Remember Hong Kong

Saying a vast majority hated the protests seems like a too strong of a statement. Here are some sources which reports 57% supported [1] and 58.3% supported [2]. It has also been estimated that 36.4% had attended a demonstration against it in August 2019, and a year later 45.6% [3].

This paper directly contradicts your claim it was mainly due to housing [4].

> Our empirical findings suggested that the systematic threat concerning the erosion of the city's values and institutions imposed by the extradition bill was a primary cause of the unprecedented mobilization.

[1]https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/exclusive-hong-kon...

[2]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asia...

[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/arti...

[4]https://www.proquest.com/docview/2714819043

(On my phone, so some sources are secondary sources).

I was there too.

It's just absolutely false that "a vast majority of the locals hated the protests". See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1]. There was also a District Council election in November 2019 in which the establishment (pro-government) parties were utterly wiped out [2].

To your second point, HK's housing situation is an unmitigated disaster that undoubtedly contributed to the overall atmosphere of discontent with the government, but it was not a proximate cause of the protests.

To your third point, merely going to a foreign government and asking them to put pressure on your home government would not remotely reach the bar for a treason conviction in the U.S. This idea that what Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai did would be considered sedition or treason in Western democracies is something that everyone in China seems to "know" that just isn't so.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-hong-kongers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_local_elections

People aren't property. Hong Kong belongs to Hong Kong people. If you ask a typical Chinese people to explain why Hong Kong or Taiwan belong to China, they will never at any point consider the will of the born and raised there. They will instead blabber on about history how they used to belong to "them", where the delusion of identity leads them to believe something of the past once belonging to someone else, now belongs to them because of this arbitrary "us" and "china". They have no capacity to consider the living breathing humans alive in the current era and attempt to derive from first principles what is best for everyone.

It's well reported matter public record that hundreds of thousands people protested, daily. And it's trivial to find polling that showed that about two thirds of Hong Kongers supported the protests, while only a third took your point of view.

Just because it is convenient for the CCP to coerce "confessions" about CIA involvement, and it's convenient for willing accomplices to their dishonest and cruel misrule to pretend that this is relevant, no one else needs to take this seriously.

> First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.

Not everyone is an American, and that's fine. Asians--on average--just care more that things "just work" than having more freedom to faff around. It's like Apple users versus Linux users. The Chinese government is a good government for the things that most Chinese people actually care about: economic development, building infrastructure, keeping trains running, etc. At the end of the day, most Chinese people in Hong Kong aren't missing the political freedoms that Americans would miss in their shoes, and value the things they do have that the government is good at.

The housing prices are sky high in HK because of artificial zoning and regulations, not because of geographical limitations. There are vast empty spaces that can be used for housing in HK, but the elites/politicians wouldn’t allow buildings in those areas because that would result in a collapse of real estate values and ultimately the wealth of elites.

What HK need is politicians that works for people and have a spine to go against the elites

A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".

It does seem most widespread revolutions only happen when the discomfort grows big enough (as the saying (1) goes, "civilisation is n missed meals away from anarchy" (n = a number below 10, I thought 3, but it's 9)).

It's interesting though, the CCP does chicken out. The last time that I remember this happening is when enough citizens in Beijing protested against their prison-like Covid restrictions, that they relaxed it within a day or two.

Same thing with Russians and the war: 2). Heck, Americans are anguishing but most are too comfortable/don't want to go through the discomfort to actually do anything against the rising fascism in their country.

1) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/05/02/nine-meals/

2) https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/06/war-of-the-worl...

> the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them

Totally false

> Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot

If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.

Wow that artist is nice. Reading that unlocked a memory of this animated video

https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"

One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.

> Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.

Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?

And those "Free Hong Kong" protesters were for him, not against him.

What happened in HK? Stupid nativist kids got disciplined for being pieces of shit, the treasonous ones jailed, and now post spanking they're partying it up on the mainland. TW should take note they're so so lucky to have that option, the alternative is Gaza.

  At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.

For much of Hong Kong's history under British rule, there was no freedom. It was whatever a single British man said. Let's take off the rose tinted glasses.

A lot of Hong Kong people have fond memories of the "old HK" because their living standards and socioeconomics were well above Mainland Chinese. Today, this gap is much closer which doesn't sit right in many HKers minds. They were suppose to be the higher class, westernized Chinese. How dare any Mainlanders become wealthier, more capable, more cultured than we are. It wasn't because they had "freedom" under British rule.

> Taiwan should take note

It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence.

the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people.

However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.

As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.

This is a Western view of things.

Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China.

Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country).

There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices.

In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.

Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910

Well no. This series of events happened exactly because the laws set up by colonial British would let loose a murderer.

Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.

> This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.

No, it wasn't.

It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.

Propaganda of what?

If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.