The end of "One country, two systems"

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports in part,

he move appears to be a direct signal that communist Beijing will not longer accept or allow Hong Kong’s current autonomous status as a free democracy. Beijing signaling “enough is enough”, and Hong Kongers are rightly concerned. If Xi follows through, we can expect to see even more protests and confrontations; and the possibility President Trump will remove the “special trade status” the U.S. gives to Hong Kong.

Right now Hong Kong is exempt from U.S. tariffs and other economic measures the U.S. has deployed against China. If Beijing takes full control, that could quickly change.

Sundance links to this article from Reuters.

(Reuters) – Beijing appears determined to stamp out any renewed rebellion against the Communist Party’s authority over the former British colony. China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, is preparing to circumvent the city’s lawmaking body, the Legislative Council, in drafting the new laws.


The fear among many in Hong Kong is that China intends to criminalize existing freedoms, including criticism of the central government and its policies. It is the latest and biggest step in a concerted effort by Beijing to assert control over Hong Kong and its 7.4 million people.

In recent weeks there had been widespread speculation here that Beijing was planning this move, described by some local commentators as the “nuclear option.” Thursday’s announcement by China nonetheless stunned pro-democracy lawmakers, business leaders and lawyers in the city. It was, they said, a historic turning point – the end of “one country, two systems,” the formula Beijing had promised would allow Hong Kong to retain its way of life and freedom for at least 50 years after the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

“This represents a real demolition of the one country, two systems idea and also the idea of Hong Kong’s autonomy,” said barrister Wilson Leung, a member of the Progressive Lawyers Group. Leung said extremely harsh sentences had been imposed on dissidents, journalists and lawyers on the mainland under vaguely expressed but draconian laws. “These same vague concepts are now being introduced to Hong Kong,” he said.

Many details of the new laws and exactly how they will be absorbed into Hong Kong’s existing statutes remain unclear. But Beijing has openly expressed its intentions in recent months. It wants to end the cycle of mass protests that have thwarted successive post-colonial administrations each time they have moved to more closely align the city with China’s political and legal system.

[…] Hong Kong is a vital cog in China’s economy. While China still has extensive capital controls and often intervenes in its financial markets and banking system, Hong Kong is one of the most open economies in the world and one of the biggest markets for equity and debt financing.

China uses Hong Kong’s currency, equity and debt markets to attract foreign funds, while international companies use Hong Kong as a launchpad to expand into mainland China. The bulk of foreign direct investment in China continues to be channeled through the city. And many of China’s biggest firms have listed in Hong Kong, often as a springboard to global expansion.

Read more here.

Hong Kong protestors wave the American flag

JJ Sefton's Morning Report focuses our attention on Hong Kong.

Good morning, kids. Midweek and the big story that's getting short shrift is the unrest in China. It has implications beyond the geopolitical and economic that hit very close to home, as you'll see. Despite Chi-Com police and security forces predictably responding to the demonstrators over the weekend with teargas, rubber bullets and clubs, upwards of 40,000 took over the Hong Kong airport and shut it down. Latest reports have riot police storming the terminal while anti-terrorism forces have massed outside the city.

Before continuing, here's a public service announcement for the Democrat-Left-Media Complex and the GOP-e: This is why we have the Second Amendment. I'm not saying that even if a good portion of the citizens of HK were armed to even a fraction of the extent as most Americans, the Chi-Com regime wouldn't respond with force to crush these protests. But it might have caused them to think twice about enacting wildly unpopular laws that are in complete contravention to the city's semi-autonomy that would have led to the situation they now face (meh, what am I saying? We're armed to the teeth and look what our government has done for the past 50 to 100 years).

Despite Beijing's innate bellicosity and imperialist dreams, aided and abetted by American stupidity in the form of granting them most favored nation trading status (Carter), handing over extremely sensitive defense technology that boosted their military capabilities by decades (Clinton) and lebensraum to illegally claim all of the South China Sea as territorial waters and a free hand in Africa and elsewhere (Obama), China today has serious internal problems that could present a mortal threat to 70 years of total Communist control. Even with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, thanks to the hideous one-child policy and the cultural imperative for male offspring, China's replacement birth rate is now in negative territory. Their real estate market, which the government sank a tremendous amount of money into, is wildly overinflated and headed for a correction. The post-Cultural Revolution and post-Tiananmen Square generations have become exposed to and fully embrace western consumerism, and thanks to the internet and the opening of travel to the west and study abroad, a growing disdain for authoritarianism. There's also the threat of jihadist terrorism from Uighur Muslims and the even greater threat from a growing population of practicing Christians that worship something other than the all-powerful State. There are also reports of serious labor unrest and protests in places like Shenzhen and Guangdong that are getting almost zero coverage from the media.

And to top it all off, you have Donald Trump who has thrown a wrench into the Globalist plan of decapitating the United States as the world's economic and security superpower and delivering its head on a platter to the Chinese dragon. Despite the headlines about the American economy set to take a dive because of Trump, it's the Chinese that blinked on tariffs and just last week devalued their currency, which will only have the effect of making their own people suffer.

So Hong Kong is a flashpoint that has the potential to touch off all of the aforementioned and cause serious damage to the regime, if not bring it down entirely. That said, when totalitarian regimes are threatened, they usually lash out elsewhere to distract the people from their misery. Taiwan? South Korea? Some covert meshugas that they could deny being involved in that would cause us pain? Remember that Google is in their back pocket and the OPM hack a few years ago. Plus we have Google openly boasting its goal of preventing the re-election of Trump and even Democrat presidential candidates telling the Chinese to hang tough against our President in trade/tariff talks until he's defeated in 2020. Normally, I'd call that treason, but this is the Democrat Party, which is now a de facto seditious/treasonous entity. Just like the Chi-Coms devaluing their own currency these fools and saboteurs would rather see Americans suffer if it meant furthering their own political advantage (hello Bill Maher and Richard Engel).

It will be interesting to see what the Democrats have to say about Hong Kong, as well as their reaction to whatever policy position comes from the administration regarding the crisis. No doubt, it will be to blast it. Interesting to note that the protestors have chosen as their talisman the Stars and Stripes, just as the protestors in Tiananmen Square had a replica of the Statue of Liberty 25 years ago. If that's any indicator, you can predict just who and what the Democrats will support.

"Hong Kong, perched on the edge of the Asian continent far from the center of communist power in Beijing, may be where the end of Chinese communism begins."

In the National Interest, Gordan Chang reports,

In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.

Almost nobody thinks any of these things can happen, but they forget that Chinese rebellions and revolutions often start at the periphery and then work their way to the center. The Qing dynasty of the Manchus, the last imperial reign, unraveled from the edges, as did others.

Hong Kong, perched on the edge of the Asian continent far from the center of communist power in Beijing, may be where the end of Chinese communism begins.

...Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, knows that very few in the rest of China, the “mainland” as it is called, sympathize with the Hong Kong protestors, especially because they challenge “China,” as the party likes to call itself. Yet the demonstrators in Hong Kong have succeeded at pushing their government around, almost at will, forcing Carrie Lam, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, to “suspend” consideration of the extradition legislation.

And that is why Xi must be concerned. Mainland residents have grievances of their own, especially now that the economy is crumbling fast, and might become inspired to treat their own leaders roughly.

Perhaps in response, Beijing late last month stopped trying to prevent those “inside the Great Firewall” from knowing about the Hong Kong disturbances and instead attempted to tar the protestors by publicizing their violent acts.

Are mainlanders encouraged by the Hong Kong “riots,” as Beijing calls them? In the first week of July, up to ten thousand residents of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, took to the streets for days to protest a proposed waste-incineration plant.

The mass demonstration there did not spread, as other protests in China have in the past, but in the future cascading disturbances could overwhelm an already troubled political system. As Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania told the National Interest, “the disintegration of the People’s Republic of China is now under way.”

...Popular attitudes have visibly hardened this year as Hong Kong residents have taken the view that this is, as they say, the “last stand” for their society. There are traditional pro-Beijing elements in the city, such as the triads and triad-like organizations, but few in the Hong Kong mainstream now trust China. In the middle of June, one pro-democracy march drew an estimated two million people.

...There is no end to the demonstrations, now in their ninth-straight week, in sight.

Read more here.

"Leftists, whose religion is atheism, in which they are the gods; small-minded, unforgiving, anti-freedom."

Andrew talks about the small, mean, anti-freedom philosophy of Leftism. First, he looks at Harvard's practice of discriminating against Asian students. Then he looks at Harvard's changing their minds about admitting conservative Parkland, Florida student Kyle Kashuv. The other Parkland shooting survivor, David Hogg, is a gun control activist and got into Harvard, despite not having grades as high as Kyle's.

Leftists, whose religion is atheism, in which they are the gods; small-minded, unforgiving, anti-freedom.

Andrew speaks about the Oberlin College case. Andrew believes the college administrators actually do not think they did something wrong when they defamed the bakery that was the victim of shoplifting by three black students. Oberlin created the culture in which the black students believed they could do this.

Andrew talked about the millions of people in free, capitalist, Hong Kong demonstrating against their government's caving in to the Communist Chinese attempts to extradite accused Hong Kong residents to the Chinese Communist system of "justice."

Police use tear gas and pepper spray on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong

Beijing is "tightening the grip" on Hong Kong protesters. Hong Kong Police have been using pepper spray and tear gas on thousands of pro-democracy protesters.

The demonstrations -- which Beijing called "illegal" -- were a rare scene of disorder in the Asian financial hub, and highlighted authorities' inability to rein in the public discontent over Beijing's tightening grip on the city. The protesters reject Beijing's decision last month to rule out open nominations for candidates under proposed guidelines for the first-ever elections for Hong Kong's leader, promised for 2017.

China took control of the former British colony in 1997, agreeing to a policy of "one country, two systems" that allowed Hong Kong to keep civil liberties unseen on the mainland, while promising that the city's leader can eventually be chosen through "universal suffrage." But Beijing's insistence on screening election candidates for patriotism to China has stoked fears among democracy groups that Hong Kong will never get genuine democracy.

Read more here, where I found the story and photos.