Posted On: Friday - September 20th 2019 8:47AM MST
In Topics: China Liberty/Libertarianism World Political Stupidity
Just as with the multi-year-long Brexit story that Peak Stupidity just got around to even mentioning, the half-year-long protests in Hong Kong probably should be something to chime in about. The year-long yellow vest movement in France is another.
I don't know how much Lyin' Press coverage any of these 3 movements has really gotten, as I avoid it like the plague .. the Lyin' Press, that is. I would hazard a guess that the former, the Brexit deal, gets the most, simply because the Media branch of the Government has a narrative to present there - they must convince the people that bad, bad things will happen, if they vote against Global Government. The other 2 are movements by the people, and that is bad, see?
Well, let me just mention that the Hong Kong situation started when the Central Government of Big China introduced policies of extradition to the mainland for crimes committed in Hong Kong. People in Hong Kong, even though just another 7 1/2 million more Chinese people, are used to some law and order, due process, and all that, as carryover from their days under British rule. Now, one could criticize the rule of the British all one wants, as I'm sure the Chinese have, but the corruption level would have been a couple of orders magnitude lower, at least at the local level, than what goes on on the mainland. It's the extended influence of that 1,000 year British history of the rights of men and property rights, etc. that these Hong Kongese were used to, in comparison to the complete lack of that in Chinese history that is worrying people and causing the rightful hell-raising.
As Peak Stupidity discussed in Citizenship in the Nation, high intelligence notwithstanding, without that background in their culture and possibly their genetics too, places with a majority of Chinese don't really get into rule of law and that very heavily.
There can be exceptions made for the Chinese that are truly Christianized, but that is still a small percentage, though growing (a subject for another post). Hey, Westerners have tried for 200 years, and what do they get?: crazy Chinamen who think they are Jesus' brother and cause wars with death tolls like that of WWII, missionaries targeted and killed, or just foreigners fought back, stripped of their un-rightfully-obtained concessions, leaving them with Little China (Hong Kong) that with one half of one percent of the population, once had an economy that was over 1/4 the size of the mainland!* Property rights and law-and-order, what a concept!
With this respect for rights and fairness and all came the turnover of Hong Kong back to China at the end of the written 99-year lease agreement. Now, would any other country, the UK still having been MUCH MORE powerful than China back in 1997, have honored such a thing?** Would the Chinese have? No, listen, while the British diplomat would cheerfully say: "A deal is a deal old chap - here you go.", a Chinese official would come up with some face-saving way to say "power flows from the barrel of a gun", and not all that cheerfully either. As I've been writing, in general this "fairness thing" is just not in 'em. Sure, in the family and with friends with that guanxi deal going, you're gonna want to be a straight shooter. However, when it comes to strangers and with no repercussions expected, there is more respect for the Almighty RMB than that silly "being fair." As I wrote in DIY and mechanical aptitude in Americans vs. Chinese - self rebuttal, regarding their disdain for those who do honest manual labor over the money-grubbers, it's likely the women driving this sort of thing.
What in Sam Hill any of this has to do with these big protests is ... well, is that I am here to say that I think the people of Hong Kong deserve all of the crap they are getting from the Chinese Big-Gov. Let me explain with some background from a time I was in Hong Kong. This was roughly one decade after the British turnover of the territory to the Chinese at the end of June,1997. Of course, I don't know how the city looked before that date, but a decade later, it sure looked de-Britishized. Everything but the numbers of addresses and phone numbers was Chinese. I didn't hear any English at all being spoken by the Chinese to each other and really saw no remnants of British culture other than that driving on the wrong side of the road thing***. I saw no respect for the British who had done that amazing job with that small territory and few million Chinese people over a century.
The people of Hong Kong have been used to a Westernized type of society and the benefits therefrom. They only have any of it, though, now 22 years later, due to "there's a lot of ruin in a Kong". They've been trying to keep the mainlanders out because of the already over-crowdedness of the place. Hong Kongers also figure that the newcomers will ruin their nice-working society, forgetting who built all that in the first place. They are freaking out because the mainland Big-Gov Commies are coming to destroy the Golden Goose, but I believe it would have died anyway, with no Brits with those stiff upper lips and odd beliefs in fairness. Too bad, so sad. Screw you, ungrateful bastards. Next time, remember to renew your lease.
Hong Kong protester Chen Cartman explains the situation much better than this lowly blogger ever could:
PS: With my one point all done ("screw these ungrateful bastard", if you didn't catch it), I will say that the courage and strategy and tactics of these protesters is definitely worth reading about by Americans. We may need a lot of this knowledge, to say the least. I've been reading about it here.
* It's now less than 3%, BTW.
** Well, they could have been like the Americans, under Jimmah! who just flat-out GAVE AWAY the huge American engineering feat and work of wonder down in Panama.
*** Yeah, and in a place so crowded that one had to walk in lines like ants heading up the side of a building to dismantle a dozen week-old Cheezits (how do they get so organized?!) and with the wild Chinese drivers, you really need to watch out. I was just about to write "make sure you look left first", as I about repeated that error that can get you killed - no look to the right first! I'd hate to lose 25% of Peak Stupidity readership in one hot sweaty Hong Kong afternoon.
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