> they absolutely cannot come into Hong Kong, it would be a totally stupid move

Strategically, for China? Yes. Politically, for Xi? Maybe not. Remember that Xi is a dictator. Moves that boost him in the short term at China’s long-term expense are on the board.

Xi is very much a dictator, but he also needs money to maintain his dictatorship. HK for all its faults and bads is still quite important to the Chinese economy.

That's why we haven't become Xinjiang, IMO.

I think hks importance is extremely arguable. Hks gdp is barely 3 percent of china's with a stalling growth rate. I've worked in both Shanghai and Hong Kong and I can say a lot of the large cities are much much nicer in China now. You also have a lot things like hackathons and events where you see lots of young creative people who really want to make things. In Hong Kong the culture is more towards looking good in a suit and networking, a side effect of the dominance of financial industry.

Personally I think that ship has long sailed and it's not particularly anyone's fault.

Hong Kong's importance to China isn't its GDP contribution primarily (although it is special vs China when it comes to per capita performance; Hong Kong packs a lot of economic punch in a small package). It's the special relationship Hong Kong is still granted globally on trade & finance, particularly with the US.

China desperately requires dollars to keep its debt problems floating and to interact with the global economy (relatively little is settled in Yuan outside of China's borders). Without a steady inflow of dollars China cannot function normally; their economy would seize up.

Hong Kong is a critical inflow port for US Dollars into China's economy and is largely spared from the tariff war.

This is why Hong Kong is so important to China right now, and it's also why China has been so careful in suppressing the protests (by their standards). China is afraid of the US changing Hong Kong's special status. People often don't think China can be swayed: the US slapped currency manipulator status on them, and they immediately backed off from letting the Yuan sink, carefully pegging it just inbounds near the 7 line.

The very people who are in charge of the mainland have a lot of money that they want to either park in the west or hedge against the house of cards that they are building. There is currently only one route for this money to go and rolling in the tanks will inconvenience way too many powerful people.

Not everything can be measured by GDP though. For instance, HK can become a buffer point or backup plan should the trade war further escalates.

Not to mention that many CCP members have a lot of investment in Hong Kong, a collapse of the HK economy, should the PLA be deployed, would be quite problematic.

But I generally agree with your observations.

Let’s face it. Hong Kong is effectively a backdoor. It’s a great place for almost anyone rich enough to do money laundering like stuff. For example, when mainland tightened its currency exchange control, people still transfer money via HK in someway. It’s sometimes disgusting

Yes I agree. That's partly why for me, despite living in Hong Kong and having worked in finance I don't really mind if some of these people get washed out in the process.

That's a horrible metaphor...

It's not what you're wearing, but how you're wearing it.

Culture is more than the rack (or tailor) you buy your suit from. If you choose to wear one. Things like personal space and not spitting in public and not having to kowtowing to whomever is the current President, are things some hold dear. Others may not. Other still, may look to the past and ask: what started on 15th April, 1989 and ended on 4th June 1989, in Tiananmen Square, and elsewhere in China?

> Xi is very much a dictator, but he also needs money to maintain his dictatorship.

To maintain dictatorship, you need bullets, not money.

In USSR during Stalin, regular people were pretty much eating grass, but he never doubted his ability to do virtually anything to them without repercussions.

Soviet army of the time had a meal of 3 slices of dried bread and a millet porridge. Even Stalin's personal bodyguards were eating thin gruel, but none of them ever dared to do anything about that.

A tactic of trying to economically starve a dictatorship has no logic. Yes, you can cripple a country, but not the dictatorship itself.

Maybe yes, but Xi is not Kim, at least not yet.

I heard a good phrase for that: "you need to be pretty stupid to appoint yourself a president for life"

In other words, great villains have exit plans, bad ones don't

Well Chinese has been ruling by lifelong kings and dictators like Mao for thousands of years. Democracy doesn’t have a great foundation there and it just need years of cultivation through education or whatever. The culture also somewhat aligned with the “do greater good” and “society should be unionized” ideology which doesn’t make lifelong leaders look like a stupid idea

This is a common argument that Chinese/East-Asian culture makes democracy extremely difficult. The prime counter examples are Taiwan, South Korea, and even Japan. Similar cultural background, but all are able to operate in a liberal democracy in a relatively short amount of time.

Well for one thing the scale is quite different in terms of population and size. They are more like at most two Chinese provinces combined. Another thing is more historical: they are all effectively allies of the US and even with US troops deployed on their land. IMO they are not quite compelling examples.

To pick a single data point, I'd assume that someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country after comparisons are made with themselves, has very probably gone insane and become utterly drunk on power.

Do not expect Xi to do something sane, especially if he feels insulted. I think HK's best hope is for something else big to distract him. Unfortunately, I think it is very likely right now that he will invade HK and kill a lot of people.

> assume that someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country

I'm not sure if this will change your opinion, but this isn't true.

I asked my friends that are in China now to search for Winne The Pooh on Baidu and Bing, and they were able to find pictures of the character.

The are also Winnie the Pooh cartoons and movies and dolls readily available in China. Along with various merchandise for sale.

So no, it is not banned in China. Neither are time travel movies and TV shows, despite the English news reporting as such.

Such things change by the day, you have to understand that. The PRC government does not publish a exhaustive list of what's being banned at the moment.

It wouldn't surprise me either, that the decision was made not by Xi, but by someone who wanted to appease him or the part or whatever.

I’m currently in Mainland China for a few months. Just searched and surely it’s totally fine:

- Winnie the Pooh Baidu search: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62957954-...

- Baidu image search featuring both Winnie and Xi: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49120719/62958027-... (Memes are filtered or at least demoted, though.)

My local friends don’t think it was ever banned. (Of course they aren’t bored enough to monitor this every day.)

A lot of stupid claims about China in the Western press are easily debunked with the teeniest amount of Mandarin knowledge, or none at all. If it sounds too crazy, it’s probably false. Doesn’t help when people reaffirm each other’s totally unfounded opinions, and discredit anyone who speaks otherwise.

The ban was a long time ago, in 2017.

https://www.hk01.com/中國/105476/太像習近平-小熊維尼-慘遭-河蟹

Of course you wouldn't have problem about it now.

Yes, there are a lot of stupid claims a out China in the western press, but there are easily equally, if not more, absurd claims about USA in China too.

Same for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, so on and so forth.

BTW, maybe try 8964 八九六四 and see what you get.

The link you provided says the phrase "Winnie the Pooh" couldn't be posted on Weibo/WeChat at that time, with a screenshot not supporting that claim, but rather showing a sticker pack of Winnie the Pooh no long being available. Assuming that was truthful (I wouldn't be so sure because HK news about Mainland China can be as exaggerated as Western news, sometimes more because the stake's higher) that's still pretty far from the "someone who bans all Winnie The Pooh pictures across a country" claim above.

> but there are easily equally, if not more, absurd claims about USA in China too.

I wouldn't be surprised. Naturally this is what happens when you talk about things you have zero experience with.

> BTW, maybe try 8964 八九六四 and see what you get.

I never said nothing is censored. Btw at least every single soul I've talked to about this in China knows exactly what it means, contrary to claims I've seen from certain Western journalists that people typically aren't aware. Censoring something inevitably makes people more interested.

What do you expect then?

A news report within the PRC that "Winnie the Pooh" was banned?

Reports from Hong Kong and Taiwan is the closest thing you can get.

>I'm not sure if this will change your opinion, but this isn't true.

Do you think there was ever a ban?

History is filled with insane leaders who made terrible choices. Sometimes it seems stranger that leaders make rational decisions.

As above, so below.

Not to mention a military takeover of Hong Kong would generate valuable data and experience that could be usefully applied to an invasion of Taiwan.

I'm not sure how applicable it would be. Taiwan does have a military that would resist and Hong Kong doesn't.

HK also doesn't have TSMC, which if destroyed would put semiconductor progress and prices back 5-10 years.

It's too bad TSMC didn't open a second factory in HK.

In another 10 to 20 years that won't matter with Moore's law slowing down. Globally competitive foundaries are one of the CCP's goals, and the same slow down that let TSMC surpase Intel will let some Chinese foundary surpass or equal TSMC. Their competitive edge is going to erode away to commodification (albeit for those who can stomach.the huge capital investment).

TSMC has never been very competitive with Intel. Intel has long been a leader in semiconductor manufacturing, but they almost exclusively used it for making their own chips; they weren't a contract fab. TSMC, on the other hand, has always been a contract manufacturer.

Recently the story has been TSMC is pulling ahead of intel in process nodes and intel has been missing deadlines, but this inversion has only happened in the last few years.

So following that logic Intel's fab has no competitors. : /

Basically, no, it doesn't (unless something has changed a lot since I worked there; I haven't kept up very much since then). Intel designs and makes their own chips, so they don't want or need a contract manufacturer.

This is like saying Ford's factories have no competitors, and that's true too. Ford isn't going to farm out their car manufacturing to some other company. (I mean the final assembly; of course carmakers routinely get various components from suppliers, such as airbags, infotainment computers, seats, etc.)

Chipmaking is a little weird because, unlike carmaking where the automakers all own and operate their own final-assembly factories, or aircraft makers like Boeing which own their own factories, chipmakers are frequently "fabless" these days and do the design work but partner with a fab like TSMC to actually make the chips. Intel is an exception and doesn't do this.

Just because they're vertically integrated doesn't mean they don't have competition, just that it's difficult to judge one half of the business on its own.

Intel's own messaging in this regard refers to the competition.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/sunit-rikhi-...

Ok, that's about Intel's "custom fab" business, which would indeed compete with TSMC. When I was there, that didn't exist AFAIK, they just made their own chips, so I wasn't aware of this (as I said, I haven't kept up much with that company since I left).

Valuable data about the public and international outcry and response- they already have all the war games simulated out.

Aah, crap, good point. And Trump will probably not do anything in both cases. Putin neither, and the EU can't go in themselves.

EU wouldn't be rearing to go in either.

Uh, if the EU wanted to, it could absolutely go in. The UK has the most valid reason for intervening since it's their treaty that's being violated by a Chinese invasion. EU countries have 2+ million military personnel combined, hundreds of naval assets, thousands of aircraft, strong mutual defense military alliances, etc.

Europe couldn’t even handle Libya without running out of bombs. They have no capability to do anything of note.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some...

> Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,”

Europe has no army or military capacity. You have UK/France with some military capability but rest of Europe has in essence no armed forces, their tiny militaries are mostly only used to help during natural disasters or with humanitarian efforts. Europe can't even handle issues in its own backyard without US.

Except the UK has appointed a child as their PM and is at the moment throwing a "we're not doing any cooperation!" tantrum.

China could just dangle the promise of a post-Brexit trade deal (the Brexiters need anything to look good, they were ready to brag about deals with S. Arabia and Turkey).

As someone has mentioned, imagine if Le Pen wins in France, the UN Security Council would be run by Xi, Putin, Trump, BoJo and Le Pen...