Both the editors of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are outraged by Beijing’s overnight end of its “one country two systems” policy with respect to Hong Kong. From the WaPo:
HONG KONG as it has been known — a bastion of free speech and rule of law, an autonomous, glittering capital of capitalism — has been smothered. Overnight, China has imposed a new national security law of six chapters and 66 articles that will criminalize dissent and install a system of secret police, putting the territory under the same authoritarian boot as the mainland. President Trump has been signaling for a long time that he would not stand up for human rights and democracy in Hong Kong. Perhaps not surprisingly, China acted with brusque indifference to protests from the West.
The law was passed in secret by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing and signed by President Xi Jinping before people in Hong Kong had even seen the text.
and the WSJ:
China’s decision to impose its national-security law on Hong Kong is a seismic event that goes well beyond the sad fate of its 7.5 million people. The illegal takeover shows that Beijing’s Communist rulers are willing to violate their international commitments with impunity as they spread their authoritarian model.
We say this with regret because we were among those who hoped, amid China’s reform era that began in the 1980s, that the Middle Kingdom could be drawn into a world of peaceful global norms. Hong Kong, a showcase of the prosperity that economic freedom and the rule of law can produce, was a lesson for Beijing to learn from.
What astonishes me is that they could possibly imagine it might have been otherwise. As I have been saying for decades, China is irredentist. The CCP maintains its hold on power through force and repression. There is no international accord to which China is a signatory that it has not violated.
the turnover of Hong Kong is one thing I hold against Maggie Thatcher. Although she didn’t have much choice. The lease had run out, and the Empire was clearly ready willing and able to take by force what they could not seize through negotiations. So Thatcher avoided a war and a massacre. And Hong Kong is poised to lose its special privileges vis-a-vis US trade. Look for Mr. DeMento Sockpuppet to reinstate them pronto when he’s elected.
I am feeling melancholy over it.
More and more, 2020 feels like the bookend to the era that started in 1989.
In 1989, there was the Tiananmen protests; the crackdown that followed sparked the democracy movement in HK; leading to the end of 1 Country 2 Systems yesterday.
Just before (Dec 1988), India’s PM visited China, beginning a rapprochement from the 1962 war — that ended with the border incident last month.
There was the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union government peacefully giving power to the people of Eastern Europe and Russia. Yesterday, the people of Russia gave Putin the power to rule for 12 more years.
The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989; harried by guerrillas assisted by the US. Now the US is trying to withdraw from Afghanistan this year; harried by guerrillas allegedly paid by the Russians.
People were tearing down statues of Lenin then; now they tear down statues of Washington.
In a way, the last 30 years was ordered by the events of 1989; and now what happens in the next 20-30 years will be shaped by this year, and not in a good way.
History has an utterly tragic aspect to it.
Taiwan is next, but not likely soon. Every country that has diplomatic relations or trade with China has agreed that Taiwan is part of China, and that includes the US.
As to violation of agreed upon treaty, every Great Power does it when it is convenient. The US is especially egregious in that regard
A false equivalence. We aren’t routinely violating the agreement we made when we joined the WTO or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Chinese made those same agreements and they violate them routinely.
Yes, Taiwan will now go up the agenda.
Bob, you should define soon. I agree it won’t happen this year or next, but Xi Jinping is rumored to have promised to “resolve” the Taiwan issue in return for removing term limits. 10 – 20 years is not really that long in the scheme of things; it is only 23 years since 1997.
I don’t what the US will do or should do. The only thing I know is the strategic stakes are very high. Taiwan is not South Vietnam; those TSMC fabs in Taiwan is where the US, China and the World sources the majority of the chips powering data-centers, smartphones, and supercomputers.