[vinceguidry]

By allowing their bureaucrats free rein to terrorize local businesses and extract mob-style protection payments, among other things. Excessive regulation. Basic, garden-variety corruption. Same stuff that goes on in every other autocratic country the world over.

Right now, Hong Kong is way too valuable as an economic engine, but the political dangers are more pressing to the CCCP. So the government will clamp down on freedoms as best they can until the citizens can't take it anymore, then keep beating the horse until it's dead.

You should read the book The Dictator's Handbook if you want to understand it better.

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

[shaobo]

The book is all well and good, but I would prefer to read an actual article about "allowing their bureaucrats free rein to terrorize local businesses and extract mob-style protection payments".

It is easy claim that China is autocratic therefore it must do X bad things

[vinceguidry]

> It is easy claim that China is autocratic therefore it must do X bad things

If you read the book you wouldn't need the articles because then you'd understand how they work.

A good China-specific book to read is:

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp...

It doesn't deal with corruption per se, rather how China has been operating politically and economically for the last few decades. The gist of it is, so long as you play ball with the CCCP, then you can enrich yourself. But the second you step out of line, officials will happily confiscate your life's work and tell you you're lucky you're not in jail. And the only reason you're not in jail is because as long as you can make wealth that they can take, you're more useful to them free than imprisoned. If that changes, a life behind bars awaits you.

What you can do in China, any autocratic regime really, is precisely what the local thugs will allow you to do, or what you can get away with outside their attention. They may not be as smart as you, but they are more numerous and have the legal system on their side.

To complete your political education, this book will fill in the gaps between dictatorship and the kind of democracy that Anglosphere nations enjoy:

https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Pe...

This book will show you the conditions in which freedom develops and really makes you appreciate the United States, tempered of course by the lessons in the Dictator's Handbook that tell how democratic regimes are, in general, not the forces for good in other countries that you'd like to believe they are. Would-be freedom fighters are fighting forces so much larger than they are that success or failure is entirely out of their control. Either the conditions are ripe for revolution or they aren't.

Barring some massive worldwide event, Hong Kong's future is dimming by the day. The Internet was supposed to be that event, but autocrats are more than capable of suppressing freedom there too, up to and including just shutting the whole damn thing off.

[baybal2]

>The Dictator's Handbook

Author shows poor understanding of real world politics and cheap writing. The type of people who read such books are ones who read The Prince and believe themselves politically educated.

[vinceguidry]

Anybody who just reads one book will be poorly educated. Doesn't matter how good the book is.

[anonbanker]

Your post is an appeal to ridicule wrapped around an ad-hominem, unless you're planning on enlightening us as to where real-world politics and the grandparent's book are incongruent.