穹顶之下: Rolling 中华人民共和国 / People's Republic of China (PRC) Thread

Again, with the link:
Chinese state media showed armoured vehicles assembling near Hong Kong
https://img.theweek.in/content/dam/week/news/world/images/2019/8/12/Screengrab-Video-PAP-forces-Shenzhen.jpg

While I'm sympathetic to the protesters, the tactics of vandalism and shutting down the airport/economy doesn't play very well with mainlanders. China will face no repercussions from its own public (or for that matter, Trump) for Tiananmen+30.

They have other viable options?

The protesters?

I don't speak Chinese, nor have I followed this closely.

My impression is that the PRC needed some protester activity that would enrage the mainland public before they could move in. As ineffectual as a daily peaceful demonstration might have been, it wouldn't have given the PRC the licence to roll over the protests with martial law and the armor/mechanized infantry elements of Southern Theater (~ 6 divisions).

As for the PRC, whose major concern is unrest in the mainland, this played well for them. To mainlanders, the government probably looks overly tolerant.

The music is Chinese state media's choice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIi1mP5Yce8

But nothing came of the peaceful demonstrations? Violent crackdown in Hong Kong would be devastating to the financial economy there, no? A lot of capital flight, I'd assume.

Read the article Dylann posted

That does not really seem to be a view from the ground as much as standard leftist explanations I could read everywhere?

xp: There will be shiploads of people fleeing, but capital? Capital doesn't give a damn about liberal democratic ideals, so long as there's reliable property rights, contract law, and tolerably low corruption.

freddie b how much more from the ground do you need? wilfred chan is in hk currently and was there for 2014 as well, born and bred hong konger. i thought it was a pretty good summing up of what the hell is going on over there.

on capital flight i think i agree with sanpaku. it wouldn't be a violent crackdown on protest that would cause capital flight but the potential for beijing to fuck with the money, which is why business elites are not into the extradition bill either. all that money is flowing into hk from the prc now, for the reason that it's safer/more reliable, not because they're a quasi-democracy still. they're also the most vulnerable to interference from beijing. who cares about dissidents getting dragged over to shenzhen, since that's already going on, just ask gui minhai, but if a ceo or two get nabbed and put on trial and they go after their ill-gotten gains, it's a problem. xiao jianhua getting kidnapped from the hong kong four seasons to stand trial in beijing was a sign of things to come.

He could be as much a Hong Konger as possible, but if the story begins with neoliberalism and ends with a call to support Bernie Sanders it's just completely useless to me. Thousands could write exactly the same thing all over the world. And does. I know all that already, so what's the point?

lol fair enough i missed the part about bernie
i think the meat of it though was that hk no longer has the leverage to demand much since their usefulness to the prc is mostly gone, it's become pool of dirty mainland money meaning that the political and business elite can't risk shutting off the tap by calling for political change. those people are out of the game. they've made their plans already. but for most people the place has become an unliveable shithole and they can't get out and are pissed off about their living conditions and the failure of protests in 2014 (and smaller protests through the 2000s and before). so now the protests are "about" about extradition (or the five demands, which are mostly about police brutality, and throw in universal suffrage as an afterthought, bottom of the list, completely impossible) but more about anger, frustration at the state that the political and business elite has left hong kong in, but they're destined to fail because there's no direction, no leadership, "no obvious escape routes, no postcolonial models of self-determination."

i dunno, what's your take on it so far b?

That it's the most important news story of the year... That's basically my take away, and I'm just following along to see what happens. But just looking at history in a broad sense I think it's way too early to dismiss what happens because it's not having direction or leadership, that seems to me to be a misreading of historical upheavals in general. The anger is the point, it's not that they have, like, the right anti-neo-liberal way to look at it. The mainland ledership will seem to have everything under control until the exact point they don't.

same here, buddy. just following along. but i tend to think this is the end of something, the final convulsion of what started in 2005 or 2010, rather than the beginning. i'm not writing it off because of the lack of leadership or direction, but that makes it tougher to call what "their" next move is, and it's nearly impossible to make a call on a prc-managed crackdown with reinforcements from across the border, since there's no precedent and we have no access to what's going on at top levels in beijing.

one more question, frederik b... talking about "historical upheavals in general," which do you think provide the best lessons for those involved here or map onto this protest most accurately? just to name one so that i seem better informed, is it the orange revolution in ukraine?

how do i embed tweets

Police officer had his baton taken from him and was attacked with it. Drew his pistol and aimed at protesters. Astonished nobody killed here tonight. pic.twitter.com/Wox8yziDnz

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) August 13, 2019

how many times in a situation like that would a cop just shoot someone dead? fucking hell.

No, I'd agree, it seems like an end, almost knowingly trying to confront the PRC into doing... something... no matter what. The obvious historical comparison seems Tiananmen, or the Green revolution in Iran, or the various failed protests against Putin. Although what's going on there at the moment is really interesting as well.

also following the story of the alleged undercover cop who was being struggled, and currently strapped to a luggage cart, it seems.

Pan-dem lawmakers Fernando Cheung and Kwok Ka-ki are now negotiating with protesters who have tied the man to a luggage trolley. Very ugly scene pic.twitter.com/Xk578seTYL

— Austin Ramzy (@austinramzy) August 13, 2019

There's a lot of stress in the world right now, where you can't really be half a dictator anymore, to paraphrase a shitty American tv show.

he was wearing a press vest, they grabbed him, thinking he was a cop, and then found an I❤️警察 t-shirt in his bag...

ICYMI let’s fill in some blanks https://t.co/21Fhvs6QQF

— tricialing (@tricialing) August 13, 2019

hope it doesn't turn out like this

i dunno, imho ideally stop this and get back to occupying government buildings and scuffling with triad thugs

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EB3LhTyU8AAqDS4?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

attacking other HK citizens is terrible tactics, even if they have "i heart the bizzies" t shirts or are wankers who are the HK equivalent to the UK FBPE posse.

turns out he was a reporter for global times.

live feed from hkg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7IvjtgSawY

how do i embed tweets

Police officer had his baton taken from him and was attacked with it. Drew his pistol and aimed at protesters. Astonished nobody killed here tonight. pic.twitter.com/Wox8yziDnz
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) August 13, 2019
― XxxxxxxXxxxxxxxxXxxxx (dylannn), Tuesday, August 13, 2019 12:07 PM (forty-three minutes ago)

This video is crazy. It was only after watching it a few times that I noticed the bystander with the wheeled luggage trying to hurry by and getting caught in the melee.

congrats on the bbc finding some myopic, thick as pigshit UK twat describing it as a "bitter pill to swallow" cos it has inconvenienced his honeymoon, hope she's shagging the milkman by next week ya weapon!

My (wife's) family in Hubei are in full meltdown about the Coronavirus. Sister-in-law is actually due to fly from Wuhan to the UK next week. Bit concerned.

There's a lot of racist crap out there about "Chinese eat anything" but this cunt has not done anyone any favours, ridiculous that this sort of thing is still being permitted anywhere in 2020.

Photo from Douban of a menu at #Wuhan Huanan Seafood Market. Don't know when it was taken, but they sell all kinds of wild animals incl. live wolf pups & palm civets. 2nd photo taken after outbreak discovered shows this storefront (3rd left) covering word “野 (wild)” in its name. pic.twitter.com/HiQlzX4XBX

— Muyi Xiao (@muyixiao) January 21, 2020

There's a lot of racist crap out there about "Chinese eat anything" but this cunt has not done anyone any favours, ridiculous that this sort of thing is still being permitted anywhere in 2020.

Photo from Douban of a menu at #Wuhan Huanan Seafood Market. Don't know when it was taken, but they sell all kinds of wild animals incl. live wolf pups & palm civets. 2nd photo taken after outbreak discovered shows this storefront (3rd left) covering word “野 (wild)” in its name. pic.twitter.com/HiQlzX4XBX

— Muyi Xiao (@muyixiao) January 21, 2020

My sister-in-laws's flight has been cancelled, so I guess out of our hands now and not to worry about so much, but parents-in-law are in Ezhou, and our feeling is that there the response is a bit half-hearted. it's a sleepy town of a million or so people, lots of them commute into wuhan, seems like an obvious place for the disease to spread from.

Hu Xingdou, an independent political economist, said Chinese people’s love for eating wildlife had deep cultural, economic and political roots.

“While the West values freedom and other human rights, Chinese people view food as their primary need because starving is a big threat and an unforgettable part of the national memory,” Hu said.

“While feeding themselves is not a problem to many Chinese nowadays, eating novel food or meat, organs or parts from rare animals or plants has become a measure of identity to some people.”

I would like to know more about this identity claim. Does the rarity of what's eaten give social prestige, or is it something more personal than that?

things that are rare (to be eaten or otherwise) can get you a degree of social prestige, yes, but also certain animals are supposed to have particular medicinal qualities (not just as an aphrodisiac) which combine with the "you have to be rich to afford this" factor in a way which parallels alleged "superfoods" in the west.

Ok, thanks. Is the "wild"ness of the animal a factor in its having these medicinal qualities?

I know a little about bushmeat practices in Africa but little about them in China, except for the little I've gleaned from time spent in Chinatowns around the world.

CHANG: And why are wild animals so popular as a delicacy in China?

SI: Eating wild animal is considered a symbol of wealth because they are more rare and expensive. And wild animals is also considered more natural and, thus, nutritious, compared to farmed meat. It's a belief in traditional Chinese medicine that it can boost the immune system, you know? Of course, some people eat wild animals just because they were driven by curiosity.

CHANG: (Laughter).

SI: It's really difficult to change the mindset of, you know, eating wild animals is better than eating farmed animals. But it's a common kind of mindset in many parts of China.

Ok, this clarifies things a bit more. The wildness is thought to contribute to its naturalness, and thus its goodness. I don't know much about Chinese Romanticism but now I want to!

I live with it, my wife is training to be (eventually) a TCM doctor (but not the bad kind that use animals! there are a few very different schools of TCM, I have found out)

http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/

He adds that certain species, including primates, bats, and rats, are higher risk than others, because of the number of diseases they harbor and the likelihood of those diseases making the genetic leap required to infect humans. “Some of the Southeast Asian rats are quite big and I’m sure they’re very tasty. There’s nothing wrong with eating them per se, but rodents carry a large number of viruses with zoonotic potential—having them in the food chain is really, really high risk,” he says.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, though, interest in these foods appears to be rapidly diminishing: a survey of almost 100,000 Chinese conducted in the midst of the Wuhan outbreak found that nearly 97 percent of respondents opposed eating wild animals, up from about 50 percent in the 2014 study.

“These are not traditional habits,” says Kang, citing, as an example, how a drink made from antelope horn, a traditional remedy given to children to treat colds, has become a widely consumed daily tonic. “It’s a combination of traditional concepts with business people promoting a modern concept of, ‘We should try interesting new things because we have more income’. Eating exotic species is about people showing on social media that they are cool.”

China’s propaganda machine has recently gone into full gear to undermine that idea. Kang says a spontaneous social media backlash has also driven the point home. A hashtag that translates as #TheSourceoftheNewCoronavirusisWildAnimals quickly racked up 1.2 billion hits on Weibo, the main social media platform in China.

“In my friend circle, there is a person who in the past liked to showcase his experience with wild animal food on social media,” says Kang. “Previously, my friends would say nothing, or they’d say ‘cool’. But now he can’t post those things, because people would say if you continue to do that, you’re not cool.”

https://thefern.org/2020/03/can-asias-infectious-disease-producing-wildlife-trade-be-stopped/

https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=231522type%3D1%26t%3D10%26q%3D%23新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物%23&extparam=%23新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物%23&luicode=10000011&lfid=231522type%3D1%26t%3D10%26q%3D%23新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物%23

I am seeing plenty of racism against Chinese online of late, especially from supposedly left-wing animal rights people. Bit depressing, though I knew it was under the surface anyway.

Animal rights people sus af to begin w

Yes. The thing I have been trying to explain to people today is that "wet market" doesnt mean "exotic meat slaughterhouse" and that the vast majority of what is sold there is vegetables, just with some live chickens in one corner, and that if you are "campaigning to shut the wet markets" you are campaigning for factory farming and supermarkets.

I have never found “trying to explain” to be a profitable use of time but the problem is likely on my end

it's true that I am probably wasting my time.

I mean not everything we do has to be profitable

China are using this unprecedented time to make another power grab in HK. There is rioting going on at the moment.

More tear gas rounds are fired in Causeway Bay, near the Sogo. pic.twitter.com/UlNmUiJ5NL

— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@HongKongFP) May 24, 2020

Close to $100bn wiped off the edtech market today, following a leaked document saying that the government intends to force tutoring companies to go not-for-profit and ban foreigners from online teaching. The bricks-and-mortar tutoring sector has already been crushed by COVID.

The rationale for this is supposedly the idea that intensive tutoring is stressful for kids, makes education more expensive at a point when the government is trying to encourage people to have more children and makes it easier for wealthier parents to get their kids into selective schools and universities. The more cynical take is that too many middle-class kids are competing for those places with the genuinely well-off, who will still be able to afford 1-to-1 tutoring.

Leaving aside the general academic stuff, it’s hard to see how this wouldn’t lead to a fairly hard stop on the growth of English proficiency, particularly in smaller cities, or even a regression. State provision of English is variable but generally a lot weaker than the private sector can offer and companies like VIPKids that recruit teachers from the Philippines deliver a pretty good, affordable service to millions outside of the big cities, in places where traditional private language schools have been patchy. If New Oriental and others are forced to scale back, it may also impact the number of students going to university abroad.

Which would be a blow to the cashflow of a lot of large universities…

These last few months have seen a series of increasingly troubling announcements from Beijing, not sure if calling it the "second cultural revolution" is right, but the direction is certainly not great.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/chinas-cultural-crackdown-few-areas-untouched-as-xi-reshapes-society

My in-laws have not been allowed to renew their passports, and at work all of the Chinese students have decided to work virtually rather than travel to the UK.