Amplify HK voices and focus on the issues they are unhappy about rather than the polities involved, which easily degenerates into nationalistic tribalism. Being supportive of protesters' demand for civil rights, self-determination, and rejection of authoritarian policing doesn't necessarily mean being against Chinese people; resist attempts by people to reshape the discussion on such terms.

I suggest not working through conventional political channels involving state actors, where the marginal utility of your participation is negligible and you are empowering state institutions which ultimately disempowers individuals and communities.

Study up on direct action techniques; if you're in the right area, protest things like companies who supply riot equipment to police; disrupt, get attention, and use that as a platform to express solidarity with HK. Direct action is effective, politically empowering, and equips you to fight against political repression yourself if there is any risk that you could find yourself or your community subject to it in the future.

Accept more asylum and immigration petitions from Hong Kong residents that want to get out. Help them bring their money with them. Publish and broadcast Cantonese-language information encouraging skilled and educated people to leave Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is China. No one disputes it. These protests cannot be seen as anything other than a rearguard action to cover the retreat of those who don't want to be ruled by Beijing. So give them a place to go other than Vancouver.

If it had the political will, and were less racist, the US could absorb 750k people to Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, and Tampa, which represents 10% of Hong Kong, and 10% the metro populations of those cities. The coast of the US facing the Gulf of Mexico is superficially similar to the Chinese coast facing the South China Sea, and there must be at least some businesses that could be transplanted without too many operational changes.

The US can't easily absorb so many people unless they're dirt poor and willing to live 20 to an apartment. That many middle-class people will make the traffic situation far worse, because the US absolutely refuses to build more densely and build more public transit to make cities walkable. It's not a good place to live at all.

We can stop repressing domestic protestors, so that we won't be the pot calling the kettle black.

Or, if we aren't interested in doing that, contemplate this may be none of our business, just like police brutality at home is none of China's business.

Or, consider it a third way - we as a society are incapable, or unwilling in reigning in police brutality against domestic protestors. What makes you think we are at all capable of bringing such a change to another country, when we can't even do it to our own?

To be honest there's really not much anyone is willing to do for HK. Particularly the European nations are doing everything to avoid provoking China anyhow.

Look at how almost no one is willing to even acknowledge Taiwan's independence in fear of Chinese reaction. Unfortunately, HK's case is much more hopeless than Taiwan's.

By being more concerned about police brutality in US, which will give totalitarian states less excuse to behave similarly.

I have yet to hear the Chinese government explain their actions in Hong Kong with regards to American police procedure.

The wumao bring it up periodically. Whataboutism is like their favorite pastime.

letting you elected representatives know that you care is the easiest thing we can do.

Something more direct.

Pick a spot on the spectrum between "plane ticket, wear black, brave tear gas and beatings" and "thoughts and prayers"

Stop buying imported goods?

Don't, freezing the global trade is dangerous. It was one of the causes of the German debt crisis and the rise of Hitler.

Trade tools are incredibly effective in foreign policy and therefore seem very appealing to people in power but also too often ended up badly for the world when deployed. Know the history.

Stop 'United States–Hong Kong Policy Act' will definitely hurt the HK gov and CCP.

> That kind of interference could lead to war.

Or a crappy election cycle.

They do; I thought that this was common knowledge.

A quick example from a few years ago http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135999,...

See also last election.

By staying out of it. Hongkong belongs to China just as Catalonia belongs to Spain, or California to the US. Imagine China interfering with that.

Just because Hong Kong “belongs” to China doesn’t mean the west should ignore the wishes of what seems like the majority of the population that lives there. Especially when they’re protesting against an anti-democratic authoritarian government, and all they’re asking for is a reduction of police brutality and the right to a democratically elected government.

Though what could we do about it?

Shine light on the brutality and inhumanity of the Communist Party of China to the rest of the world. The CPC tries to keep secret its cruelty, tries to keep secret its concentration camps, tries to silents their people's discussion about the true nature of the CPC, and tries to keep secret its leader's lust to be a new Mao.

Sunshine on the CPC's true nature is the best disinfectant.

Not sure what all that sunshine has done so far about those concentration camps in Xinjiang and possibly elsewhere too. I'd say just about nothing. The communist party seems rather immune to criticism.

Franky, HK's struggle looks hopeless to me.

It is an unpopular opinion, but actually this is right answer. Look at Syria and other examples. We should stop pretending, we are supporting people by posting,liking stuff online. They will be all alone when things gets serious. So, let's stop giving these people false sense of hope for help from anywhere else.

I'm probably a bigger fan of self-determination than you: if the people of HK, Catalonia or California wish to follow their own road, I support them, but they need to work that out on their own. When those movements are even partly the product of foreign intervention and are given uncritical coverage in the western press, that is a giant warning sign. We've been there before many times yet we never learn.

>When those movements are even partly the product of foreign intervention

Do you think that is the case in HK?

Yes, I think that that is the case, based on the following elements.

1. Contacts between US consular staff and HK opposition leaders.

2. Funding by the US 'National Endowment for Democracy' of several Hong Kong groups.

3. My observations of the western media coverage of the events in the province of Xianjiang.

4. My observations of the similarities between the events in Hong Kong and other 'colour revolutions' that have the fingerprints of Washington all over them.

Would any contact with locals or funding of any organization of any kind that might be sympathetic to the protesters cause be "foreign intervention"?

It seems like this is such a low bar that it would mean that nobody else could associate with people in HK without it declared "foreign intervention".

Let alone that you could declare just about anything "foreign intervention".

I agree partially. The limits of 'acceptable' foreign intervention are not black and white. My feeling, based on what I observe, is that western intelligence services are all over this. Foreign intervention in Syria and Lybia started quietly enough alright through unofficial meetings with opposition groups. It's obvious that many Hongkongese are legitimately concerned about their political and economic future. Foreign money and promises at just the right moment can be wielded to manipulate people that are more or less well intentioned initially.

It's strange the differences in perspective here as with Syria and Libya ... IIRC there was little in the way of any mystery as far as who sided with who and their involvement, yet some folks portray those events as some sort of semi secret war.

Those events have also become the poster child for some regimes to use to warn people about opposing them.

A semi-secret war? Surely a very mysterious war, at least to me because conventional reasoning does not allow me to understand why western governments encouraged putches that destroyed stable governments (imperfect but far, far superior to the alternative) and subsequently armed 'moderate' groups whose morbid ideology differed little from the ideology that we're all supposed to combat ('...right?').

Unfortunately, our press doesn't ask the hard questions. No one is held accountable for the death and destruction that these policies have created. So western governments go on and try to apply the magic formula again. I believe that they are doing the same in HK.

> When those movements are even partly the product of foreign intervention

I feel this is a cop out. We live in a global economy and so all these things are highly connected. Your statement implies that our reporting of these events is intervention. May be influence, but I'm not sure that would be intervention.

To clarify.

A free press writes what it likes and the act of writing a newspaper article of any sort is not an act of 'foreign intervention'. We probably agree on that.

I have a problem with the fairly homogeneous discourse that I observe in the western press about certain subjects that prepare the domestic public opinion for political and armed intervention in other countries. I know that it's happening because I remember the day when I could read a lot more opposing opions in the newspapers of my language.

But preparing the domestic public opinion for intervention is not intervention itself. I am resolutely opposed to the intervention that is desired by the powers that be.

The difference is, of course, that the people of Catalonia and California get to vote on who represents them.

The people of Catalonia and California have the rule of law and actual representation. China, as a whole, does not due to the CPC. As the CPC does not have the rule of law in China, they stand against Basic Law. CPC deliberately stands against law and human rights.

Spain and California have human rights and the rule of law, but CPC ruled China does not. The CPC is the difference and forms a fundamental difference in the examples you list.

Just like Kosovo belongs to Serbia?

Is easy to imagine. People go all over the place and people love interfering. History would be dramatically different otherwise. And probably a lot shorter.