As I’m sure most of you recall, tensions between Hong Kong and Beijing have been getting pretty tight since last year. China’s passage of an extradition law that forced Hong Kong to return Chinese dissidents and other offenders to the mainland, stoked fears that this would essentially allow the communist party to reel in anyone they saw as a problem. As for how they could “legally” do this I’ll get to in a minute.
But now China has essentially, as it was almost inevitable, absorbed the largely independent city. This is a issue for everyone – including china, it turns out.
That line about Hong Kong being exempt from tariffs is a major point here. Trump, as I’m sure most of you know, cock-smacked China with tariffs and cost them hundreds of billions of dollars on their shitty exports. Hong Kong had been major source of what was essentially tax-free income if I’m understanding this correctly. But, China being China, decided that dissent and the optics that came from it wasn’t worth the money.
As you heard, the big Achilles heel in Hong Kong’s autonomy stems from the fact that the city’s semi-sovereignty was contingent on that fact that its security still lay in the hands of Beijing. That was their way in. You all know the context that surrounded the Patriot Act following 9-11, yes? Well, as it turns out, all Beijing really needed to do was act in the name of national security and Hong Kong was basically theirs.
I mentioned that this move would hurt China, and it will. Hong Kong’s special statues will go away. Pompeo said himself that the city’s autonomy was gone and once he reports to congress on that, it’s tariffs galore. That makes the city a much less inviting place to do business, and considering that China refused to even release an estimate on it’s growth this quarter, I fail to see how they can afford to stifle their own growth anymore than there little pandemic debacle already has. I’m no economics expert, but if china’s running the show in Hong Kong, wouldn’t that mean that every firm doing business in china would not only be paying more to do business there because of the tariffs, but also be forced by the Chinese communist party to become state partners and divulge company secrets as your forced to do? People aren’t going to want to do that. They’re going to leave.
Hong Kong is like that big red jewel in the cave of wonders from the Aladdin movie. The good one, the Robin Williams one, not the will smith one. Now that they took it off its pedestal, the whole trove is going to crumble and fall down all around them.
I don’t know what could have possibly possessed Xi to do this during a time when China’s stalled out to the point that its belt and road initiative and all those other dreams of global dominance have essentially evaporated. When you’re that dependent on manufacturing and global trade to stay in power, and if you aren’t growing at a very rapid and consistent rate, you’re imploding. And make no mistake, that is exactly what’s happening to them right now. China’s political and economic standing is like the value of fiat currency. If faith in its worth is shaken, it fails.
As for what will happen to the Hong Kongers, well, it’s murky. I have to image that many of them, the one’s arrested during protests anyway, will disappear. But you might see their livers and kidneys for sale on the dark web. Some places are considering taking them in as refugees – no doubt they’d be less of a liability and assimilate more easily than their usual refugees.
I don’t know. It was pretty doomy and gloomy when the story broke this week, but the more I read about it the more it seems like, while it’s really bad fucking news for the people in Hong Kong, it also seems to me that China’s cutting off its nose to spite its face. Between the entire planet fingering them for Coronavirus and prepping lawsuits and the loss of their influence, and social stability caused by that same virus, I don’t see any plausible justification for this now or how China digs itself out. Hopefully they don’t. As much as it blows a whole in world-trade, I dare say that’s a good thing. If China goes belly-up and the world can’t get its cheap plastic shit and slave-phones, they’ll have to start making shit themselves and become more independent. Or just have India do it. Yeah let’s repeat all this with India. That’ll be something.
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