Hong Kong protest is slowly devolving into the phrase: cutting off the nose to spite the face. Small islands have major ideological differences with the mainland. Singapore seceded from Malaysia mainly due to ideological differences. What unifies great societies is a common language, common beliefs, common goals, and common values. These are irrevocable traits that weather through epochal changes. Hong Kong has these in spades. CarrieLam’s mind-numbing death march towards full integration with the Mainland will only create a permanent schism.
In accordance with the “One country, two systems” principle of Sino-British Joint Declaration, the socialist system of the People’s Republic of China(PRC) would not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong’s previous capitalist system along with its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years. This would have left Hong Kong unchanged until 2047. The broader fight between China and Hong Kong regarding the “one country, two systems” issue is more abstract and is subject to interpretation. China focuses on one country while Hong Kong focuses on two systems. What is pissing anyone off in Hong Kong is that mainland policymakers are acting as if Hong Kong = China, 28 years even before the treaty concludes.
Passing the ‘extradition bill’ which has massive implications, without even holding a referendum was just begging for a complete loss of confidence in the Hong Kong government’s ability to protect their citizen’s interests. The extradition bill allows Hong Kong people to be dragged to China and judged under Chinese law, constitutes a massive overreach that directly contradicts ‘One country, two systems’ policy. The bill effectively meant that anyone with different ideology from mainland China can be hauled off and tried in China for any fabricated reason. China refuses to allow Hong Kong any say in legislation. Beijing can reject any Hong Kong leader that they disapprove and they can force re-election, rinse and repeat. Catalonia, Spain – does it ring a bell? China needs to prevent future chaos while subsuming Hong Kong into part of their governmental system. So they have started in fluxing of mainland Chinese into Hong Kong and making Hong Kong more dependent on China.
A Hong Kong guy killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan. He returned to Hong Kong and although he confessed his crimes to the Hong Kong police, he could not be charged because Hong Kong did not have an extradition agreement with #Taiwan. I wonder if things would have gone differently if the Hong Kong government decided to draw the line at ‘extradite criminals between Taiwan/HK’ instead of Taiwan/HK/China. The purpose of the Hong Kong protest was for the Hong Kong government to completely remove the extradition bill. Protesters are against this extradition bill because the Chinese legal system is completely broken.
China is against freedom of thought, speech, and expression, and China tends to have forced organ harvesting of political dissidents. Considering this bill would basically kill freedom of speech in Hong Kong, over 2 million protesters started protesting, a month ago. China caved into civil disobedience for the first time, though their traditional way of reacting to these occurrences have been less than palatable. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam took the bill back, but the bill could still be revived. As such, protesters are trying to get the bill completely retracted, so as to keep it from ever being revived until China absorbs Hong Kong. Carrie Lam has blatantly refused this. She also went on a public holiday during all the protests, which got Hong Kong protesters even more displeased. Now protesters want her to step down since she’s not responding to the voice of the people.
Fights between Hong Kong police and protesters have been escalating for a month now. Hong Kong protesters don’t only want the bill to be retracted completely, they want Carrie Lam to step down and for China to stop trying to subvert Hong Kong’s political freedom. The world would be kinder to China if they had sent government representatives to talk to Hong Kong citizens instead of military trucks to Shenzhen.
Hong Kong has been dependent on China for a long time for resources since it’s not self-sufficient in any way. Without China using it as a port, Hong Kong would never have become the way it is now, yet Hong Kong people have historically been discriminating against the mainland. So a lot of mainlanders are seeing Hong Kong as “biting the hand that feeds it”. Hong Kong can also be seen as a poisoned pawn and Trojan horse left by the UK and the West to raise opinion against China in their ideological war to evangelize the world with democracy.
China isn’t going to show the protestors in a good light and the west isn’t going to show the Hong Kong/Chinese government in a good light. The whole truth might never come to light, as there are no free media houses in China.
