Rancid wrote:It's not just because China is large.
One point that @skinster has made, which is totally valid is that HK does in fact belong to China. Thus, it's easier for them to justify taking what is already legally theirs. Technically, it's not an issue of sovereignty , it's about how can China manage the absorption of HK into the mainland culture.
China will win, they just have to be VERY patient and realize it will take a generation or two, to fully absorb HK and basically make it like the rest of China. China can play the long game here, which is why they will win.
You sure about that? The mainland has actively shifted China's finance economy away from HK and towards Shanghai. I don't think it would be as painful for the mainland. They've done this precisely to make absorbing HK easier. If you make the HK economy less independent, and more dependent on the mainland, integration will happen economically. When that happens, cultural integration will follow.
I generally agree, that it would make China's neighbors start to align much more closely with the US. This is a legitimate constraint for China. Still, if they continue to get larger economically and militarily, they can just say, fuck you to everyone. The US has done that before, why wouldn't China do the same?
The economic damage to China doesn't have anything to do with Shanghai or HK being the centre. The problem with Chinese economy is that it is largely dependant on foreign countries and companies will to buy and produce goods in China and that can be taken away. As much as they want to pretend that they have started building their internal market, it has been shown clearly that almost nobody really trusts the data coming out of China. But without real data we just work with China because it seems sort of stable and we don't have data to the contrary since we are not allowed to gather that data. If our politicians will really want to put a squeeze on China then they just need to say that we are not gonna deal with China anymore. With just that, the companies will start to pull out pretty fast because they are already unsure what is happening in Chinese economy. A lot of data doesn't make sense and seems inflated. The recent data that is coming out of China is showing a slowdown so it seems that they can't keep up the disquise any longer even themselves.
I don't think that the CCP can hold to power and survive without the US, EU, Japan etc markets buying their goods and producing them in China. How many will become unemployed? Do you really think that the Chinese can crack down on millions of their own people if not tens of millions? After all, my assumption is that CCP rule is ultimately rests on economic prosperity and once its taken away then they will have only propaganda to fall to. The same as the Soviet Union did, how bad the West lives, how horrible they treat the workers, how good our system is compared to theirs but in reality this fools the leaders as much as it fools the people. Ideology really matters in these cases.
The argument about Chinese patience: Theoretically yes. They can be patient but there are no indications that Chinese leaders are. Look at the current events. This is not patience. Nor is it very easy to recover from such a nightmare. They basically instigated a rebellion for at least the next 50 years because if you haven't noticed a lot of the people on the streets are younger generation. This will not be forgiven easily. 50 years is a very long time even for the "Patient" China. They will encounter a crysis or two or a more by that time. If China will have existential problems during that time then Hong Kong WILL proclaim independence or whatever it wants. (Go back to Britain?)
Don't take it as if i am saying that China is collapsing. Far from it, it is doing decently but the trend is of degradation as of recently. The economic data makes no sense, they are intensifying propaganda, they are trying to crack down on HK, Trump has started a trade war, Europe will eventually start one also with China, the model that they tried to switch to from 2008 has not worked well.... There are clearly signs that the Chinese system is facing a test of time. Perhaps the first one since the pro-capitalist reforms but this is exactly the situation where Western democracies excel at. Look at Soviet Union, it didn't manage to reform itself and died out. Look at the Monarchies pre/post-WW1 they also failed for the same reason that they couldn't reform and change.
There are negative and positive sides to both autocratic and democratic systems. Reform and change is definitely a strong point of democracy but a very weak point for autocracies and dictatorships. Its not impossible that they will succeed but i just think it is very likely that they won't. No matter how smart one individual or the whole party is they will screw up. Democracy helps us to compensate while in autocracy/dictatorship that is very hard to do.
. Hell they even invented simplified Chinese!
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