Your contempt for those people who are fighting for their freedom in their own country is astonishing.
I'll all for standing up to the man, but let's get real, this battle is unwinnable. Even if all of Hong Kong decided to really start fighting to preserve their way of life, China would just declare martial law and that will be that.
I am pretty sure you had no idea about the mass protests[1] that are ongoing in the past few years either. How can you look at this crowd of several hundred thousand protesters and claim that they are powerless?
Another Tiananmen square probably can't happen again in the digital age. Or maybe it can, but only due to our defeatist indifference.
If it starts to look like they're getting uppity, they'll get a visit from their local Party leadership and gently encouraged to stop their foolishness. Escalate as appropriate.
Defeatism is precisely appropriate here. You have to ask yourself how badly you want change. Enough to put your family's livelihood at risk?
Nothing here is worth fighting a war over, and that's what it would take to meaningfully change the way politics is conducted in China. Everybody's best bet is to just fall in line and hope the Party doesn't totally bungle this five year plan.
If you were concerned about being governed by Communists, you had 13 years to get the hell out. And if you weren't concerned about being governed by Communists...well, you clearly hadn't been paying attention to history. Tiananmen Square (1989) alone should have been a wake-up call to China's future subjects.
This doesn't make what's happening now less appalling, but HK residents had ample opportunity to avoid the inevitable. Compare that to other dictatorships that sprung up relatively overnight; in Turkey, for instance, Erdogan has been president for little more than 2 years.
To add, I don't know much about Hong Kong, but it's pretty difficult to leave Turkey if you're a citizen, not many countries want to give you a Visa meaning only the educated, upper class, is able to leave. If you're proposing a solution you should propose one which doesn't leave behind all the poor.
This is exactly why my father-in-law sent all 5 of his kids to the US for college. All 5 now have US passports and can leave Hong Kong if and when it becomes worse than they can stand. So far, 2 of them have made the move.
Good luck with immigration. Britain certainly didn't want to let many of its former subject leave.
As an aside, the United States alone has brought in more than 7 million immigrants from all over the world, in just the past decade.
Bringing the matter to the public stage and attempting to hold Beijing accountable is the best available option.
Will this influence Beijing? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Will 10 or 100 instances like this, or disputes in the South China Sea identify Beijing as a bad actor? Yes.
I don't disagree with where you are coming from, but it sounds like you are endorsing giving up.
Matters such is this will take decades, now is not the time to give up for the Hong Kong or Chinese citizens that seek freedom.
Hong Kong is an amazing city, international and self-governing, competitive and self-funding-- in almost every way, it seems like a glimpse of the future; Tomorrowland.
However, its leverage to fight for its own sovereignty (or the rest of the world's leverage to fight on its behest), is extremely weak, and unable to grow. I fear that Hong Kong is a lost cause, which is extremely sad.
...In any case, I hope the idea of Hong Kong lives on, and we see more cities like this as we progress. One city isn't worth fighting a war over, especially because the lessons Hong Kong taught us show that we can make more Hong Kongs in the future.
Preserving emigration rights for HK citizens seems the most practical way to keep people safe.
We live in an inadequate world.
(See also: ongoing US election, or Erdogan's purges in Turkey)
I'd argue the third option, which I proposed, is adequate, and the best if only because it includes hope over the long-term.
In decades Hong Kong as we know it won't exist anymore. In a century, maybe China will have it's Magna Carta movement. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction right now.
That's why it must be crushed and CCP members' families flayed alive before them.
A full scale airborne landing from Japan and Korea on Beijing. Finish them!
What concerns the HK situation. There are only 4, possibly 3 proper military garrisons in immediate vicinity of HK. Only one hosts a modern and trained mechanised force. In case of mainlanders pulling the trigger, striking that garrison before forces stationed there will be mobilised will leave PLA with nothing that can strike on day one other than lightly equipped forces on machine gun equipped apcs/armoured cars. This will leave defenders with three threats on day one: guys with assault rifles trying to swim across from the new territories, air bombardment and assault from sea. Air attacks are inefficient in densely built up areas with reinforced concrete buildings. One can simply run into any multi-storey concrete building to hide, anything below a 1 tonne bomb can't outright destroy it.
The naval landing will remain a threat. Yes, even if PLAN will send disembarked ship crews alone without marines it will be enough to outnumber defenders and overwhelm them without use of heavy weaponry. PLAN does train ship crews to double as a landing force. The likeliness of Beijing ordering the navy to capture HK using what ever means possible, at any cost is high if their land forces will be rendered impotent. The above scenario of disembarked crews being used as a land force was simulated in recent military exercises.
Here, a third force intervention is definitely needed to prevent this outcome. With a cooperation of the defenders and a third party, HK will be able to stand for 3 days for sure.
High displacement ships (read a big frigate sized and above) can't navigate close to the shore all around HK island except for the West Lamma Channel between Lamma and HK island. A capable pilot familiar with local hydrography can get close to land in the region of Shek O village, but the likeliness of that is low and the locations is strategically unfavourable for naval landing. This leaves the control of waters south to Bluff Head as the main concern. There, scuttled civilian ships can be used to block access to the Lamma channel and provide radar clutter to disable enemy long range anti ship weapons. A defender allied ship, can then hide in the channel behind the cover of scuttled ships to prevent landing from smaller crafts.
I am genuinely curious.
Right now, Hong Kong is way too valuable as an economic engine, but the political dangers are more pressing to the CCCP. So the government will clamp down on freedoms as best they can until the citizens can't take it anymore, then keep beating the horse until it's dead.
You should read the book The Dictator's Handbook if you want to understand it better.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
It is easy claim that China is autocratic therefore it must do X bad things
If you read the book you wouldn't need the articles because then you'd understand how they work.
A good China-specific book to read is:
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp...
It doesn't deal with corruption per se, rather how China has been operating politically and economically for the last few decades. The gist of it is, so long as you play ball with the CCCP, then you can enrich yourself. But the second you step out of line, officials will happily confiscate your life's work and tell you you're lucky you're not in jail. And the only reason you're not in jail is because as long as you can make wealth that they can take, you're more useful to them free than imprisoned. If that changes, a life behind bars awaits you.
What you can do in China, any autocratic regime really, is precisely what the local thugs will allow you to do, or what you can get away with outside their attention. They may not be as smart as you, but they are more numerous and have the legal system on their side.
To complete your political education, this book will fill in the gaps between dictatorship and the kind of democracy that Anglosphere nations enjoy:
https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Pe...
This book will show you the conditions in which freedom develops and really makes you appreciate the United States, tempered of course by the lessons in the Dictator's Handbook that tell how democratic regimes are, in general, not the forces for good in other countries that you'd like to believe they are. Would-be freedom fighters are fighting forces so much larger than they are that success or failure is entirely out of their control. Either the conditions are ripe for revolution or they aren't.
Barring some massive worldwide event, Hong Kong's future is dimming by the day. The Internet was supposed to be that event, but autocrats are more than capable of suppressing freedom there too, up to and including just shutting the whole damn thing off.
Author shows poor understanding of real world politics and cheap writing. The type of people who read such books are ones who read The Prince and believe themselves politically educated.
Call your local Communist Party office. They will tell you how to proceed.
Oh you wanted rule of law and freedom of expression? Move somewhere that respects it.
The Chinese government gives approximately 0 shits about Hong Kong's silly foreign ideas and just wants to extract as much wealth from the area as possible before redwashing it. Their days of freedom were numbered from the day the Brits took over.