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yorwba 2504 days ago

> they are literally protesting for democracy

Protests don't achieve democracy, voting does. If all participants in the recent protests were willing to volunteer, printing a few million ballots and distributing them to improvised polling stations wouldn't be insurmountable. The Hong Kong Identity Card means that voter ID can be implemented without access to government records, simply by assigning a range of ID numbers to each polling station. The only drawback is that they'd need to somehow record who already cast their vote, which could be abused by the government to crack down on participants if they decide to ignore the outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta#Great_Charter_of_1...

kthejoker2 2504 days ago

> Protests don't achieve democracy, voting does.

History strongly begs to differ - assembly to address grievances is just as crucial a step in achieving democracy as a vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

yorwba 2504 days ago

The Magna Carta didn't result in anything resembling democracy, so it's not terribly relevant. The civil rights movement and the the end of apartheid may be better examples, but they both involve existing democratic institutions agreeing with the protest movements and passing legislation to fulfill their demands [1, 2].

My point is that although protests are a way to force a vote to occur, it's the actual act of voting that makes a democracy, and protests are neither necessary nor sufficient for that.

It seems to me that the protests in Hong Kong don't have to wait for the government to "allow" them to hold a vote, so long as they can manage the logistics.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...

AnimalMuppet 2504 days ago

Without the protests, when and how are the residents of Hong Kong going to be allowed to vote for democracy?

yorwba 2504 days ago

Have they tried doing an improvised vote? Even just among protesters, too see what the level of support for certain positions is? I genuinely don't know.

Regarding being allowed to vote, the Hong Kong government is certainly taking a hardliner stance, but I'm not sure whether they could justify it to themselves to criminalize stuffing a piece of paper into a ballot box.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/hong-kong-pro-...

eric-hu 2503 days ago

Are you aware that people officially voted for pro independence representatives and those representatives were dismissed for being insulting to China?

yorwba 2503 days ago

No, I wasn't, thanks for the information. FWIW, I wasn't suggesting an election within the existing system, where formal requirements like the oath-taking ceremony matter, but rather an improvised referendum with no such restrictions. On a purely legal basis, the government would be free to ignore the results, but in practice that might not be so easy. Since voting requires less effort than participating in a protest march, turnout is more likely to reach a majority of the population.

pjc50 2504 days ago

There are really only two possible endings. One is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 , and the other is Taiwan.

Either China consolidates control over HK and it loses critical political freedoms, ceasing being a democracy even in the slight way that it already is; or, somehow, incredibly, the protestors win and HK gets to retain its quasi-independence while China claims to be sovereign but lacks practical ground control.

(I suppose a third ending is somehow they return to the status quo ante of nominal control with little practical interference, but that was never entirely stable from the British withdrawal onwards. Getting back there would require everyone forgetting the whole thing, disabling injuries and all.)

Simon_says 2504 days ago

Without guns it's hard to see how Hong Kong ends up free as Taiwan is. Like, seriously, what sequence of events gets us from here to there?

Think about this next time governments talk about taking away your guns and anti-tank mines for the public's own protection.

culturestate 2504 days ago

As an American who has lived in Hong Kong for many years, I can comfortably say that if every Hong Kong citizen were armed with an AR-15 and 1,000 rounds of ammo they still wouldn't be able to hold off the PLA for any meaningful length of time.

An armed populace is not now nor will it ever again be the answer to this or any other geopolitical debate involving an advanced, militarily powerful national adversary.

marcusverus 2504 days ago

A small segment of well-armed and determined citizens can still win a war of attrition against any foe. See Afghanistan.

kart23 2503 days ago

This is just straight up not true. It's all about the attackers aversion to force and end goal. Americans did not want to raze the country, they wanted to take out a small subset of the population which was hard to identify and find, and create a well functioning democracy in its place. In china, if they dont care about killing civilians or about what the land will look like after the war, they can certainly eliminate the uprising very easily. Simply bomb the crap out of the city, invade and shoot anything that moves. An army wins everytime, especially China's.

pjc50 2504 days ago

> anti-tank mines for the public's own protection

Seriously can we not? Mines are such a horrendous lingering danger to the public that most militaries restrict them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

pasiaj 2504 days ago

Everything you say seems correct.

The problem is that movements without specific, clearly defined policy goals tend to fail.

It is easy to come together to oppose some bad thing, but it is really hard to find consensus on what to do after the bad thing has been defeated. So while movements without specific policy goals can win elections, the usually cannot bring effective change.

Is independence the goal here?

That's what's different about this protest, there in fact five basic demands that they have been pretty consistent with.

The first demand that originally sparked the protest was to have the extradition to China bill officially withdrawn, not simply referred to as dead yet left in legal suspension but still theoretically possible to push through as soon as the protesters went home.

The second demand is to have all of the people who were officially declared as rioters to be officially declared as peaceful protesters on a protest from early June because people who are declared rioters can face up to 10 years in prison. These protesters were once occupying the legislative house and even though they were graffitiing the walls with slogans, people went around and posted papers on refrigerators holding drinks and foods that said 'we are protesters not thieves' and no one took any of the food. Talk about being polite. Yet they were declared rioters (ok clearly I've come to a conclusion)

The third demand is for Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam to resign.

The fourth demand is for an independent commission to be formed to investigate police brutality as alleged by the protesters during the protests over the last 10 weeks. Heavy use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The fifth demand is for all protesters to be unconditionally freed.

I'd recommend reading https://www.hongkongfp.com to keep up with what's going on in HK. I've followed it since May and it has been quite insightful.

jddj 2504 days ago

It's made more difficult (partly due to the lessons learned from the umbrella movement) because this has been a leaderless movement, which while making it difficult to disappear the people managing it, also must make it more difficult for defined policy goals to form (although some have emerged).

It seems to be developing organically as the people come to understand how much momentum they have and how much their peers agree with their frustrations.

I'd speculate that if they somehow gained enough momentum that it appeared to be within reach then independence would probably be the end goal, but who knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_anti-extraditio...

pasiaj 2504 days ago

I searched and found the five demands:

one, the bill must be withdrawn; two, the chief executive must resign; three, the government must retract its characterisation of the violent clashes as “riots”; four, there must be a full independent inquiry into the actions of the police and; five, everyone arrested in respect of the clashes must be unconditionally freed.

More here:

culturestate 2504 days ago

This movement (which has been building for years) has one very specific goal: true universal suffrage and free elections. Whether that comes as a protectorate of China or as an independent state seems almost inconsequential to many people.

Everything else (extradition, the five demands, et cetera) is just a series of sub-plots leading to self governance.

pishpash 2504 days ago

They had that chance in 2014, but rejected all compromise or incremental improvement.

culturestate 2504 days ago

Elections aren't free if you can only vote for candidates that have the government's blessing.

pishpash 2503 days ago

Ask the question whether CE being elected with more direct votes is a better or worse outcome than now. There is an element in HK that only has one possibility in mind, ending up with nothing. That's called extremism.

culturestate 2503 days ago

It would be exactly the same outcome with different numbers. Do you really believe the CCP would allow someone like John Tsang to run in a situation where he might actually win? Of course not.

hdkrgr 2504 days ago

While there's certainly small parts of protesters whose aim is independence, the movement at large has very clearly communicated 5 well-defined demands since the end of June and by and large stuck with them.

The protesters may not clearly understand their own endgame, but the CIA certainly understands its own... which is to precipitate an armed crackdown that diminishes Chinese prestige - giving the U.S. further leverage in the current battle for global pre-eminence that is occurring between the two powers.

And no - I don't have evidence of CIA involvement, except for the somewhat co-incidental timing of the unrest relative to the trade war and the long well-known history of CIA involvement in such events. I will nonetheless consider disbelief - as conspiracy - to be the height of naivety.

Ironically - despite it's flaws and incumbent president, I still would much prefer the U.S. to win this particular bout of dirty Realpolitik - over an authoritarian regime that truly deserves it's comeuppance.

It's just a shame that the U.S. does this shit to authoritarian states and democracies alike (while also aligning itself with authoritarian states as well)... if and only if such choices promote U.S. interests.

It's also a shame that the HK people are going to be made to suffer deeply for this. They can't win - China can only lose... a little status. I have friends there. I hope they will be ok. :(

yyhhsj0521 2504 days ago

Julie Eadeh (a diplomat at the US consulate in Hong Kong) was seen meeting a leader of the protesters. It certainly smells fishy.

bitanarch 2504 days ago

The extradition law, which was proposed by CE Carrie Lam, was indeed proposed and supposed to be passed by the legislature, at around the time frame as the Trump-Xi meeting.

If you infer the cause of the protests is the CIA, then CE Carrie Lam would be a CIA agent.

The much more likely explanation to all these is incompetence, rather than conspiracy.

CathayRe 2504 days ago

>The much more likely explanation to all these is incompetence, rather than conspiracy.

Given the sensitive nature of the bill, and its timing, and She has shown her understanding in how US / China / HK operate in both Financial and political levels.

And it was clear the bill wasn't put forward by CCP either, it was someone else ( or Carrie Lam )'s idea.

I find it hard to believe all of these are incompetence and coincidence. Not saying Carrie Lam is a CIA agent, but something is definitely not right.

317070 2504 days ago

Just a thought, but the cause-and-effect relationship you suggest between the protests and the trade war might be the other way around? I.e. the protests causing the timing of the trade war?

Economic realities tend to determine political events - not the other way around... historically speaking.

yyhhsj0521 2504 days ago

The tension has been building up for a while, way before there was any sign of a protest.

yshnurxghtfh 2504 days ago

why has this been downvoted? Of course everyone who plays the game will evaluate what they can make out of a new situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird

I'll just leave this here:

pjc50 - it won't let me reply to you directly. I just mean it as a demonstration of the links between local HK authorities and foreign intelligence services. It wouldn't take much for the CIA to leverage those links.

Keep in mind also that Chinese state media has publicly accused the CIA of involvement in the HK protests. Haven't seen that reported much have you? You wouldn't.

pjc50 2504 days ago

This is very interesting, but what does it have to do with the CIA?

Looks like an operation that CIA assisted in spiriting away protesters from the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre.

The reader is expected to see that article and see that the CIA took some action in HK in the 90s and come to the conclusion that because they helped protesters to flee the country in the 90s they are behind the current protests by inference.

I personally see a coincidence or red herring.

Do you claim that the establishment of precedent has no value in increasing the plausibility of a claim?

In response to the protests, the government line has been to continue to stall and to claim that everything happening in Hong Kong is magically just the result of foreign interference by actors like the CIA, that way they don't have to actually listen to their own people, they can just plug their ears and say lalalalala the CIA did it all.

This comment appears to support that general narrative, so I suspect people are seeing that and not wanting to see the standard government obfuscation line here are downvoting it.

Just ask yourself, if the CIA has such control over Hong Kong that it could cause 10 weeks of protests by large large amounts of the population, whether or not they wouldn't have already declared independence and declared themselves a mini United States state or something to that effect.

The Hong Kong government's accusation and Beijing's continual messaging that this is all just the United States messing with them is untrue, a bald faced lie and ridiculous on its face if you think about it, but they haven't come up with anything better just yet so they're just sort of holding onto that line for anyone who will listen.

How are the ringleaders surviving? Not a lot of bank to made protesting I suspect.

I resent the claim tho that my comment supports the "general narrative" - I explicitly disavow the Chinese regime as authoritarian that "deserves comeuppance". I'll add here that I think the protesters have a genuine cause that deserves support.

I do, however, think that the CIA, the U.S. and the west generally - doesn't actually give a fuck about the interests of the HK people. It's just convenient to them currently to make China look bad.

My apologies for painting with too broad a brush. I do believe that the same sort of people who downvoted the original comment jumped to the same conclusion I did, which was that your comment was intended to support the government line about foreign interference and function as a distracting debate rather than commenting on the merits and effects of the HK protests.

I personally think the CIAs involvement is limited to none, completely without evidence and fueled by optimisim that the HK protesters are doing all this completely by and for their own people.

icebraining 2504 days ago

Eh, I don't doubt the US is helping the protestors, but surviving is not really a problem when you're the leader of a mass protest. You'll have plenty of followers willing to give you the necessities of life. If you read the histories of revolutionary leaders, they often lived for years from the support of regular people.

throwaway2048 2504 days ago

Do you really think that a protest movement with such widespread support has leaders that need to be supported financially somehow by the CIA?

I'll grant that in these days of crowdfunding etc... your counter has more plausibility than it would have in days past.