Dispatches from the State Ministry of Truth

[Jacob]

Garry Kasparov on China and Russia: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/03/unfortunately-for-hong-kong-protesters-its-almost-impossible-to-beat-a-savvy-modern-autocracy/

Why are the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong enduring where their counterparts in my country failed? A simplistic answer is that even the student Hong Kongers who barely recall the 1997 handover from the United Kingdom to China are accustomed to their special status and rights relative to the rest of China. The flame of Russian democracy, by contrast, flickered only briefly before President Vladimir Putin squelched it, and the memories of the chaos and corruption of the 1990s are not fond ones for most Russians. Thanks to a decade of anti-democracy propaganda and the annihilation of civil society, Russians worry, not unreasonably, that toppling Putin could lead to something even worse.

But there is something deeper at work. In truth, the Communist dictatorship in China needs its people—especially its young, educated, and global-minded ones—in a way Putin doesn't. Hong Kong is still a large and strategically critical piece of a Chinese economy that depends on consumers in the free world, consumers who have far more information about the protests than nearly anyone in heavily censored China. A Tiananmen massacre in Hong Kong, transmitted around the world on millions of Chinese-made iPhones, could turn "Made in China" into a bloody mark.

Putin, on the other hand, has no use for the people of Russia, especially its young and educated. He and his junta are turning the country into a petro-state, and exporting natural resources to an insatiable global market doesn't require entrepreneurs or programmers, let alone writers and professors. It's also harder for disgusted consumer-countries to boycott oil and gas. That would require coordinated political will, a substance Putin knows is far rarer in the free world than the platinum and diamonds in the Ural Mountains.

Decades of economic and political engagement with the West and improved standards of living were supposed to liberalize dictatorships and provide leverage against them. But leverage is only useful if applied, and it is not clear Western countries are willing to do this. Seven months after Putin annexed Crimea and two and a half months after Russian-allied forces shot down a commercial airliner over Ukraine, Europe is still "considering" looking at ways to substitute Russian gas. The European Union gets a third of its oil and gas from Russia while buying over 80 percent of Russia's petro-exports. Instead of using this overwhelming economic influence to deter Putin's aggression, the Europeans feign helplessness.

The citizens of China and Russia have similar social compacts with their authoritarian governments: economic stability in exchange for their human rights. They both have heavily censored state propaganda instead of news and minimal freedom of speech and assembly. The key difference is that the Chinese regime is built on a broad collective and ideological base that is unlikely to experience drastic shifts. Putin's Russia, on the other hand, is the most dangerous and unpredictable form of government: the dictatorship of just one man. The skyrocketing price of oil through the 2000s allowed Putin to fulfill, if marginally, his promises of pensions and payrolls. China started from a much lower point and managed to raise a billion people out of poverty by turning an entire nation into the world's factory. Globalization and integration with rich free economies made both the Russian and Chinese scenarios possible.

The reason the developed world won't fight back is that most consumers there would rather not know where their phones and gas come from as long as the prices are low. The occasional scandal over inhuman working conditions in Chinese factories is quickly and conveniently forgotten when the next shoe or gadget comes out.

Disputes between Washington and Moscow or Beijing are quickly criticized (often by the policymakers themselves) as a "return to the Cold War." This use of this cliché today is ironic, since it requires forgetting, rather than emulating, how the Cold War was fought and won. Instead of standing on principles of good and evil, of right and wrong, and on the universal values of human rights and human life, we have "engagement," "resets," and moral equivalence. The Cold War was won not just by military or economic superiority, but on values that I, a former Soviet citizen, un-ironically call traditional American values. Chief among them is the belief that individual freedom matters and is worth sacrificing for, fighting for, even dying for. For now, the Hong Kong protesters appear admirably willing to test that proposition.

We cannot resolve the problems of globalization with the tools that created it. We need new frameworks to confront the globalized dictatorships in Russia and China. These frameworks must be based on moral principles, the only weapon the enemies of democracy cannot match. This is even more obvious when those enemies possess nuclear weapons, making a military confrontation unimaginable.

The protests in Hong Kong also rebut what I mock as "the genetic concept of democracy." For years I have been told that Russians (or Arabs, or Chinese) simply aren't disposed to democracy. They require a "strong hand" or they "love a tough leader." This is just one of many theories people born in the free world use to mask their privilege, their inaction, and their shame. It's condescending and ridiculous when you look at the two Germanys, the two Koreas, or Taiwan.

What is true is that no one is simply entitled to democracy, or even to basic human rights. No, these things must always be fought for, and if the brave students in Hong Kong can remind the world of this then their protest is already a success.

[Monoriu]

What is true is that no one is simply entitled to democracy, or even to basic human rights. No, these things must always be fought for, and if the brave students in Hong Kong can remind the world of this then their protest is already a success.

No one says we should just throw away our human rights.  There are smart ways to fight for human rights, and there are stupid ways.  Telling China that we need freedom of speech to sustain our position as a financial centre is a good way to fight for our rights.  Occupying roads, drawing international attention, and telling Chinese leaders to withdraw a decision that was publicly announced several weeks ago to undermine their authority and make them lose face is a stupid way to do it. 

[Valmy]

A lot of folks in this thread are treating it as a good vs. evil situation, whereas i think it's much more gray.  The demonstrators are: well-intentioned, naive, and selfish.

I think this has been said many times in this thread.  I myself has stated that the demonstrations might be a dangerous miscalculation.  I don't get the selfish angle but hey whatever.

[Valmy]

Occupying roads, drawing international attention, and telling Chinese leaders to withdraw a decision that was publicly announced several weeks ago to undermine their authority and make them lose face is a stupid way to do it. 

I think you are right about this.  If the protestors want to take down the central government they need to rally the mainlanders.  Hard to do that in Hong Kong.

[Monoriu]

Occupying roads, drawing international attention, and telling Chinese leaders to withdraw a decision that was publicly announced several weeks ago to undermine their authority and make them lose face is a stupid way to do it. 

I think you are right about this.  If the protestors want to take down the central government they need to rally the mainlanders.  Hard to do that in Hong Kong.

One of the key underpinnings of One Country Two Systems is: we mind our business; they mind theirs.  If we don't want interference from Beijing, we also have implicit responsibility not to mess with them.  If we harbour groups that actively try to overthrow the communist regime, we only have ourselves to blame when the PLA comes to root them out.  It isn't unfair for Beijing to demand that we keep these people off our city. 

[Martinus]

Occupying roads, drawing international attention, and telling Chinese leaders to withdraw a decision that was publicly announced several weeks ago to undermine their authority and make them lose face is a stupid way to do it. 

I think you are right about this.  If the protestors want to take down the central government they need to rally the mainlanders.  Hard to do that in Hong Kong.

One of the key underpinnings of One Country Two Systems is: we mind our business; they mind theirs.  If we don't want interference from Beijing, we also have implicit responsibility not to mess with them.  If we harbour groups that actively try to overthrow the communist regime, we only have ourselves to blame when the PLA comes to root them out.  It isn't unfair for Beijing to demand that we keep these people off our city.

But this arrangement was broken by Bejing going back on its promise regarding the elections of the Chief Executive, no?

[Martinus]

Occupying roads, drawing international attention, and telling Chinese leaders to withdraw a decision that was publicly announced several weeks ago to undermine their authority and make them lose face is a stupid way to do it. 

I think you are right about this.  If the protestors want to take down the central government they need to rally the mainlanders.  Hard to do that in Hong Kong.

I think the protestors have no chance of succeeding, sadly. Essentially, Bejing has gone back on its promise it made under the Two System arrangement, and it just shows that the arrangement was unworkable in the first place - you just can't have a vastly more powerful side in a deal (and one that does not answer to any higher authority, even the authority of the public opinion) keep its word if it wants to break the arrangement - and the Hong Kong people are now painfully finding that out (much like the Ukrainians thought they had a territorial integrity deal with Russia).

I blame the Brits.

[Monoriu]

But this arrangement was broken by Bejing going back on its promise regarding the elections of the Chief Executive, no?

So a father promised "vacation" for his child, and it then turned out that such "vacation" consisted of camping in the city park.  The child's reaction is to sit at the house door 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and prevents anybody from getting in or out. 

Not defending Beijing's decision here, but I want to point out two things:

1. Beijing has never been specific about its promise to HK.  They promised that we may elect the Chief Executive by "universal suffrage" in 2017.  That's all they have said.  We are still allowed to do that, just that we can only vote on nominees approved by Beijing.  That's certainly not ideal, but from a certain perspective, one may argue that we just have different definitions of "universal suffrage".  It is hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have broken their promise, because it isn't clear what the promise is in the first place.  The Basic Law has always specifically said that the nominees must be approved by a committee. 

2. Even if Beijing has really gone back on its promise, is blocking roads the appropriate reaction?  I am sure there are other ways to express frustration, e.g. organising legal marches and sit-ins. 

From a more realistic perspective, politics is all about give and take.  Democracy is Beijing's biggest sore point.  I say we should give some ground here, in exchange for other stuff that are more important to us, like freedom of speech, judicial independence, right to local governance etc. 

[Monoriu]

I blame the Brits.

And what do you think the Brits should have done?  We are not Falkland islands, and they are not dealing with Argentina.  There is no military solution available.  I cannot think of any additional concession they could have extracted from China, given the huge advantages that China enjoy at the negotiating table (namely, that nothing short of nuclear war can stop the PLA from marching over, and that HK depends on China for everything from food, water, to trade). 

[Josquius]

There hasn't been much reported on how this is going over with the mainland Chinese. Obviously the government won't be reporting it to them I expect, but I would be very surprised if the news wasn't getting through anyway

From what I've heard - and this is anecdotal - there's a fair bit of "WTF are they complaining about?" Some of it is "I have no idea about the issues at all", some of it is "after all we've done for them, they're bitching? Assholes". There's also a not insignificant amount of "good luck to them."

There is some truth in those allegations.  Beijing has tried to appease us by giving us favourable economic treatment.  The most important reason they flood us with tourists is to revive our economy that was wrecked in the 2003 SARS epidemic.  They also give our banks and professionals preferential treatment when they operate on the mainland. 

I thought beijing were trying to replace hong kong as a financial centre with shanghai?

[Monoriu]

I thought beijing were trying to replace hong kong as a financial centre with shanghai?

In the long-run.  Takes time though.  Meanwhile, their policy is to give us preferential treatment in exchange for political stability.  Same thing they have done to Taiwan.  On economic policy, Beijing can be generous.  It is on the political stuff that they are strict.  In particular, there is absolutely no way they'll give gound on democracy. 

[Monoriu]

I am not sure if you guys are aware of this, but Beijing is actually quite frustrated with the HK government on welfare policy.  Beijing's no. 1 concern is political stability.  It wants more bread and circus in HK to appease the masses.  The Chinese premier has told the HK Chief Executive many times, in front of cameras even, that he needs to do more to resolve "deep rooted issues", euphemism for the wealth gap.  Beijing doesn't care if the HK government needs to raise taxes to create a better safety net; in fact it encourages the government to do so.  This is reflected in local politics where all the leftist (read loyalist) parties are pro-welfare.  The irony is that, Beijing actually shares the pan-democratic platform for a retirement safety net, even though they are sworn enemies on other issues.   

The problem is that the local business sector and the civil servants do not agree.  The former are concerned with profits, and the latter are concerned with balancing the books. 

[Martinus]

I guess the best solution, then, would be for Bejing to send a popular tribune to take over the local administration in Hong Kong and decimate civil servants and local business sector for bringing people into the streets with their selfish policies. 

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think the Romans would have given a shit about people being in the streets.

[Martinus]

I don't think the Romans would have given a shit about people being in the streets.

What does that have to do with Romans?