China breaks its word over Hong Kong

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Giggle
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Giggle » April 11, 2021, 11:28 am

Laan Yaa Mo wrote:
January 12, 2021, 9:53 am
Now what is going to happen when China moves against Taiwan?
The entire world will immediately look to the United States of America, at which time Xiden will soil his diaper and run for cover to the basement, Heels-Up will be too busy measuring curtains for her new mansion, Pelosi will declare Thailand a disaster zone and propose a bill worth up to $200 T in covid aid, and Disgraced Ex-Navy lieutenant Hunter Biden will begin drawing up war plans with six Russian prostitutes and a meth dealer from his bedsit in Santa Monica.

It's what we've become. Shameful.


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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Laan Yaa Mo » April 16, 2021, 2:50 am

The Chinese panda is loaded for bear again:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-warning-1.5988767
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Laan Yaa Mo » May 29, 2021, 9:31 am

I prefer reading about Hong Kong on this thread. You should put the North Korea stuff in one of the Niggly threads to boast its ranking in the posted messages table.
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Niggly » May 29, 2021, 9:41 am

^ yes, everybody is welcome. There’s 4 threads, make your choice wisely grasshopper. If you talk nicely to RCT I’m sure he’ll tweak the title to accommodate
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Laan Yaa Mo » June 24, 2021, 7:08 pm

Freedom of speech and the press officially ended in Hong Kong today with closing of Apple Press. Thanks China.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong ... -1.6076415
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Doodoo » June 24, 2021, 7:32 pm

Its China what was expected?
Kill the Press

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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Doodoo » June 24, 2021, 7:33 pm

Its China what was expected?
Kill the Press

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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Laan Yaa Mo » June 26, 2021, 10:59 pm

The odious and repressive Chinese government has done it again. This is yet another bow in its quiver to end peaceful, democratic protests in Hong Kong and on the mainland. We didn't even mention the Uighurs yet

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong ... -1.6076415

Okay, the Uighurs,

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcast ... g-down-on/
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Re: China breaks its word over Hong Kong

Post by Laan Yaa Mo » August 6, 2023, 11:34 am

This is an interesting book about China and Hong Kong. One of the reminders by the author is that Chris Patten, the Governor of Hong Kong noted that the Chinese side did not care what Hong Kong people felt at the time negotiations between Britain and China began. One of the key revelations in the book is that Britain's key advisor in the negotiations, and former Ambassador to China, Percy Craddock, advised his Chinese counterpart of the way the British were going to carry out negotiations. Here's a review of the book:
The Gate to China by Michael Sheridan review — a new history of the People’s Republic and Hong Kong
This look at the former colony’s modern history reveals Beijing’s ruthless global ambitions

You can understand a lot about China’s relations with the rest of the world — and the brutality and single-mindedness of the communist dictatorship — by looking at how the leadership in Beijing has dealt with Hong Kong.

Michael Sheridan’s The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic & Hong Kong meticulously details why this is so. “For a nation as great as China,” Sheridan writes, “Hong Kong was a tiny enclave. Yet it had outsize psychological and political importance.”

The book explores the origins of Britain’s colonial adventure in China, but its main focus is on the past three decades of British rule up to 1997 and the breathtaking economic developments that have happened on the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong, the colony that Britain never planned to rule, over time went from being an unloved acquisition to the pivotal gateway to China and a vibrant international city. When China judged the time right to resume sovereignty, the communist government was anxious enough to make elaborate promises about its future conduct in the territory and enshrine them in an international treaty with Britain.

That was in the 1980s, before China grew in strength and dominance, and in this very readable book Sheridan takes the reader through the tortuous Sino-British negotiations that led to the handover. He interviews an impressive swathe of those involved in the talks on the British side, and draws too on Chinese material that’s in the public domain yet rarely seen. Britain, Sheridan argues, was outmanoeuvred time and again in these discussions, yet was able to put in writing something no dictatorship had ever conceded to the people it ruled: a high degree of autonomy.

Notably absent from these proceedings, though, was input from the people of Hong Kong. Indeed, Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last governor, later talked about how it was made clear to him in his dealings with Beijing that “the future of Hong Kong had nothing to do with the people of Hong Kong”.

It’s worth remembering when analysing these talks that China’s offer of one country, two systems was not just a way of reassuring the world of its intentions towards Hong Kong, but was originally designed to lure Taiwan back into its embrace. And there were some takers for this offer on the island — that is until the protests in 2014 and 2019 and Beijing’s rampage through Hong Kong’s liberties put paid to any lingering enthusiasm (something Sheridan could probably have made more of).

One of the strengths of the book is the light it sheds on the late Sir Percy Cradock, Britain’s key adviser in the negotiations. He was a former ambassador to China, and later became head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Margaret Thatcher’s principal foreign policy adviser.

Sheridan, for many years based in Hong Kong as the Sunday Times Far East correspondent, has uncovered the extraordinary story of how Cradock subsequently came close to treason in secret dealings with China’s ambassador to Britain. At the height of discussions with Beijing in 1993 over Patten’s plan for political reform, the former insider, by that point retired, gave the Chinese ambassador insights into Britain’s negotiating tactics and failed to report it to the Foreign Office.

This all happened during Cradock’s vociferous campaign to undermine Patten, whom he viewed as ignorant and foolishly idealistic.

What Sheridan makes clear, and explains in fascinating detail, is Hong Kong’s role in China’s extraordinary economic growth in recent decades. He also, incidentally, reminds readers of the pivotal role played in this process by Xi Zhongxun, father of the Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Xi senior, like his mentor Deng Xiaoping, never thought that loosening the state’s grip on the economy would herald any similar liberalism in the political sphere. Yet this illusion was lovingly cherished in the West, not least by successive British governments.

The reality has been otherwise. Under Xi Jinping, economic growth has accelerated and political freedoms have diminished, almost in tandem. In Hong Kong, where the erosion of liberty has been more visible than in any other part of China, the communist leaders have cynically calculated that, such is the nation’s economic clout, the rest of the world will turn a blind eye even when essential principles such as the rule of law and freedom of expression are brutally knocked aside.

Sheridan shares a view held by many China scholars that the Chinese leadership believe that only the weak have to abide by the norms of international rules. In official histories Beijing acknowledges its weakness at the time of Hong Kong negotiations and admits that it made concessions to achieve membership of the World Trade Organisation.

But such meekness is no longer required, and the rulers in Beijing are confident not just of their economic ascendancy but also of their global political power.

Has the outside world, and particularly the US, found a way of dealing with an increasingly assertive China, asks Sheridan towards the end of his book. With studied understatement, he concludes that “the past suggests it will not be an easy task”.

The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic & Hong Kong by Michael Sheridan
Wm Collins £25 pp512

Stephen Vines is the author of Defying the Dragon: Hong Kong and the World’s Largest Dictatorship
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the- ... -bqbd8n0f6
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