[jerf]

Imperial Britain is still not China of today. There are some cultures that will simply read your nonviolence as weakness and stomp over you.

Our modern tendency to compete on who can most hyperbolically denounce Western Imperialism strips us of any ability to calibrate between cultures. Do you know what Imperial Rome would have done to the nonviolent Indian revolt? They'd have executed it at its infancy and it would be a historical footnote. They wouldn't have even waited for it to become a big movement; the death penalty would have been used early and often. To some degree, even as entertainment.

My read on China is closer to first-century Rome than 20th century Britain. YMMV.

[theseadroid]

And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?

To be clear, neither I or you are certain what the majority of HKers want to trade for democracy. Realistically if they want democracy so bad, what else they can do other than the protesting they are doing? Long term striking seems to be something they can do TODAY, RIGHT NOW. Equiped with weapons or not, one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed.

[jerf]

"And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?"

I don't know how that's relevant to anything I said. My point is about culture. Nonviolent protest requires you to be protesting an amenable authority. There have been plenty of examples in history of authorities that will just spill as much blood as it takes. To my eye, the only constraint on China doing that is their fear that people might stop paying into their economy.

Bear in mind that if China decided to roll into Hong Kong and simply kill everybody there, it would only increase the current Chinese government's death toll against their own people by somewhere between 16% to 40%. It wouldn't even double it! This is the government that brought you the "Great Leap Forward" in which they killed 18-45 million of their own people. This is a government being credibly accused of engaging in ethnic cleansing.

Are you sure advising "nonviolent protest" against that is a good idea?

"one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed."

That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.

[theseadroid]

I thought it was relevant because my initial reply was to someone saying

>They are too scared of weapons and (justified, defensive) violence to make Chinese occupation unviable.

To that end I felt striking is probably a better option to try before more violent forms of fighting get involved. Maybe nonviolent protest is not a good idea, but it's probably not a worse idea than violent ones.

>That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.

Say without international community support, is there any winning strategy you can think of?

I personally think once the confrontation becomes more heated, at least a dozen western countries would allow HKers to immigrate to their countries, which doesn't require too much resources to do? One example is last year Sweden has already started granting China's Uighurs refugee status.

[throwaway_2047]

They did. For 6 months since last June at least, every single day.

[theseadroid]

not long term striking. most protesters are students.

[ngcc_hk]

Guys; We do not 2m students. It is not 2015. It is the whole Hk.

We are trying our best to find a way. The recent approach is not to do any business with anyone who is Communist blue. (Well, the Communist control many things and this strategy should not work. But it hurts a bit. ) Strike is hard but we will see.

For so call violence, there is a lot of police violence and they have used this to suppress the protest, down to even sing a song in mall.

Tomorrow we will try. But how many will suffer from police we do not know.

Democracy and human rights is core to our belief. We will fight even as said here not very hopeful. Fighting a communist state with resources like that ...

It is not because we have hope we persist but by persistence we might have hope. One of our belief as well.