[hker]

The analogy means that Hong Kong is an enclave in one of the frontiers in this “new cold war”, not that Hong Kong is politically under PRC.

The major protests in Hong Kong (e.g., the anti-national-security-law protest in 2003, the anti-restricted-democracy Umbrella protest in 2014, the anti-extradition protest in 2019) show that Hong Kong aligns closer to the belief of rule of law and democracy in the Western world (including Taiwan), than to the authoritarian rule and Xi’s dictatorship in China.

[underthebus]

That's equally disingenuous.

HK is not a frontier of any 'cold war'.

What is happening is that some forces are trying to use HK to create problems for the Chinese government because China is getting too powerful for the established powers. And they try to create issues and frame them using narratives such as this article.

This is the same as trying to pass the extradition bill off as an attack on the rule of rule or on HK's status.

This is cynical but that's how the game has always been played.

In the end the victims will be the naive young Hongkongers who are used as pawns.

[hker]

> HK is not a frontier of any 'cold war'.

It is the cold war between free capitalism–supported by the United States, most of Europe, and many others–and state capitalism–as exemplified by China.

For a discussion of this tension as the root cause behind the trade war, see the speech by Gao Shanwen at Tsinghua (in Chinese [1]). The main thesis behind the speech is that, China with its State-Owned Enterprises are competing with an unfair advantage against foreign enterprises which do not have the same state-level backing, which is a tension behind state-boundaries and enterprise-boundaries.

> What is happening is that some forces are trying to use HK to create problems for the Chinese government because China is getting too powerful for the established powers.

On the other hand, some forces in China are trying to create problems for Hong Kongers by introducing the extradition law, which would undermine Hong Kong’s status as a financial hub, a concern many foreign businesses have voiced out. They are doing this while Hong Kong is still influential to China, because more than half of Chinese foreign capital inflow and outflow go through Hong Kong [2].

> In the end the victims will be the naive young Hongkongers who are used as pawns.

Young (and older) Hong Kongers are fighting for their democratic and financial future [3], by leveraging external pressure (from Britain, Europe [4], the United States [5], and elsewhere). They work together with foreign pressure when it is mutually beneficial. The bottom line is that Hong Kongers fight for themselves, regardless of foreign motivations.

[1]: https://www.xuehua.us/2018/08/15/高善文在清华大学的发言：中美贸易战的本质图/zh-tw...

[2]: Quoting “Economic and Trade Information on China” of HKTDC (https://hkmb.hktdc.com/en/1X09PHBA/hktdc-research/Economic-a...):

Hong Kong is the largest source of overseas direct investment in the Chinese Mainland. By the end of 2018, among all the overseas-funded projects approved in the Chinese Mainland, 46.3% were tied to Hong Kong interests. Cumulative utilised capital inflow from Hong Kong amounted to US$1,098.1 billion, accounting for 54.1% of the national total.

Hong Kong is also the leading destination for China’s FDI outflow. According to Chinese statistics, by 2017, the stock of FDI going to Hong Kong accumulated to US$981.3billion, or 54.2% of the total outflow of FDI.

[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/24/hong-kong...

[4]: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/18/european-parliament-de...

[5]: https://time.com/5607043/hong-kong-human-rights-democracy-ac...