protection or escape from the vile Chinese tyrants in Beijing and their PLA butchers of Tiananmen. The Taiwan Sunflower Movement that seized the pro-Beijing KMT controlled Parliament building then elected her, and the HKG Umbrella Movement that infuriates Beijing have had significant overlap for several years now....


Taiwan’s incumbent president, Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) issued a statement about the protests on her Twitter account Sunday:

"We stand with all freedom-loving people of #HongKong. In their faces, we see the longing for freedom, & are reminded that #Taiwan’s hard-earned democracy must be guarded & renewed by every generation. As long as I’m President, “one country, two systems” will never be an option."

Her opponent in the 2020 elections, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu, fumbled with his remarks, saying he did not know about the developing protests and calling them a “parade.” Han, the mayor of Taiwan’s largest southern city, Kaohsiung, made a controversial business trip to Hong Kong earlier this year, where he met with Beijing’s top representatives in the city.

Hong Kong Protests: The View From Taiwan | The Diplomat


KIMT nominee and Mayor Han btw is fighting censure by the Kaohsiung city council and recall by the voters who elected him 7 months ago. The guy has bungled everything and demonstrated shockingly he knows nothing. The lawyer Pres. Tsai meanwhile acquired a new national nick, La Tai Mei which means "Tough Taiwanese Girl," after telling Xi Jinpingpong in March his HKG same "One country, two systems" proposal of January for Taiwan was DOA in Taiwan. Polls show Tsai with a significant lead over Han going into the January election.

Tsai just recently ignited the CCP Dictator-Tyrants in Beijing when she visited the United States en route to Carribbean nations that have diplomatic relations with Taipei and that have resisted huge bribes by Beijing to switch sides. Xi Pingpong was quite upset at Trump but let his underlings criticize Washington for approving of Tsai's visit to USA (which is not her first visit either). Trump, Bolton and Trade Council Chairman Peter Navarro want Tsai reelected -- there's no question of it. Bolton wants diplomatic recognition of Taiwan now.
 
Rexedgar said:
Hong Kong is an anomaly. China has been trying to get them into the fold since the UK ceded the territory back in 1997. Hong Kong isn’t technically an island anymore. How many bridges to the mainland are there now? China wants Taiwan also, but there is big water there still.
Click to expand...

Lord Tammerlain said:
As for being an island Hong Kong (administrative region) has not been one for a long time as Kowloon and the new territories are part of the mainland. The island itself is a small part of what makes up Hong Kong
Click to expand...

Tlrmln said:
There aren't any bridges from Hong Kong Island to the mainland.
Click to expand...

Tlrmln said:
Tunnels. But anyway, it's largely beside the point as 80 percent of HKs population is not on the Island.
Click to expand...

The Island District of Hong Kong is the center of the city's finance, economics, government, culture and international fare. The Island District is composed of many islands and it has several of the best universities of Asia and the world. It includes nightlife and the best food in China whether the food is Chinese, regional or Western.

The New Territories on the Mainland are primarily residential. The New Territories are being built because HKG population density is 6,000 per square km. The airport and Disneyland are on Lantau island which is one of the many islands of the Islands District of Hong Kong. Lantau island is bigger than HKG island. Kowloon on the tiny Mainland peninsula is a slum run by gangs btw. The body of Hong Kong are its many islands of the HKG Islands District. Everywhere you look and go there are bridges and islands. In contrast, one can get a preview of Fantasyland by reading your guys posts about all this that try to deflect to the New Territories which are residential. As if the Island District didn't matter.

The protests and demonstrations are occurring in the Admiralty district of the Hong Kong island which is the center of government, commerce, finance, the economy, education and research, culture, nightlife. If the Tyrants in Beijing use their Barbarian PLA in HKG all of this or most of it will go to Singapore. Local Party leaders in HKG know this and they care about HKG and their own people. Boyz in Beijing don't want to hear it and they don't give a rat's ass about it except for their own authority, control, dictatorship, corruption and bucks.

It has always been Beijing's intention to reduce the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region while building up Shanghai. Yet no successful business in HKG wants to end up on the Mainland and in Shanghai. It would give new meaning to being Shanghaied. The actual beneficiaries of this moron attitude in Beijing have been Singapore and Taiwan which only points out yet again the chronic stupidity in Beijing. For which many of us continue to be grateful.
 
The Chinese government are the modern day Nazi's of our time and should be fully opposed and awareness raised on their human rights violations. It's sad to think they'd rather gun down their own people in Hong Kong before they'd allow them to have universal suffrage and voting rights which is the chief request behind the Hong Kong protests. China is the greatest evil force in our world today.
 
digsbe said:
The Chinese government are the modern day Nazi's of our time and should be fully opposed and awareness raised on their human rights violations. It's sad to think they'd rather gun down their own people in Hong Kong before they'd allow them to have universal suffrage and voting rights which is the chief request behind the Hong Kong protests. China is the greatest evil force in our world today.
Click to expand...

If I may say, it is welcome indeed to see a person who knows the central issue of all of this: universal suffrage.

I'd add for the information of others that Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the CCP-PRC. It is not a province.

Under the 1997 transfer of sovereignty agreement voting was guaranteed for Hong Kong citizens. And yes, HKG citizens can vote. However, there is a stark commonality between elections in Hong Kong run by the CCP and elections in Iran run by the ayatollahs.

That is, HKG voters do not have universal suffrage. Their list of candidates is determined by the CCP in HKG and approved in Beijing. HKG voters can only vote for the candidates Beijing puts forward. This makes it impossible for HKG voters to elect a majority to the Legislative Council who favor democracy and universal suffrage. It also make it impossible for HKG voters to elect a chief executive (governor) not dictated by Beijing.

CCP Dictator-Tyrants have zero intention of allowing universal suffrage in HKG despite the decisive referendum vote by HKG voters expressing their support of universal suffrage.

I'd also add to other posters who see Beijing forcing themselves on HKG militarily that despite the rudimentary and barbarian crudeness of Chinese elites in Beijing, the Dictator-Tyrants there are still stinging from the consequences PLA massacre in Tiananmen in 1989. Domestically and globally. It's virtually assured they're not going to repeat or duplicate that in HKG.

The lesson of Tiananmen is to wait it out rather than to send in the PLA butchers. It is central to keep in mind also that after Tiananmen the commanders of PLA said frankly to the butcher Deng Xiao Ping they would never do that again to Chinese anywhere under same or similar circumstances. That is, unarmed Chinese demonstrating for anything less than revolution. And in HKG the protesters are demonstrating for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, not on the mainland. Universal suffrage in HKG is what was guaranteed in the transfer agreement of 1997. Nothing more. Xi Jinping has already defeated two unsuccessful coup attempts by two PLA generals for their own reasons, and he knows he just can't afford a third in respect of Hong Kong.

Beijing knows that its accepting universal suffrage in HKG will almost surely being peace to HGK. Continuing to reject it assures massive headaches for 'em. The equation is really rather clear and simple yet the dictator tyrants in Beijing continue to have their impossible time with it. I would add that this is the problem of Chinese emperors for thousands of years, ie, they are their own worst high and mighty enemy. Still however the last thing the Boyz in Beijing want is the USA advising 'em of what to do. It seems instead the best thing the USA can do is simply look over the shoulder of the Boyz in Beijing to remind 'em of what is the right thing to do. This the Boyz can understand.
 
I visited Hong Kong last year and have a very close friend that lives there and is involved in the pro-democracy movement. The system is set up where 50% of the legislature is appointed by Beijing and the chief executive is also appointed by Beijing. The remaining 50% of the legislature is voted on. The Chinese have the system set up to ensure that the Hong Kong government will always be a puppet government of the CCP and accountable only to the communist party in Beijing and not the people. The fight for universal suffrage has been ongoing for years, with Beijing each time refusing to allow Hong Kongers to enjoy the "high degree of autonomy" or "universal suffrage" as promised to them in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. China has gone so far as to call the legally binding treaty with the UK a "historical document" and has repeatedly told Britain, with whom the sign the treaty, to back out regarding Hong Kong issues as if they have no place in the game.

Nearly every other British colony was given the option of independence. Hong Kong is one of the few outliers where sovereignty was handed over to China (many speculate the Chinese were threatening to take it by military force and the Joint Declaration was the only safe way to protect the freedoms in Hong Kong) without consulting the people and China flagrantly ignoring it's obligations under the treaty to allow Hong Kong to remain free, highly autonomous, and a push for universal suffrage. I believe the thing the Chinese Communist Party fears the most is democracy. They fear people being allowed to have power over the government or a government subject to an electorate. I think this is also why China has increasingly become more militant towards Taiwan with a push to annex the democratic country under the guise that Taiwan is part of China when legally it is not and has never been since the CCP took over the mainland. The CCP also fears giving in to the demands of protesters because that also sends a message that protests/revolts will yield concessions, something which may challenge the hard-line authoritarian rule of the single party state. China has no respect for human rights, to them people are meant to be ruled, controlled, and their lives dictated to by a government that only respects itself and the retention of power. They'd soon kill their own citizens as they did in 1989 with the Tienanmen Massacre rather than allow them to vote or have any sense of power or democracy. The Chinese government is responsible for the deaths of more Chinese citizens through mass murders committed by Mao and others than by any enemy state. The people of Hong Kong realize this which is why they urgently push for self determination and universal suffrage as promise with a high degree of autonomy free from the meddling of Beijing.

I believe the international community needs to wake up and understand the threat Chinese authoritarianism poses to the world as well as confronting them on the purely evil human rights violations committed by the country. Sadly, due to China's economic pull nations stay silent and fear retribution and harm done to their economies by the world's 2nd largest economy.
 
Renae said:
Hong Kong: Chinese forces gather at border, White House monitoring


This will not end well...
Click to expand...

Rumpel said:
It may end badly ....
Click to expand...


The cheering section needs to be advised this may not end for some time yet. You might just have accept the risk Beijing is more likely than not at this point to encourage a ratcheting down of its arbitrary aggression against Hong Kong Democracy.

Xi Jinping is always focused on Taiwan as he cares little about Hong Kong. It's the Party hardhats in Beijing who want fiercely to destroy democracy in HKG. Party boneheads in ZhongNanHai which is the huge walled Party compound next to Tiananmen started this. They assured Xi they would ram through the extradition bill and isolate the dissenters forever.

Now that Hong Kong has blown up the the face of the Beijing Party ideologues and militants Xi is getting an earful privately from leaders around the world to recalibrate. Xi had to authorize PLA vehicle formations to satisfy the Party hardheads but all PLA can do is drive around on the highways next to HKG for show.

PLA has a garrison in HKG and it doesn't necessarily need any forces from the neighboring mainland garrison in Shenzhen City or from the much larger garrison in nearby Guangzhou City (HQ of South China PLA). Beijing showing a PLA column from adjacent Shenzhen also suggests very strongly the HKG garrison of PLA is not reliable in this particular instance. The probability is great PLA Garrison commanders in HKG don't want their troops invading the streets, airport, subway stations, malls and so on, given the horrible mess that would precipitate. Troops too can be easily isolated in the urban density of HKG -- very easily in fact, and these are very smart protesters as we've seen.

HKG police are doing poorly too. What I saw watching the airport fracas on tv told many of us the HKG police are being outsmarted by the demonstrating protesters, out maneuvered and out slugged by 'em. HKG police authorities know individual cops pulled their guns against unarmed demonstrators. HKG police chiefs and commanders know the individual cop here and there who pulled his handgun did this without orders. In other words HKG police have lost their discipline and good order when they are separated in small defensive groups away from the main line of police. And that a main line of police can itself be easily isolated by these unarmed and very smart protesting demonstrators.

Xi's strong laser focus on Taiwan would be wrecked by a catastrophe or a lesser disaster in HKG. Taipei might even double its defense budget while USA, Japan and SE Asian nations could well double their ties and support activities. Singapore already has had most of its stellar Air Force based on Taiwan for training given the postage stamp airspace of Singapore. US Marines staff the American Institute in Taiwan campus given the private Institute is staffed entirely by US State Department foreign service officers. State Department just recently announced $2.2 billion of Abrams tanks to Taiwan to include TOW antitank missiles. Pres Tsai Ing-wen of the pro independence DPP party has offered asylum and refuge to anyone in HKG who wants it; her reelection prospects in January are strong as she continues to open big leads in the polling.

Xi needs a bloodless and gradual climbdown by the Party in HKG, ie, by the Party hardasses in Beijing. That would mean torching the extradition bill, dumping the puppet chief executive and quit ejecting legislators who favor universal suffrage from their elected positions in the HKG local Council. Number one is that HKG police keep their distance and the PLA in their vehicles keep driving around in circles on the mainland roads outside the SAR. This has the potential to make or break Xi in his drive to be emperor for life and in respect of how he covets Taiwan. Xi wants to die in office with Taiwan incorporated back into the mainland China. We'll see which happens first given the second part of it is impossible.
 
Roadvirus said:
Tiananmen Square 2.0
Click to expand...

This is what I am half-dreading.

Far to many people have no real memory of that incident in 1989. It was right before the US-China trade floodgates opened, when the nation was little more than a supplier only in the region. At that time they ran into the square to end the protest with tanks. And even today, nobody knows what the death toll was.

At that time they were not members of the World Trade Organization (this was delayed until 2001), and their exports were much less important.

This time, to me it is still a coin flip how they will respond. But if they do a repeat of 1989, expect things there to get bad fast.

To start with, pretty much all new businesses will stop looking there for manufacturing. And a lot of long time partners will be looking to jump ship to new locations. At this time, odds are the real beneficiaries will be the nations they took the business away from in the first place. Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

Myself, I think the best possible way to handle this would be for the US to get off it's ass and create a "Monetary Amnesty" program. There are huge amounts of money sitting overseas in China and other countries, trapped because of the tax laws see the government confiscate at least half of it. I have long thought that we should do a kind pf "Appropriation Amnesty", where so long as the money returned is spent on rebuilding US manufacturing it should not be taxed.

Imagine companies like Apple taking the billions they have sitting in Chinese banks, and spending it on new factories to make their products right here in the US.

Odds are it is going to start to trickle back, as companies get nervous at the stability of China politically. But given the right incentives, that could become a flood.

Especially if China does what it looks to be doing, and taking the Big Stick approach.
 
Capital has been fleeing China at the rate of $1 Trillion a year for several years. The reforms of Xi Jinpingpong and his prime minister Li Kejiang have failed to increase household spending which is far behind the advanced economies.

The Chinese economy continues to rely on big infrastructure projects despite the excess of infrastructure already in place. Xi needs desperately his Belt and Road big infrastructure project yet India and almost every country of Asia has said no, they don't want Chinese swarming in to take up residence, establish businesses and construct a China extended across the continent. Elites across Asia recognize the Belt and Road for what it is, a Chinese debt trap by which Beijing takes control of the countries.

Boyz in Beijing have been ineffective in trying to impose capital controls on the exiting capital. The Boyz can place only limited capital controls because too much of capital controls will tank the yuan/rmb. The yuan/rmb is already at 7:1 which is the highest since Bush left office. Trump had the Treasury declare the Boyz in Beijing as currency manipulators, an official act that will torture Beijing in the global markets beginning in the fall.

The trade war is also psychological in China in that the Chinese know the USA is working to isolate and contain China rather than allow Beijing to span across the continent, the Pacific and the globe. Having the USA as their antagonist weighs heavily on the ordinary Chinese. They worry their leaders are not up to overcoming the USA much less overwhelming it. Their fear is in the air.

Capital is fleeing China via Hong Kong which is another factor limiting Beijing in respect of capital controls. Beijing imposing serious capital controls on HKG will effectively freeze its economy, the financial sector in particular.

Japan has pulled almost all of its corporations out of China since the government sponsored mass riots against Japanese companies and Japanese people in China of several years ago over island disputes in the East Sea. Beneficiaries are Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia.

Chinese families are exiting the mainland with their huge fortunes for the West. Beneficiaries are Australia, EU but Italy and Spain in particular, Canada, USA. Chinese expats are buying villas, properties to include existing businesses and corporations. They are not big on startups or creating new opportunities from scratch.

Businesses and corporations exiting China for continued operation using cheap labor are already populating the following countries:

India
Indonesia
Mexico

South and Southeast Asia
Bangladesh
Cambodia
Myanmar
Vietnam

East Africa
Ethiopia
Kenya
Mozambique

Central and South America
Nicaragua
Paraguay
Peru


The United States is not competitive with these countries and their labor markets. Nor will it be.

Trump's trade war is much more messy than it needs to be for the sound interests of the USA and people. The Trump focus against the Beijing spying corporation Huawei are effective as 2Q results of sales in EU have tanked severely. Q2 growth rate annualized for EU is -16%. Huawei may not survive to next year. Suppliers globally have cut it off and it's laying off thousands in its base Shenzhen City. China's 5-G dreams are predicated on software from MSN and Google and now they're screwed there.

Other aspects of the trade war such as agriculture are being overdone by Trump. China's agriculture is doing miserably enough as it is which is never enough anyhow. They've got diseased pigs dying by the millions and being dumped in rivers and so on. As thousands of years of history show us, left to themselves the Chinese always self destruct. The shadow of the Soviet Union is still very big in China.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom