[HN Gopher] Jimmy Lai Is a Martyr for Freedom
___________________________________________________________________
Jimmy Lai Is a Martyr for Freedom
Author : mooreds
Score : 256 points
Date : 2025-12-22 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| fibers wrote:
| Headline seems overstated.
| pavlov wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "He may be sentenced to die in prison in connection with his
| efforts promoting liberty in China."
|
| Martyr doesn't sound like overstatement if that happens.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This man will spend the rest of his (possibly short?) life in
| prison for the crime of publishing ideas that the government
| didn't like. He chose to stay in hong kong defending the
| principles that mattered to him instead of abandoning his
| principles and fleeing to the UK, which was on option entirely
| open to him.
|
| Explain why you think it's overstated.
| bmelton wrote:
| It seems accurate and unsensational here
|
| I think perhaps we've lionized the term martyr to mean too many
| things, but his actions seem in line with the dictionary
| definition
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Jimmy Lai is more courageous and principled than anyone you've
| probably ever met in your life. He'll die in prison for his
| belief that speech should be free in Hong Kong.
| fibers wrote:
| Appeals to emotions won't get you anywhere. What else is
| next, "We NEED to reelect Trump to restore Christendom in the
| West!!!"?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It isn't an appeal to emotion. Jimmy Lai stood up for free
| speech in Hong Kong, factually and it paying with his life.
| I'm simply pointing out that you have probably never seen
| real courage or conviction in your life and aren't in a
| good position to judge Jimmy Lai.
|
| Your whole posting history is just inflammatory claims that
| you rarely stand behind. I keep bumping into you doing
| this, it's a bad look.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If there was one critical miscalculation the West (particularly
| the US) made in the last 40 years, it was thinking that
| investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic
| reforms. There was a mistaking of capitalism for human rights.
| While it is a human right to own property and use it to
| rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that
| capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the
| greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human
| rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced.
|
| If investment was the key to liberalization, we would have seen
| far greater investment behind the then-fallen Iron Curtain, where
| countries had actively turned their backs on command economies.
| The cynic in me thinks that capital didn't like just how that had
| turned out. If a country's people could either violently
| (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such
| totalitarian systems of politics and economics, they could also
| reject methods of accumulating capital that might run afoul of
| their values.
|
| China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command
| economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism.
| People were free to try new things that could create economic
| expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state.
| Anything else would be handled with the same totalitarian methods
| that political dissidents and class enemies were once handled
| with under Mao. While this has ebbed and flowed over the years,
| it essentially remains the system in place.
|
| Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > it was thinking that investment in China would equal
| liberalization and democratic reforms...
|
| That's a rewriting of history and a common misconception I've
| seen repeated ad nauseam both on HN and (what I assume is it's
| origin) Reddit.
|
| The West (primarily the US and then-West Germany) began
| investing in China in the 1970s to 1989 explicitly as a bulwark
| against the USSR [0] due to the Sino-Soviet Split. The
| "economic democratization" argument was a 1990s-era framing to
| reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO [1] along with to
| reduce the sanctions enforced following the Tienanmen Square
| massacre [2].
|
| George HW Bush as well as Clinton's NSC Asia Director Kenneth
| Lieberthal were both massive Chinaphiles, and played a major
| role in cementing the position China is in today.
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332
|
| [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-
| needs...
|
| [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-
| tianan...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I think that it's both a rewriting of history and a
| rationalization of the investment on some people's parts.
|
| Nixon's opening of relations with China was definitely a move
| against the USSR, but that was nothing compared to the extent
| of investment that was seen after the fall of Communism in
| Europe. The fact that the CPC was still very much in charge
| while all of this investing was occurring had to be
| rationalized somehow in the minds of people who were less
| cynical, and "it'll help liberalization" was probably one of
| the rationalizations used. And in some ways, you can use
| investment as a way to leverage social changes within
| countries, and some people (though apparently not enough)
| thought that was the intention with China, but there was only
| a carrot, not a stick, and by the time there was a desire to
| use a stick, there was too much dependency on China as a
| market and producer for the West. That's where we're at now.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > but that was nothing compared to the extent of investment
| that was seen after the fall of Communism in Europe
|
| Most of the capital investment and institution building
| that led to China Shock in the 2000s only happened due to
| the extreme degree of tech and capital transfer in the
| 1970s-80s, along with the visiting student program. Heck,
| Vietnam had a higher HDI [0] and GDP PPP per Capita [1]
| than the PRC until the early 2000s. The only difference was
| Vietnam was strictly in the Warsaw Bloc camp, and was
| negatively impacted by the collapse of the USSR,
| Czechoslovakia, and GDR while China was able to leverage
| ties with the US during that period.
|
| [0] - https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=2005
|
| [1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.C
| D?end=2...
| earlyreturns wrote:
| Interesting point and pardon my naivete but I'm curious, by
| "the west began investing" do you mean public sector
| investments? Or are you including people like jim rodgers
| long time China bull? I think private sector investment
| wouldn't be done for anything other than profit. It seems
| like trade liberalism is an ideological thing that people
| seem to believe in above and beyond geopolitical concerns.
| Those who believe in trade liberalization (globalization) are
| sort of religious in their belief that it leads to liberalism
| in all spheres, not just the economic. I'm thinking of
| classic liberals, economists, Ayn Rand fanboys, etc.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > public sector investments
|
| Both public and private. Read my first citation - I don't
| feel like relinking dozens of citations on 1970s-80s US-
| China relationship.
|
| Tl;dr - the Carter and Reagan administrations both heavily
| invested in building the PRC's R&D, military, and
| industrial capacity through a mix of public-private
| investments primarily as a bulwark against the USSR along
| with US Army boots on the ground in Xinjiang.
| earlyreturns wrote:
| I've read the first 4 of those links and they don't point
| to financial investment per se. They do cover
| liberalization in the diplomatic sense, and sale (not
| purchase) of US military tech, all of which is obvious
| given their location and the time period (peak Cold War),
| but I am curious about specifically financial investment
| in China, which is what the parent was discussing. I mean
| we weren't buying their planes or submarines or anything.
| We were cozying up to them because that's what was
| demanded by the defensive realities of the Cold War. That
| seems like a different thing than investing in China in
| the sense of financial investment during the post Cold
| War period of the late 90s onward. Again, sorry if I'm
| asking stupid questions but you seem to have a lot of
| knowledge and I want to learn more myself.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That 's a rewriting of history_
|
| You both agree.
|
| "The 'economic democratization' argument was a 1990s-era
| framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO" is
| what they're talking about. American security analysts
| believed that making China richer would make it more like us.
|
| Prior to that it was principally geostrategic. But prior to
| that, the argument was never made.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > American security analysts believed that making China
| richer would make it more like us
|
| The NSC in the first Clinton admin and the HW admin was
| ambivalent-to-opposed to the "endogenous democratization"
| approach, as was seen with Clinton 1's decisions during the
| China Straits Crisis under Anthony Lake (who was canned in
| 1997) along with Bush 1's retrenchment of sanctions in
| response to the Tiananmen Square Massacre under Brent
| Scowcroft. Much of the shift happened in Clinton 2 due to
| personnel changes and a significant loss of political
| capital due to then ongoing controversies.
|
| > But prior to that, the argument was never made
|
| Yep. The "endogenous democratization" argument only arose
| in 1997 after Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi's paper
| "Modernization: Theories and Facts" was published back in
| 1997 [0].
|
| [0] - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Modernization%3
| A-Theor...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Much of the shift happened in Clinton 2_
|
| That's when the relevant argument was made and, by my
| reading, mistakes made per OP's comments.
|
| Nobody is criticizing Nixon splitting China from the
| USSR. The criticism is in trade liberalization and
| technology transfer following the 1990s.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.
|
| I don't think it was a miscalculation. Greed always ran deep in
| the West too.
|
| > If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or
| peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian
| systems of politics
|
| It's not always possible. It works in some countries but not in
| others. For instance, it seems not possible in Russia.
|
| > China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command
| economics at the time. Instead, the result was state
| capitalism. People were free to try new things that could
| create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the
| needs of the state.
|
| I somewhat agree, as the sinomarxist theorem and strategem is
| about that (and the sinomarxists also managed to bring out many
| people out of poverty too), but your analysis is not entirely
| correct either as China has many superrich now, which is a
| perversion in the system. So Xi also lies here. Because how can
| there be so many super-superrich? This is a master-slave
| situation, just like in other capitalistic countries. So why
| then the lie about sinomarxism? They just sell it like an
| ideology now, not unlike the Juche crap in North Korea.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _seems not possible in Russia._
|
| But Russia has never removed the Communists from power. It
| removed the Communist party, that's true. But plenty of the
| revolutionaries were themselves Communists; both Gorbachev
| and Yeltsin were very high-ranking Communists. They liked the
| idea of economic liberalization, but the political
| liberalization was only allowed as long as they stayed in
| power. I'm not sure Russia has seen even a single honest
| presidential election. The current "president" of Russia is a
| former KGB officer.
| YC34987349872 wrote:
| Calling Yeltsin a communist is bananas. He played a central
| role in collapsing the Soviet Union by pulling Russia out
| of the Union, without any democratic input from the people.
| He then privatized everything, sold it all to the oligarchs
| and outside American/European hedge funds, and gutted all
| of Russia's remaining social safety programs from the SU.
| Yeltsin would be considered the very definition of a
| neoliberal, and was considered a friend and ally of the
| United States, which is now something we try to whitewash.
| nine_k wrote:
| The key thing for me here is that Yeltsin apparently
| falsified a lot of elections, including his own, to keep
| the right people in power. Economic liberalization (which
| had quite an effect) while holding the political reins
| tightly is very much like the Chinese communists acted
| during Deng Xiaoping's tenure. The Chinese managed to
| bring somehow wiser people to top though, it seems.
|
| Yeltsin may have used Communists as a scare during his
| campaign. But today's Russia is in hands of a former
| Communist dictator, much like today's China is in the
| hands of a career-Communist dictator.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The key thing for me here is that Yeltsin apparently
| falsified a lot of elections, including his own, to keep
| the right people in power.
|
| The US _helped_ with that.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The key thing for me here is that Yeltsin apparently
| falsified a lot of elections, including his own, to keep
| the right people in power.
|
| No, he didn't. The 1996 elections were honest, with maybe
| slight irregularities in favor of his _opponent_. There
| is statistical analysis by a professional mathematician:
| https://www.electoral.graphics/en-
| us/Home/Articles/sergei-sh...
|
| It _is_ correct to say that Yeltsin fought a very dirty
| campaign, using "dark cash" (the infamous "Xerox box")
| and unfair agreements with the major media owners.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Miscalculation on what level? I think you are right concerning
| the methods as during the "last-stand" at hk poly technic,
| tanks were assembling in Futian Shenzhen (sat images.. what was
| this site again)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I think that laypeople in the US were willing to see more
| investments in China with the rationalization that it could
| lead to more human rights. If you had polled random Americans
| in 1995 with a question like, "Should the US government and
| American companies invest in the People's Republic of China
| in an effort to increase human rights and liberalization
| there?", most people would have responded "yes".
|
| The miscalculation comes from thinking that the investment
| would actually have that effect. And I do think some people
| at the top knew it wouldn't have that effect, but of course,
| there was cheap labor to be had, and that was what they
| wanted more than anything else.
| slibhb wrote:
| So far you're right but the tide can always turn. China has
| massively overbuilt housing supply, which is the kind of
| mistake that a freer economy couldn't make. China's failed
| birth policies (1 child until 2015!) are another example.
|
| My opinion is still that capitalism (Western style) will win.
| Not because markets are never wrong but because the scope for
| fucking up is so much less. Markets can't decide "families can
| have only one child" or "we need to build 90 million units of
| housing" (that now sits empty). An accumulation of fuck-ups in
| this vein is inevitable when you have a small group of people
| making these kinds of decisions. In the long run, it will be
| fatal.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Markets can't decide "families can have only one child"
|
| Actually they can. It's part of the reason why a lot of
| capitalist nations are seeing major problems with population
| stagnation and possibly shrinkage.
|
| The problem is markets don't care at all about society. If
| they can require that every member of a household has to work
| and extract all their money as efficiently as possible, then
| they leave little room for society to have families.
|
| Capitalism is geared towards minimizing workers' free time.
| And, unfortunately, free time is how babies get made and kids
| get raised.
|
| That is where western capitalism is failing. Shouting louder
| and young adults to pull on bootstraps harder isn't making
| them have kids in their studio apartments.
|
| South Korea and Japan are 2 examples of this train-wreck
| that's coming for the US and other nations.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > If they can require that every member of a household has
| to work and extract all their money as efficiently as
| possible, then they leave little room for society to have
| families.
|
| This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn't exist.
|
| The families themselves make the choices to have more or
| fewer children.
|
| Capitalism says nothing about free time. Make the
| connection in your argument - people without enough money
| work as much as they can, maybe... but I still don't see
| the lower wage people I know working 16 hour days. In fact
| it is the people who have a use for the extra money,
| usually to buy free time later, as one would expect in a
| capitalistic system.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn't
| exist.
|
| Oh no, it really doesn't.
|
| Captialism is everyone working to maximize profit. It's
| the lack of foresight on social problems and pressures in
| capitalism that leads to exactly this problem.
|
| > The families themselves make the choices to have more
| or fewer children.
|
| Right, because of the pressure of a capitalist society.
| People can be priced out of having children if
| necessities like food, housing, and clothing price them
| out of being able to take care of a child.
|
| > Capitalism says nothing about free time.
|
| Capitalism is about maximizing profit. A direct path
| towards that is paying employees the minimal amount and
| having them work the most hours to extract the maximum
| amount of value from them.
|
| Before mass unionization, 60 or 80 hour workweeks were
| pretty common in the US. Even today, we see companies
| that use salaried employees as a way to make employees
| work longer hours.
|
| If overtime wasn't so expensive, you could bet that
| McDonalds would have people working 12 hour shifts.
| Hospitals already do that to nurses.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _capitalism is everyone working to maximize profit_
|
| This is nonsense. Capitalism is about the private
| ownership of productive stuff, _i.e._ capital. That's it.
| Profit is a corollary, and one that is bounded by
| preferences and tastes.
| saubeidl wrote:
| That completely ignores the coercive law of competition.
|
| "Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets."
|
| - _Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,
| Volume 1_
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _completely ignores the coercive law of competition_
|
| Not a forcing function unless you're levered. Competition
| can't push your return on a productive asset below zero
| (by definition), just lower by increasing the value of
| said asset while reducing the cash flows from it.
| tankenmate wrote:
| `Not a forcing function unless you're levered`; but every
| one is levered, you aren't born with all the housing,
| food, and water you'll need for the rest of your life.
| Everyone is born with a net negative of the necessities
| of life, the difference though is that a very small
| minority are bequeathed this by well heeled ancestors.
| But for the overwhelming majority there is a life long
| struggle to afford to live a suitable life.
| YC34987349872 wrote:
| The "ghost cities" narrative has been bunk for a while. Most
| of those developments have been filled up and are now seen as
| highly desirable ultra-modern cities, e.g. Pudong New Area in
| Shanghai, but much cheaper for first time buyers than
| anywhere in the North America or Europe.
| sQL_inject wrote:
| This take is bunk. I travel to China every year and in each
| major city, for each filled skyscraper, there is another
| that is half built and empty.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| 1) Years ago for work, I went deep investigating these;
| some of the team actually flew to China to see it all
| first-hand and verify the data. This is not a bunk
| narrative.
|
| 2) I've never made this accusation on HN before and
| apologize if I'm wrong, but this is a new account with 3
| comments, all on this post (one of the largest posts about
| Hong Kong I've seen in a while here), and it looks a lot
| like a paid actor for China. This makes me thankful for the
| green-name feature on HN, if the random string of numbers
| wasn't enough of a tell.
| maxglute wrote:
| They prebuild 10 years of housing runway but still have
| another 10 years, aka 100m+ housing shortage for urbanization
| goals. They realize they got overzealous and was venturing in
| bubble and and intervened during boom vs after collapse. AKA
| preplanning and prematurely fixing something, which is the
| kind of intervention a freer economy can't do.
|
| Family planning was also massive successful in preventing
| frankly 100s of millions of useless mouths from being born
| and concentrating resources to upskill 1-2 kids, hence their
| massive catchup within a few generations. Now they make more
| technical talent than OCED combined and will have the
| greatest high skill demographic dividend to milk for at least
| our life times, giving them 40+ years to sort out better
| family planning.
|
| BTW US overspending 5-10% of GDP aka 2.5 Trillion per year on
| healthcare vs OECD baseline is basically more wasteful
| misallocation than anything PRC has ever done, including RE
| misallocation (3-5% waste). And at least they still have
| housing units left to use (being converted into affordable
| housing), instead of piles of paper work and personal debt.
| Accumulation of fuckups that are not resolvable in western
| style capitalism, it will be fatal medium term.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| China is still moving millions of people from rural to urban
| areas every year. The overbuilt housing is a complete non
| issue that will naturally solve itself in under a decade.
| Meanwhile in the west there is a massive housing
| affordability crisis because the government lets special
| interests make new housing illegal. I am not a fan of the
| chinese government but their housing policy is one spot where
| they are obviously better than western policy.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It depends though, whom you are asking about failed or
| successful policies. For example I have seen a normal flat of
| a friend in China in a capitol of a province, who lives alone
| in this 4 room apartment. I asked how much rent they had to
| pay and then asked them what they think, how much they would
| have to pay for that in Berlin. When I told them they would
| probably have to pay some 2k EUR rent, they thought for a
| moment, then just said: "That's insane!". The rent they paid
| was maybe 1/8 to 1/6 of that. And that apartment was not
| somewhere far out. It is well within the city and has good
| public transport connection. People can afford to rent.
| People can move. Single people. Over here not so much. This
| is also a result of the state having built houses and
| apartments.
| em-bee wrote:
| i don't know much about the rental market in china, but
| living there, always renting, i had the impression that
| rents do not cover the cost of the apartment. it is as if
| most people rent out their apartment because it would
| otherwise stay empty. when we finally bought an apartment,
| the mortgage payments were twice as high as what we would
| have paid for the same apartment in rent. we had a 15 year
| mortgage i think, so that means it takes 30 years in rent
| to just cover the cost of the apartment. is that
| profitable? i don't know. in germany rent has to be
| profitable.
| jen20 wrote:
| > Markets can't decide "families can have only one child"
|
| Sure they can. Just make it unaffordable to do anything else.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > While it is a human right to own property and use it to
| rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that
| capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the
| greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human
| rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced.
|
| I'd argue that communism is the only system of government that
| guarantees property for all. That's somewhat a core tenant that
| every member in a communist society collectively owns
| everything.
|
| Capitalism is optimized to reduce or eliminate property access.
| For example, a free market capitalist has no problems with a
| very rich individual buying a city and perpetually renting the
| property to it's employees at rates above their salary, putting
| them in perpetual debt to that individual. They own nothing and
| can't escape their circumstances. Nor can their children.
|
| Capitalism with minimal or no regulation naturally devolves
| into feudalism.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Communism as such has never existed and will never exist
| because it ignores human nature. Private property rights are
| a fundamental tenet of human psychology.
|
| But hey, in defiance of 100+ years of failed attempts, if you
| want to see Politburos putting people in gulags again for
| being counterrevolutionaries . . . sure, give it another go.
|
| Capitalism is the worst economic system that has ever been
| tried . . . except for all the others.
| cogman10 wrote:
| For the record, I'm not a communist. I'd probably say my
| values are pretty close to socialist-capitalist. And that
| is a form of government that many nations have adopted and
| are successfully running.
|
| What's been failing is neoliberalism. Every nation that's
| been moving in that direction has serious problems as their
| social safety nets have started to collapse.
| bpt3 wrote:
| > socialist-capitalist
|
| What is this? Are the existing examples you mentioned
| considered examples of democratic socialism, or are you
| referring to something else?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| No OP. But if it's similar to what I believe in, it's
| free-market capitalism for business (with provisions for
| market failure, _e.g._ antitrust and utility regulation),
| redistribution of wealth for individuals, strong
| individual investor and consumer rights, and the state
| providing the bare basics through the market (housing
| voucher, food voucher, public education or an education
| voucher, electricity voucher, water voucher, internet
| voucher, and public healthcare).
| bpt3 wrote:
| It doesn't sound all that similar on the surface to OP's
| response based on my initial read of both.
|
| It seems like you're proposing a regulated free market in
| parallel with a highly regulated UBI?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a regulated free market in parallel with a highly
| regulated UBI?_
|
| No UBI. Just basics for survival guaranteed. You should
| not starve if you can't find work. That doesn't mean we
| can support a non-working population at leisure. (Which,
| in our current model, occurs at both ends of the income
| spectrum.)
| bpt3 wrote:
| > No UBI. Just basics for survival guaranteed.
|
| That's why I called it a "highly regulated UBI", which
| might not have been clear. You're proposing that all
| citizens receive the basics for survival in kind instead
| of the cash equivalent (which is how a UBI would work).
|
| I think I prefer this model over what the OP ended up
| suggesting, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be in
| practice in the US.
|
| > That doesn't mean we can support a non-working
| population at leisure.
|
| Aren't the people who choose to live at a basic survival
| level living a life at leisure in your system?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Aren 't the people who choose to live at a basic
| survival level living a life at leisure in your system?_
|
| I suppose so, given they're subsisting. It should not
| luxurious, however, and would probably carry with it a
| modicum of indignity. (Which is fine as long as they
| aren't discriminated against.)
| cogman10 wrote:
| Basically this [1]
|
| And for who's done it, basically every capitalist nation
| at this point.
|
| Simply put it's recognizing that capitalism has failings
| but so does communism. It doesn't seek full state control
| of everything, just over industries where it's needed. It
| tries to strike a balance between public and private
| ownership.
|
| Everything from Vietnam to the US have aspects of market
| socialism. I think that there are more industries where
| the US should take ownership, particularly industries
| that lend themselves to natural monopolies or
| oligopolies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
| bpt3 wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. I agree that regulating capitalism
| is necessary, but I also think the "where it's needed"
| portion of your thesis is a real sticking point.
|
| I would be interested to know what industries you have in
| mind where the US should take ownership, and in what
| form.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It'll obviously be industry dependent.
|
| A few that I'd see the need.
|
| - Railroads - The lines themselves and the operation
| should be owned by the federal government. Private rail
| companies should buy access which pays for line expansion
| and maintenance. The US needs regulations on things like
| train length and line speeds (none of these super massive
| trains blocking roadways because they don't fit inside a
| rail yard).
|
| - Medicine - Medicare for all, but honestly I think
| nationalizing major hospitals and pharmaceuticals would
| probably be warranted. It's in the national interest to
| fund a wide breadth of research and medicine production
| even if that medicine doesn't ultimately turn a profit.
| But even if we just did insurance, the US is already
| covering the most expensive pool of individuals with
| Medicare (old people) expanding it to all citizens
| wouldn't be that expensive. Reform to medicare would help
| (particularly removing Part C, that's just a slush fund
| for insurance companies, but then also expanding and
| simplifying the other parts).
|
| Utilities ownership - Doesn't need to be nationalized,
| but having municipal or state ran utilities would, IMO,
| be preferable. The state utilities boards suck and
| putting in checks for utility companies. They aren't
| elected and are easy to corrupt. For example, my water
| utility was recently purchased by a company. In order to
| cover the loan they took out to purchase the previous
| water company, they raised rates (fat chance those go
| down). For telecommunications, I think a British telecom
| style system would work well. The government owns the
| lines while various telecommunication companies compete
| for service. That'd make it easier for more than just 2
| companies providing internet service to a given location.
| Cellular networks practically already work like this, the
| big 3 own everything and sub-carriers just lease access.
| It'd be better if the government nationally owned cell
| service deployment. Especially in terms of spectrum
| usage.
|
| - Food production - I don't really think government
| ownership is needed here, I think anti-trust and breakups
| are needed. These markets have consolidated to a huge
| extent which is really bad for everyone. Having just ~5
| different national grocers is a bad thing. Having just a
| few mills (like general mills) is a bad thing.
|
| - Chip fabrication - This should be owned by the
| government much like TSMC. And like TSMC, the likes of
| nvidia/intel/amd can buy a fab to do their runs. Fabs are
| just too crazy expensive and losing the competitive edge
| here is a security problem.
|
| Basically, my view centers mostly around when an industry
| gets too consolidated. Especially when I think it's
| something that has critical importance to the general
| public. I could be open to more of these sorts of
| actions, it just depends on if an industry can be
| naturally competitive or not. Like, for example, I think
| a nationalized shoe manufacturing is a dumb idea as it's
| already a highly competitive market that could be easily
| broken up.
|
| Hopefully that answers your question.
| bpt3 wrote:
| It does, thanks. I'm not sure how much I agree with your
| premise, but I'll think about it.
| Wilder7977 wrote:
| Anthropologically speaking these statements about human
| fundamentals (or "human nature") end up falling flat. There
| have been plenty of societies organized in ways such that
| private property was irrelevant when existing at all.
|
| I suggest "Debt" from David Graeber for a great
| dissertation of this topic (which is not the core topic,
| but definitely touched).
|
| All of this without considering that private property of
| means of production is different from private property in
| general.
| nine_k wrote:
| True communism has of course existed and likely still
| exists, but it's limited to small self-selected
| communities, like monastic retreats.
|
| Communism indeed is highly unlikely to works as a political
| state system, due to human nature.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Safety-nets for big companies so they can't fail, shared
| ownership for rich shareholders. Dog-eat-dog market forces,
| rugged individualism and bootstraps for the poor. Don't you
| think it's weird that the things communist Americans want,
| are the things Wealthy Capitalist Americans get, while
| telling the poor "those things don't work"? Central
| Planning sounds like a stupid idea, but why are all the big
| companies planned from a central HQ if everyone agrees that
| local planning is better?
|
| > " _in defiance of 100+ years of failed attempts_ "
|
| Just curious, there wasn't any interference from outside
| during these 'failures' was there? Any trade embargoes? Any
| military intervention? Any assassinations? Any deliberate
| destabilizing? Any puppet governments?
|
| > " _if you want to see Politburos putting people in gulags
| again for being counterrevolutionaries_ "
|
| There's 1.3 - 1.9 million people in American prisons now.
| 4.9 million who have been in prison. 19 million with felony
| convictions. Prisons are for-profit, and prisoners are used
| for forced labour, either paid nothing or paid less than
| minimum wage. The US ICE is disappearing people off the
| streets. The US president is targeting people who criticize
| him accusing them of treason (punishable by death)[1],
| recently writing """Chuck Schumer said trip was 'a total
| dud', even though he knows it was a spectacular success.
| Words like that are almost treasonous!""".
|
| Why is "Communism" the cause of gulags but "Capitalism"
| isn't the cause of mass incarceration, forced labour, and
| the government covering up how many people die while
| imprisoned? Why does this American "communism can't work,
| has never worked, and reminder Communism == mass graves"
| style comment always feel like a loud pledge of allegiance
| trying to make it clear to the powers that be that you
| aren't criticizing them, begging them not to disappear you?
| Are you not even allowed to entertain a different idea? To
| consider that even if any given Communism actually can't
| work and is crappy to live under, that what you're saying
| is more like a religious recital than something sensible?
|
| [1] https://time.com/7290536/miles-taylor-president-trump-
| treaso...
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Private property rights are a fundamental tenet of human
| psychology.
|
| This is a weird religious belief. Property rights are an
| entirely unnatural construction. Under normal
| circumstances, you own exactly what you can defend, no
| more, no less. Property rights are a communal imposition to
| protect the weak from the strong, and are no more natural
| than any other socialist endeavor.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a core tenant that every member in a communist society
| collectively owns everything_
|
| Everyone owns the world oceans ("common heritage of
| humanity"). How is that going for its fisheries and sea
| bottoms.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Yeah man I don't think co-op fisheries are the problem
| here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't think co-op fisheries are the problem here_
|
| Co-op fisheries are owned by the co-op. They aren't a
| problem and regulate access.
|
| Common heritage fisheries are trawled unregulated because
| when everyone owns something, nobody owns it.
|
| For the communist model to work, the state has to own
| everything. Which in practice means apparatchiks control
| everything.
| saubeidl wrote:
| We could finally try finish the experiment Allende
| started before the CIA couped away a democratically
| elected president.
|
| Do something like project Cybersyn [0], but give all
| decision making to a digital planning engine.
|
| No humans, no apparatchiks.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
| nradov wrote:
| That's so naive. Economic central planning is a fool's
| errand. Regardless of how good the computers are, it can
| never work because it's impossible to gather accurate
| demand data. Only free market economics can ever work at
| scale over the long term.
| saubeidl wrote:
| That is nothing but an ideological statement without any
| evidence, one that is being disproven as we speak.
|
| Free market economics haven't worked out great for the
| vast majority of people.
| mopsi wrote:
| Go ahead, plan my Christmas Eve. What time I wake up,
| what time I leave the house, which routes I take, what
| things I buy. Assign the kWhs of electricity and liters
| of water and fuel that I'll use up, plan ingredients for
| my meals of the day.
|
| The belief that a central "digital planning engine" could
| plan the lives of an entire society is an incredibly
| naive idea from early cybernetics. This doesn't work even
| in small thought experiments because of information
| limits. No central system can access all the local
| knowledge and constantly changing circumstances.
| mopsi wrote:
| > I'd argue that communism is the only system of government
| that guarantees property for all. That's somewhat a core
| tenant that every member in a communist society collectively
| owns everything.
|
| This year, I knit a scarf for a friend as a Christmas gift.
| He already owns several scarves, unlike some other people who
| own none, but might need one more than he does. How is that
| collective ownership supposed to work here? Are you going to
| take that scarf away from me and "assign" it to someone you
| deem more deserving? I'll resist and you'll have to take it
| from me by force. And if you do, I'll stop knitting
| altogether, because why bother if I never get the chance to
| gift it to my friend. What are you going to do when you need
| the next scarf, force me to work?
|
| If the answer is "yes", you've just reinvented a communist
| dictatorship. If it's a "no", then such society will run out
| of food and goods, and something better will rise to replace
| it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Communism doesn't entail owning nothing or being able to
| produce nothing. It often even has a concept of money to
| trade for goods and services.
|
| So you could take your earnings, buy some yarn, knit your
| friend a scarf, and there's no real change in societies.
|
| The difference is that you'd get your money from a state
| run industry. Your home would be guaranteed. And where you
| ultimately end up working would be based on your
| capabilities.
|
| You are free to knit or whittle gifts for friends. What you
| wouldn't be free to do is setup "mopsi's scarf business"
| without working through the state. You wouldn't be allowed
| to take the earning from "mopsi's scarf business" and use
| them to become a landlord. You could gain social status and
| benefits by running the scarf business, but those would be
| limited (barring corruption).
|
| When I say "a communist society collectively owns
| everything" I'm talking mainly businesses, land, housing.
|
| A mistake that people often make about communism is
| thinking it means "Everything is free" or "nobody owns
| anything". That's more of a collectivist approach.
| Communism is mostly centered around providing minimum
| guarantees through public ownership.
| mopsi wrote:
| > You are free to knit or whittle gifts for friends. What
| you wouldn't be free to do is setup "mopsi's scarf
| business" without working through the state. You wouldn't
| be allowed to take the earning from "mopsi's scarf
| business" and use them to become a landlord.
|
| If my scarves become so popular that even strangers begin
| offering money for them, I won't be interested in working
| for the state for basic necessities while the state takes
| the rest.
|
| I'd rather barter with others for the useful things they
| produce. My friend, for example, grows excellent
| tomatoes.
|
| Over time, if we have many friends, we will live
| comfortable lives, while loners will wither away. Is this
| an acceptable outcome for you as the dictator of the
| Bestest Communist Paradise on Planet Earth (BCPPE), or
| will you do something about it?
| charlescearl wrote:
| "Private property" in the socialist sense is property which
| is used for production (note that socialist countries -
| Laos, Vietnam, USSR before the destruction of socialism -
| typically have 80%+ rates of home ownership). Collective
| control of factories, land used for commodity & social
| (i.e. feeding people) production.
|
| There are many writings that address this misconception.
| Communist Manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w
| orks/download/pdf/Man... provides a succinct response. You
| might also search for what class owns most of the property
| in the united states.
| tankenmate wrote:
| "Lai is a victim of this miscalculation."; I don't think Lai
| miscalculated, he knew what was coming and fought it anyway.
|
| "Authority comes from submission"; sure someone can threaten
| you with physical coercion, but they can't make you want to
| submit. I would strongly suspect that Jimmy knew what was
| coming, but the point isn't "winning" in the "hollywood" sense,
| but rather that he did the right thing even. I would suspect
| not even in spite of the cost, but _because_ of the cost.
|
| Are principles that don't cost you anything even principles?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| China hasn't become a Western capitalist democracy, but it has
| changed enormously for the better from the genocidal tyranny of
| the Mao era, and my guess is that it will keep changing.
|
| One "first principles" way to think about it is that money is
| power, and as the Chinese middle class grows bigger and richer,
| it will have more and more of the power. I expect it will want
| similar things as the middle class in other countries.
|
| This may take any number of decades, which unfortunately makes
| this a hard theory to falsify.
| cyberax wrote:
| > it was thinking that investment in China would equal
| liberalization and democratic reforms
|
| China now _is_ far more liberal than in the 80-s. But it's also
| not even close to the Western democracies.
|
| > China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command
| economics at the time. Instead, the result was state
| capitalism.
|
| Not really. "State capitalism" really is misleading. China is
| fiercely capitalistic, far more than any modern Western
| country. The ruling party has an unspoken agreement with the
| population: you stay out of politics, and they stay out of your
| business.
|
| But I don't think this is sustainable. Russia had a similar
| social compact, and it had been broken after the Ukrainian
| invasion. There was too much power concentrated in one person,
| and it just never works.
| malvim wrote:
| Did big businesses in the West really think "investing" in
| China would lead to "freedom" and such? Isn't that framing a
| bit naive?
|
| They went to China because it was cheaper. They went there in
| detriment of their countrymen that went without jobs, in
| detriment of the environment (what with all the shipping boom
| that followed), even in detriment of their own countries, since
| this would stifle development and industrialization. And they
| KNEW that technology transfer would follow, because China had
| made it clear.
|
| No one forced them to do it. They did it knowingly in the name
| of short and medium-term profit. I'm not even judging if that
| is bad (I do THINK it's bad overall, but I'm not arguing it
| here). I'm just pointing out what happened.
|
| So now the West must not be surprised. And they aren't! They
| just need to craft narratives that will paint them in good
| light.
| drdec wrote:
| > Did big businesses in the West really think "investing" in
| China would lead to "freedom" and such? Isn't that framing a
| bit naive?
|
| I think the OP would frame this as the Western governments
| allowing Western businesses to invest in China.
| jrmg wrote:
| _Did big businesses in the West really think "investing" in
| China would lead to "freedom" and such?_
|
| You're right in your assumption that profit-seeking was the
| major part of it - like, it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
|
| But the idea that the West trading and interacting with China
| would mean the populous (and perhaps government) would come
| to understand the benefits of a free society, and so China
| would trend towards a Western political system - probably
| gradually rather than violently - was a mainstream view from
| the 80s to the early 2010s.
| derektank wrote:
| Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that US policymakers
| deregulated capital flows with China in the hopes that it
| would lead to political liberalization. Businesses always
| just follow the money, but for a long time American policy
| makers had made it difficult to invest in China, from
| regulatory uncertainty to restrictions on dual use technology
| exports to high tariffs.
|
| It really was an intentional decision, largely on the part of
| the Clinton administration, to make investing in the country
| easier and improve the economic well being of Chinese
| citizens in the hopes it would inevitably lead to
| democratization. Clearly, those hopes were just that though
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think China also made it difficult to invest in China.
| dnautics wrote:
| > Did big businesses in the West really think "investing" in
| China would lead to "freedom" and such? Isn't that framing a
| bit naive?
|
| It worked in south korea and taiwan which were severe
| military dictatorships before (maybe you could throw japan im
| there too?) so the history of capitalism liberalizing
| countries isn't all failures
| varenc wrote:
| > Did big businesses in the West really think "investing" in
| China would lead to "freedom" and such? Isn't that framing a
| bit naive?
|
| Yes I think. At least a lot of Western policymakers did buy a
| "change through trade/investment" story, and it wasn't pulled
| from nowhere because it had worked in the past.
|
| In postwar Japan and later South Korea, integration into the
| West's economic system coincided with eventual
| democratization, closer alignment of values, and alliance.
|
| It was reasonable to think the same thing would work in
| China, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
|
| Also the US intentionally set China up for investment by
| doing things like bringing them into the WTO. All that
| investment wouldn't have happened without some level of
| government support.
| jzb wrote:
| I think it's more accurate to say that Western policymakers
| sold that story to the public on behalf of the companies
| that bought, er, lobbied them.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| In our current system, which is, without a doubt, a
| corpocracy, it's easy to forget that before the 1970s,
| corporations didn't have that much power at all, and they
| were regularly overruled by other organizations - labor
| unions, government social welfare programs, religious
| institutions, grassroots movements, etc. Allowing
| corporations to maintain access to the US market while
| outsourcing jobs to countries with slave labor is the
| exploit/loophole that allowed corporations to amass wealth
| and MADE corporations as powerful as they are today.
| jandrese wrote:
| The weird thing is China is absolutely jam packed with small
| companies. Go to a trade show and you'll find dozens of
| companies selling basically the same products with minor
| variations. It's absolutely cutthroat.
|
| In the US we tend to see small companies get gobbled up by huge
| incumbents regularly, but in China the situation is much more
| in flux and it's not always obvious who the winners are going
| to be. It's the opposite of what you would expect from a
| command economy, at least in the tech and consumer product
| sectors.
| overfeed wrote:
| > It's absolutely cutthroat.
|
| Meanwhile in the land of the free, it's consolidation galore
| with very little competition.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The West failed in its goals but the flip side is they
| unintentionally made it possible to pull 750 million people out
| of poverty. Probably the greatest western foreign policy
| victory ever.
| shevy-java wrote:
| The sinomarxist mono-party is kind of doing their powerplay here.
|
| The interesting thing is that the "two systems, one state" claim
| was revealed to have been a lie. I can kind of understand the
| position of China too, mind you - after all there was a war
| against the UK empire and they forced ceding territory (e. g.
| Hong Kong). But that still does not nullify the local's people
| preferences, and Beijing simply bulldozered through by force
| here. That's the total antithesis to freedom. Xi will focus on
| Taiwan next - that is also clear. It is in the "DNA" of the
| sinomarxistic philosophy (though one can wonder how much marxism
| with chinese focus is still left; it's kind of capitalistic led
| by a dictatorship. Oddly enough the USA is also transitioning to
| this by the tech-bros oligarchs.)
|
| We kind of see that freedoms are being eroded. I don't know if
| that was always the case, or whether it just happens now more
| rapidly so; or is reported more often, but in the late 1990s I
| would say we had more freedoms, globally, than right now. Somehow
| the trend is going towards less freedom. Putin invading Ukraine,
| occupying land and killing people there is also highly similar to
| the pretext of the second world war, with the invasion of the
| Sudetenland by Germany, and then the Gleiwitz lie to sell the
| invasion of Poland. I think the only real difference here is that
| more countries have nukes. And smaller countries are kind of put
| in a dilemma now, since they can not offset bigger countries
| without nukes.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >But that still does not nullify the local's people
| preferences,
|
| One reason why Lai's fate has only limited impact is because it
| doesn't resonate that strongly with working people for whom
| Hong Kong isn't an example of upward prosperity. His rags to
| riches 'boomer optimism' appeals more to the Western audience
| than to someone who has lived in the stagnation of Hong Kong of
| the last few decades, where ambitious tech talent now migrates
| to the mainland.
|
| Likewise on the mainland the youth is significantly less
| interested in emulating the West or old Hong Kong which to them
| is not a symbol of dynamism.
| maxglute wrote:
| 1Country2Systems is still in place, just the version that was
| always meant to be, not the lie western propaganda sold.
|
| HK failed their half of 2System by not implementing national
| security law on their accord after 20 years of failures and it
| became obvious they were never going to do it out of own
| volition. Frankly if local preferences is to be under national
| security umbrella and be free to commit treason their
| preferences should be completely nullified because that's
| unserious position. Hence PRC, after UNREASONABLE patience had
| shove it down their throats under 1C mandate (1C supercedes 2S)
| - HK only ever had "high" degree of autonomy, not full
| autonomy. It was always in Beijing's prerogative to force HK to
| eat their vegetables, it just took 20 years of HK incompetence
| before Beijing ran of patience. AKA the 1C2S muh HK has full
| autonomy under Sino British declaration tier of retarded
| western propaganda fed to useful idiots was a lie and got
| dispelled.
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| That's a whole lots of words to say that the people of HK
| don't get any say in how their lives are run, and that it's
| justified to force them into a situation they don't want.
| That's a crock of shit, and I suspect you know it.
| corimaith wrote:
| There is no or ever has been a national security issue in one
| of the safest cities in the world. You could leave it in the
| doldrums for 50 more years and it wouldn't make a difference.
|
| On the other hand, has John Lee made any real progress
| regarding the entwinement of the political economy and real
| estate developers leading to the high housing prices or
| overcompetition? Not really. So it's just full throated
| authoritarianism with no benefit. Unlike the West, HK already
| enjoys efficiency and infrastructure on par if not superior
| to Tier 1 Chinese Cities, so any appeals to "order" are
| farcical when the city is already far more orderly than the
| mainland.
| 10xDev wrote:
| >The dissident was convicted in Hong Kong earlier this week of
| two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces
|
| >he also met with then-Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of
| State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them
| to voice their support for Hong Kong.
|
| Yeah, I don't think that's going to help convince anyone buddy.
| 10xDev wrote:
| Imagine if Jensen Huang started meeting Xi Jinping.
| axus wrote:
| Nothing would happen to Mr. Huang, he's free to talk to
| anyone.
| repeekad wrote:
| Too bad Mr. Lai was not
| budududuroiu wrote:
| He wouldn't be meeting Xi, as it's not a state visit, but he
| did meet the Vice Premier, He Lifeng. Elon also met Li Qiang.
| anon291 wrote:
| Never give up speech.
| QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote:
| Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the
| handover negotiations even began. You can thank Murray MacLehose
| for the mess they're in now.
|
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the
| handover_
|
| How would it have made a difference when the Chinese military
| invaded?
| nine_k wrote:
| UK offered a rather simple pathway to immigrating to the UK for
| most Hong Kong residents [1]. But the choice between the
| stagnant UK and the booming mainland China was not obvious for
| everyone in late the 1990s, when China seemed to be
| democratizing more and more (despite the Tiananmen massacre),
| and growing richer by the day.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas)
| z2 wrote:
| It was a far cry from the full Portuguese citizenship offered
| for Macau, both in the latter's lack of conditions on
| acquisition (beyond being over age 15 at the handover), and
| in passing it on to descendants.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-
| citizenship...
| btilly wrote:
| They had multiple pathways. The top three destinations were
| Canada, the USA, and Australia. These locations offered a
| major benefit over the UK - they were on trade routes along
| which people from Hong Kong were already doing business.
|
| Canada was particularly affected. It absorbed the most
| immigrants, they were a larger share of the population, and
| this was a major increase in ethnic diversity. The resulting
| cultural clashes were sometimes an issue. Here is one that
| literally doubled car insurance rates in British Columbia
| around the time I left.
|
| Three cars, 2 in front with the left-hand car being driven by
| a Canadian, and the back car driven by a recent immigrant.
| The immigrant sees the opportunity to pass, swings out into
| oncoming traffic, and guns it. Leaving just a few inches of
| room. Normal Hong Kong driving.
|
| The Canadian has no idea that this is happening until OMG I'M
| ABOUT TO BE HIT! The Canadian then swerves right to avoid the
| emergency, and hits the car on the right.
|
| The immigrant drives off. Presumably wondering about these
| crazy Canadians who don't know how to drive.
|
| Everyone involved behaved reasonably for how they were used
| to driving. But the combination worked out very poorly...
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| I would argue that the immigrant behaving reasonably "for
| how they were used to driving" is itself unreasonable. When
| you move to foreign country you have to adjust some things
| about your behavior. Driving behaviors and anything else
| with such a strong public safety component should be the
| most obvious thing to adjust for an adult, without needing
| to be told.
| bparsons wrote:
| A rather bizarre digression...
| maxglute wrote:
| TBH UK never had the chance because PRC saw through their
| games. TLDR UK wanted to maintain influence post handover for
| their investments, but like most other colonies on the fading
| empire they had no leverage, i.e. negotiate to turn HK into
| self administered territory (like Singapore)... along with UN
| decolonization rules meant engineering pathway for HK
| independence. PRC keked and said fuck off and promptly removed
| HK from UN list of non-self governing territories. There's a
| reason UK/Patton had to jam in HK liberalisation efforts last
| minute to increase UK influence post handover and not before...
| because if they did it before, i.e. pre 90s there would be so
| much anti colonial and pro CCP sympathies that political
| freedom in HK could be contrary to British interests. HK was
| just another Suez, symptom of UK weakness, not any one man.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I know that attributing to western countries the responsability
| for any bad thing happening in this world is a common reflex,
| but we are 30 years after the handover, 40 years after the
| negotiation, so surely China bears some if not pretty much all
| the responsibility here.
|
| And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first
| place. China threatened to invade and there is very little the
| UK could have done to prevent a full control.
|
| Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came
| with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > I know that attributing to western countries the
| responsability for any bad thing happening in this world is a
| common reflex
|
| You can't gloat that the sun never sets on your empire and
| then absolve yourself from responsibility for events that you
| had a heavy hand in influencing. Regardless, if you think the
| article is wrong, your point would he better served by
| providing examples of where it's wrong and stating why.
| QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote:
| > I know that attributing to western countries the
| responsability [sic] for any bad thing happening in this
| world is a common reflex
|
| I don't think I'm being superficial here. There are a few
| distinct events during the 20th century which can be
| attributed to the British. The handover of Hong Kong, Suez
| Crisis and the Balfour Declaration stand out the most.
|
| > And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first
| place. China threatened to invade and there is very little
| the UK could have done to prevent a full control.
|
| The leased territories are Chinese territory. Full stop. Hong
| Kong island and the ceded land could not survive alone. All
| of the water processing happens in the New Territories. It
| would have been impossible to either break up HK or defend
| it.
|
| https://i.redd.it/zghghoib1k1a1.png
|
| China has not rolled back any reforms that happened before
| negotiations began [0]. They did rollback the last-ditch
| efforts of Chris Patten [1] because at that point it was seen
| a malicious attempt to undermine the handover.
|
| The mechanisms for China to take control were largely left in
| place by the British so they bare some responsibility, but it
| is the PRC asserting this control and there's an argument to
| be made that most of HK supports the PRC and it's their right
| to do what they wish with their own territory.
|
| > Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came
| with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
|
| It'll be interesting to see what is kept. China's
| experimenting already in Hainan. They could structure Hong
| Kong in a similar fashion.
|
| [0] - The PRC did introduce PR with the idea that it would
| reduce the risk of majorities forming but the system is
| arguably more democratic than FPTP.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Hong_Kong_electoral_
| refor...
| maxglute wrote:
| >he also met with then-Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of
| State Mike Pompeo;
|
| To sanctions HK politicians btw aka, comprador traitor gets the
| traitor treatment. Man should be in extraterritorial laogai in
| 247 stress positions but get kids treatment because CCP too
| lenient, and well they don't have those.
| YC34987349872 wrote:
| Reminds me of the recent Nobel "Peace" Prize winner, Corina
| Machado, who begged America and Israel to bomb her own country
| (Venezuela). If these people are supposed to be our heroes then
| I'll go with the villians.
| paganel wrote:
| It's a good thing that the anti-comprador discourse has find
| its way on this forum, too, out here in Eastern Europe they
| (the compradors, that is) occupy almost all positions of power,
| it's really tiring.
|
| Back to the article, it only took me one click to find this
| info about its author [1]:
|
| > Prior to his career in journalism, Binion worked as a
| contractor at NATO,
|
| They're not even trying to hide it anymore, like in the good
| old days of the Paris Review.
|
| [1] https://reason.com/people/billy-binion/
| lbrito wrote:
| Doesn't martyrdom imply, um, death?
|
| I don't care about the specific politics, and I don't know his
| biography. You can love this man and hate China with the power of
| every cell in your body. But calling anyone a martyr, even with
| poetic license, has very specific connotations which don't seem
| to apply here.
| Snild wrote:
| Not necessarily:
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/martyr
|
| > a person who suffers very much or is killed because of their
| religious or political beliefs, and is often admired because of
| it
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr
|
| > 2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and
| especially life itself for the sake of principle
| everdrive wrote:
| Would you be you happier with "soon-to-be-martyr" or "martyr-
| in-the-making" ?
| lbrito wrote:
| Snarkiness is not appreciated here. Well, at least
| officially.
|
| No, that wouldn't make me happy. A world without suffering
| and oppression would make me happy, but failing that, lets at
| least try to use words appropriately.
| zdragnar wrote:
| He will likely die in prison, either from old age, poor
| conditions or shenanigans. He could have fled, but chose
| not to. Calling him a martyr isn't too much of a stretch.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Leave it to Reason to pick out a billionaire as a martyr.
| Normally when I hear about free speech heroes, they've said
| something. Apparently, what Jimmy Lai stands against is the
| extension of China's "illiberalism" to Hong Kong.
|
| What exactly is that supposed to be describing, and what is he
| against? If all he's against is the financial setup that allowed
| him to become as rich as he did, and the fact that he would have
| to deal with new masters as Hong Kong's colonial period was
| ended, why the hell should I care? What does Jimmy Lai stand for
| that China stands against that I should care about?
|
| "Illiberalism."
|
| Meanwhile, the EU just unpersoned a Swiss citizen, a writer,
| Jacques Baud*, for not taking the European side in the US-Russia
| conflict. Not for lying about it, but simply for not taking the
| European side. Not that Reason would support that, either, but
| China doesn't have any monopoly on "illiberalism," and
| illiberalism in the control of speech is far more important to me
| than the oppression of billionaires.
|
| Lai's just getting Khodorkovsky'd: some of the rich think they're
| beyond government, when they operate purely through the blessing
| of and coddling by governments. You would think you would know
| that when all you do is accumulate and trade _government
| promises_ in the form of currency, but the amount of praise you
| get as a disturbingly rich person must destroy brain function to
| some extent. There has got to be some atrophy in your sense of
| cause and effect and a distortion of your place in the world when
| you 're on top in every room.
|
| -----
|
| * https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
|
| > Jacques Baud, a former Swiss army colonel and strategic
| analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio
| programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda
| and makes conspiracy theories, for example accusing Ukraine of
| orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO.
|
| > Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for, implementing or
| supporting actions or policies attributable to the Government of
| the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability or
| security in a third country (Ukraine) by engaging in the use of
| information manipulation and interference.
| mopsi wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the EU just unpersoned a Swiss citizen, a writer,
| Jacques Baud*, for not taking the European side in the US-
| Russia conflict. Not for lying about it, but simply for not
| taking the European side.
|
| He was not "unpersoned", whatever that means, but sanctioned
| for being a professional Kremlin troll and for spreading lies
| such as claiming that the Bucha massacre was committed by
| British and Ukrainian secret services, that the war actually
| started a week earlier with a Ukrainian offensive that the
| entire world has suppressed, and so on. This is not even a
| matter of viewpoint, but a malicious flood of obvious lies.[1]
| Such superspreaders of lies are exactly the kind of people who
| should be sanctioned.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| a capitalist is a martyr for capitalism when they knowingly break
| laws in the country they live in? i'm no fan of authoritarianism
| but come on. this article is such typical Reason dreck.
| zdragnar wrote:
| He's not being imprisoned for being a capitalist, engaging in
| capitalism, or anything of the like. This is a pretty lame
| take.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| When the UK handed back HK, the Chinese who are nothing if not
| wiley, understood that they needed to maintain intelligence,
| surveillance, and some kind of institutional knowledge of the
| various organised crime groups, certain individuals with
| borderline business interests, that sort of thing. They offered
| the British police officers houses, stipends, and other
| incentives to stick around and clue-in the incoming crop of
| officials, domestic intelligence officers, and cutouts/go-
| betweens. Something of an untold story. Would make a great
| streaming series.
| cedws wrote:
| I'm interested in how the takeover happened on the inside. How
| do you take control of a country with minimal drama when even
| small corporate takeovers get so messy? I assume there's been a
| lot of work to root out internal dissent, install aligned
| individuals, take control of computer systems. Even though the
| UK handed HK to China, there's got to have been people with
| strong feelings that created roadblocks along the way.
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