You can see the desperation in trying to find an exception to this, given how much energy would be expended by protestors and those bound by the popular vote, so the we can at least concede - for their sake - that they may have gotten the attention of special interests sometimes, with one influencing the other.
I think the more efficient use of energy would be to identify the most effective special interest groups and capture them.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong voice in media (remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first). We're now seeing this struggle with Trans rights. Where it's >52% popular you see equality legislation, where it's a good wedge issue for Republicans they act against (e.g. DeSantis is running for president on the backs of attacking children..)
Civil Rights Act comes to mind too and interesting in that it had such strong opposition, interesting question of what are special interests if you expand beyond 'economic and business elite.' NAACP et al were very powerful.
Marijuana & decriminalization is another quick thought, though that's a bit more cloudy especially with later states with a more established business interest group. But I worked on the original campaign here in CO and our budget was pretty tiny...
It is worth remembering that at that time period, which was just 2008, California literally voted to change its constitution to ban gay marriage, which was purely a popular vote which was successful. If you want 55 electoral college votes, you aren't going to be saying things that ensure the opposite outcome.
I don't think it is useful to have actual opinions if you are playing that game.
Regardless of your opinions of Obama's politics, he is not a stupid man. All this nonsense about his position "evolving" is just that, nonsense. Obama was never really against gay marriage, he just needed to have viable positions to get elected.
In 2012 it was different. There was no primary. Obama could afford to be less of a follower and more of a leader. Black voters might not be enthusiastic about gay rights, but there was no doubt they’d show up to vote for their guy. So Obama calculated he could get the black vote and the gay vote by “evolving” his public stance.
This is of course separate from his own personal stance, which likely hasn’t evolved in a long time. What people find difficult to understand is that public figures have public and private personas.
Not singling out Obama here because all politicians do it to an extent (the ones who don’t never get far).
Just calling out it’s not exactly a virtue.
Obama presided over many terrible things, but overall the amount of terrible things dropped during his tenure.
Not sure virtue is the right word but it’s more complicated than “lying bad”.
Therefore, the system will always be moving towards more consistently acting that way. It's not right or wrong driving much of anything, just survival.
If this is bad, the incentives must be changed; you can't just wish people were nicer, cause even if you got your wish magically, they'd still lose to those that aren't
Not just politicians, although they are the most visible at it.
Is it wrong for a politician to mirror the opinions of their voters? That’s literally what a representative democracy is supposed to be.
Is it wrong for a person to express their heart felt opinion to folks who like and trust them? Isn’t that what all human communication is?
Obama did the right thing, in both 2008 and 2012. If he does 2008 differently, he remains a Senator with no national platform. If he does 2012 differently and doesn’t use his national platform to advocate for gay rights, maybe it takes longer for it to reach 80% support in the general population.
If you’d like to actually understand politics, I’d suggest reading The Dictators Handbook or watching this video for the tldr- https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
Dismissing criticism about our system,in which the officials just do whatever they want without checks and lie every four years to keep doing it, by saying "tell me a better system", implies you have given up. Good for you, but at some point the "best system in the world" was monarchy because the question "can you tell me a better system" had no answer either.
Because he could have just as easily STFU'd and said some mumbo jumbo without giving a real answer. As a career politician (and well spoken one at that) giving a non-answer that gives both sides hope he'll be on their side was perfectly within his capability.
Maybe he isn't the one who needs to STFU.
Some rightfully point out below that there's always politician BS lip service, saying something during the election and not following through or doing the opposite.
But on this issue both 'sides' show the point I'm trying to make. Public sentiment, not industrial lobbyists, drove anti-queer policy (though to be fair with Prop 8 you could call the mormon's monied elites since they evidently have a ginormous secretive endowment controlled by a few white guys).
And then in just a few years popular opinion turned, laws/policy followed at a lightning fast pace. Because politicians want to get elected. Pretty amazing. I distinctly remembering talking about marrying my at the time long term boyfriend, my parents didn't realize I could get married like a year after SCOTUS opinion & they are very supportive.
i think and hope that there are many examples like this, which parent's study seems to show doesn't exist, at least affecting business/tax/money policy
Yes I know most of it is meaningless me-too bullshit and to an extent is even done cynically to make themselves look good as much as enact actual change. It's largely done to make hiring easier, but nevertheless the fact that big companies openly and publicly promote these attitudes does matter to politicians. As big employers, companies get a say in local, regional and national policy development. They comment on and influence advertising, safety, accessibility, transport and zoning regulations. They are big donors to political campaigns. Over time the fact that they have consistently and persistently pushed the same narrative has I think had a normalising effect.
Can you support that? History is filled with protests leading to change. Just looking at 100 years off the top of my head: Women's vote, Gandhi, civil rights, S. Korea, the fall of the Soviet Block, the Arab Spring ...
In France, countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party, in addition to criminals not being arrested, should at least give you a doubt on how much the “bad vs good” show is artificial.
Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.
It's an attempted tactic, though in the US I think by the political opposition (radical neo-reactionaries) and not the government. It has uneven success.
> countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party
Do we know those pictures were legitimate? Countless pictures on the Internet doesn't mean much.
> Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.
How do you know?
The only democracy is Switzerland. Switzerland solves the problem of populist tyrannical capture by having an Executive Council instead of a President.
More recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that all Republics are doomed to fail.
One should never let an “expert” make a decision for you. They will over time deceive you because they will always be a likely scapegoat.
It is much better to get it wrong yourself because then you can face the truth instead of constantly being on the watch for a scapegoat and damaging the dynamics of decision making.
But women weren't allowed to vote (in every canton) until 1991. There is a ban on new minarets being constructed (but not other tall buildings). The anti-immigration referendum couldn't be implemented as would have led to dramatic consequences for Switzerland's relationship with the EU.
From an outside perspective even Switzerland doesn't seem like a "true" democracy.
Does democracy mean something else to you? I think you are confusing your indoctrination of good and inclusive with democracy. Or Vice versa.
I’ve seen that alot.
People like to talk about good and inclusive as if they aren't universal values. Good is a value in every culture and religion; it's human nature; we aren't sociopaths. Just off the top of my head, there's the fundamentals of the Bible, 'love they neighbor, love thy god'. There's the Mandate of Heaven in Imperial China, which said only a good ruler keeps heaven's mandate and thus their power.
Inclusive is not only part of good, it's necessary to democracy: It requires respecting the votes and believing in the rights of everyone, and practically, freedom requires respecting your neighbor.
The question is, why work so hard to undermine good, including inclusiveness, democracy, and human rights? What an incredible heritage we've been given; what an optimistic history and what opportunity we have to build something even more amazing for the next generation. It takes an very cynical politics to try to undermine that - to give that up for yourself, for an entire generation, for our descendants. People from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill to Gandhi to MLK to all those who have died and struggled in service have worked to bequeath to us our free and good, in large part, society. With everything we've been given, what will we bequeath? Hate, authoritarianism, and climate change? What a shame our generation would be, among the others, if that was what we produced. The question is, what can we accomplish?
Constitutions provide inclusiveness, constitutions are not unique to any system of governance, and can be the basis for any form of governance
Collaboration with the people willing to abide by the system isn’t unique to any system of governance, and is required by all systems
Democracy is just rule by majority
It's not, by any meaningful definition, and not how people who study it think about it. Democracy's are rule by majority and, just as essentially, protection of minority rights. You need both or you have nothing. The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution is the best known example.
Authoritarian dictatorships and single party countries have constitutions that give the same guarantees as seen in the Bill of Rights and other areas of the US Constitution
You are conflating the definition of democracy with ideals you were taught to respect. This is indoctrination by definition of accepting a set of beliefs uncritically.
Instead of trying to argue that point or differences between constitutional countries, you could just drop your expanded definition of democracy in favor of the rule by majority one.
academics in democracies are viewing it uncritically too. democracy doesn't mean anything related to limitations of the government or a form of inclusivity that aspires to enfranchise everyone. it means rule of the eligible voting majority, just like when all states in the United States only allowed male land owners of Northwestern European descent vote, that was a democracy. All tweaks are adjectives, such as representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, etc.
I'm not responding to the pending questions you generated because they are aspirations from completely left field, used to support your warped aspiration view of a form of governance that has no specific name, that you dream of as right and correct which you also consider a non-existent inclusive democracy to be. I am just hoping you try to explain your view so that you see that on a standardized test, my answer would be the "more correct" choice than your. If you chose your own answer you would get points off.
The newest definition I’m aware of is “the original 51% attack”
The referendum wasn't on noise or the legality of minarets broadcasting sound though, it was on the structures themselves. Churches can still build steeples (or even noisy belltowers). I fail to see why the simple construction of a minaret harms anyone any more than say a steeple of a church of a different denomination. If anything it just seems like legislation to tell Muslims that they are not welcome in Switzerland.
I think it is exactly that and this should be their right.
Minarets do not build themselves. There would be very possibly some money and influence involved from countries that do not share Swiss people values.
But then why not address that by banning foreign funding of construction of religious buildings? If Swiss Muslims want to build a minaret on their mosque I personally don't see the harm. But it's clear that others disagree.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: if you could please stop creating accounts like this and definitely stop creating accounts to break the site rules with, we'd be grateful.
Americans have long referred to themselves, quite proudly, as a democracy. The distinction is otherwise a technicality for political scientists.
A recent political trend has one group, which fears getting outvoted, saying that it's not, that it's a 'republic' (they, of course, that they won't be the ones excluded from power). But the distinction is theoretical - government by the people, for the people, of the people, to use just one phrase, is what defines the US and the US is a democracy. We the people created the government and make the law.
> More recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that all Republics are doomed to fail.
Well the evidence is pretty bad. The most stable, successful form of government in history is modern democracy. If you want failure, look at the disasters of authoritarian governments, with their civil wars, weak economies, and governing calamities (e.g., hyperinflation, needless wars, etc.).
In Switzerland you have 4 referendums a year where the demos, the people, make decisions in concert.
In most republics, all you get to do is elect a representative. Some US states do hold referendums like California. This means that some republics do have representatives and the people share decision making power. This however does not happen at the level of the American Federal government. So far as I know, you can only vote on having someone speak for you and you are not part of the decision. These representatives are much more susceptible to capture than the entire demos.
It would be nice if the etymology of Rep in Republic came from Representation because that is all you get for sure. Sadly, that is not the case.
As to the stability of governments—I would also agree that a Republic is more robust and long lived than a tyranny. However, I still hold that a Republic is likely to end in tyranny because the incentive and the likelihood to capture becomes enticing and likely.
We do not disagree here. Would like to know if the distinction between the decision making power of a Swiss citizen and the decision making power of an American citizen seem meaningfully different to you as they do to me. The difference becomes even more stark if you compare the Dominican Republic and Switzerland as the Dominican Republic has even less democratic aspects than the US Federal Government (which incidentally has fewer Democratic characteristics than US states)
You should check out ballots from around the U.S. There is far more than "a representative" on them.
> These representatives are much more susceptible to capture than the entire demos.
I'm not sure that's true. Recent history hasn't shown the public does well with complex issues - that's why it's good to hire someone to focus on them.
The first point dosen’t really do anything for me because I did cite California as one of many US states holding a referendum.
The 2nd point is a more interesting debate and it may involve some preference.
For my money, I would much rather be Swiss than Singaporean.
Swiss trains run on time and the infrastructure is plenty good compared to Singapore. You could switch this out for a more free and still very competent state like Taiwan.
Of note: questions of citizenship in Switzerland are decided at the Canton, not the Federal level. Your neighbors are making the decision as to whether they want you to become a citizen. Not some far away bureaucrat.
An argument for your stated preference of more expertise is hinted at in this review in what I think is the book of the year, “The Premonition” by Michael Lewis. They cite a book “10% Less Democracy.” There is some merit to this in the short run—but in the long run, I would rather be Swiss. (And I would be on the side where I would be happy to have the union expect more responsibility from me. For example, I would not be in favor of shortening the time of service.)
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/th...
The efficacy of peaceful protests in enacting change is orthogonal to whether the US is a democracy "in any form" or not.
If you mean, it doesn't match theoretical models of democracy, of course: Reality is messy. To say there's no democracy in the US doesn't match my experience of my community, state, and country.
I guess Canada isn't a democracy either, it's a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Oh and I guess Germany isn't either, it's federal parliamentary republic.
That does not mean anything. A republic has more stability because of (typically) a constitution which guarantees principles, whereas a democracy can turn into "whatever the current majority decides". A democracy can easily turn into a dictatorship or at least an authoritarian regime just through voting. A republic, much less likely without a bloody revolution.
Haha, as a westerner, I believe peaceful protest is invariably futile.
Take the 2003 protests against the Iraq war for example - 3 million protested in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid, 1 million in London, and millions more across the west. What happened? They went to war based on lies anyway. It's always the same.
The flaw is applying a binary metric: It's not that protestors don't have either absolute power or no power. Protests have influence. Those protests limited the scope of the war and their governments' involvement. Imagine the world if nobody protested, the free hand governments would have had if nobody cared. I can tell you that in my community, the George Floyd protests put political leaders in a position to respond immediately or be swept away by the next vote.
The Iraq War was conducted while constantly pushing back against world opinion. The cost in political capital was high; those protests imposed real costs and real limitations on the leaders. That's how democracy works (though not only through protest).
Whenever you think protests are futile, imagine the world without them. Then get out there and contribute - the world doesn't need people sitting on the sidelines, criticizing. Each person who shows up demonstrates to many others - people who see them, people who know them - that they too have the power, can act, and have a responsibility to do it.
> The Iraq War was conducted while constantly pushing back against world opinion. The cost in political capital was high; those protests imposed real costs and real limitations on the leaders. That's how democracy works
Did they change the scope of the war? I reckon they just did what the wanted regardless. Something like a million dead in Iraq (never mind Afghanistan), many times more wounded or maimed, vile treatment of POWs by US military, absolute evil undertaken by the CIA at Black sites, and of course, the enrichment of many a rich pocket. What real loss in "political capital" was there for fabricating evidence and using it for justification for invading Iraq? What meaningful consequences were there for any of it?
> I can tell you that in my community, the George Floyd protests put political leaders in a position to respond immediately or be swept away by the next vote.
I admire your optimism, but the impression I get from my US friends and colleagues paints a different picture. The media seldom even covering peaceful protests, hazing of civilian populations with helicopters and patrol cars, and several months of increased police brutality (because how else would they respond to protests about police brutality?!), with insane quantities of tear gas being used, numerous people beaten, tasered and shot with rubber bullets, several people losing eyes etc. Video after video, image after image of police brutality and negligence. Police departments blatantly fabricating evidence. And of course, more killing of black men and women under the most dubious of circumstances. Some of my friends have been involved in protests, and one was badly beaten and hospitised by a violent police officer - the whole thing was caught on film, yet the police charged him! Nothing meaningful has changed as a result of all these protests. It likely won't any time soon unless something more radical happens.
> Whenever you think protests are futile, imagine the world without them. Then get out there and contribute - the world doesn't need people sitting on the sidelines, criticizing.
I've done my bit, protesting on the street about things I care about. It felt good to feel like I was doing something, but eventually I came to the conclusion that I was deluding myself. None of our actions made any difference - and certainly where foreign policy, the military and war are concerned, the government are going to do whatever the hell they want regardless.
I've caved and given in, for sure; emotionally, I have nothing left to give. But I'm not criticising those who do still get out there - if you feel like it makes a difference, or even if it just makes you feel good, then more power to you.
> The media seldom even covering peaceful protests
George Floyd protests, including peaceful ones, dominated the news for the summer.
> hazing of civilian populations with helicopters and patrol cars, and several months of increased police brutality
There were problems, but I'm not being an 'optimist'. The great majority of protests were peaceful and uneventful. The only helicopter incident I remember was in DC.
> Nothing meaningful has changed as a result of all these protests
You should turn on the news, because it's good! Police reform laws have been passed and candidates have been elected nationwide; every Democratic candidate embraces them now, it's a necessity, and candidates who are far more progressive on these issues win; for example, look at the new mayor of Buffalo or at all the DAs elected and re-elected in major cities. Even Republicans in the Congress have voted for removing Confederate names from military bases, etc. Everyone remarked how the Thin Blue Line was finally broken, publicly and dramatically, in the Derek Chauvin trial.
Much more needs to be done, but it's just a reactionary fantasy to say nothing has changed.
> Video after video, image after image of police brutality and negligence. Police departments blatantly fabricating evidence. And of course, more killing of black men and women under the most dubious of circumstances.
Right, this is what people were protesting. It's not going to change overnight.
> None of our actions made any difference - and certainly where foreign policy, the military and war are concerned ...
You're just saying that, with no support. For the other claims of futility, where we do have clear evidence, they were clearly false. Maybe the same is true here.
I think the important question is: Why is it trendy on the Internet to claim democracy is so ineffective, when the reality is manifestly so much better? What do people gain from deceiving themselves? Who gains?
Residents of Minneapolis would beg to differ.
> Right, this is what people were protesting. It's not going to change overnight.
They were brutalising protesters for protesting about police brutality. Never mind changing overnight, this behaviour just beggars belief, and shows just how ingrained the problem is.
> You should turn on the news, because it's good!
What I've seen is some kind of attempt at the bare minimum (i.e. banning choke holds, which I think were already banned, and ending qualified immunity) - and IIRC, not a single Republican voted in favour, which demonstrates how polarised things are. AFAIK, nothing has actually changed yet - I'd love for meaningful changes to actually come, and hope that they do. But police unions are very powerful, and police brutality is institutionalised, so it's hard to be optimistic.
> just a reactionary fantasy to say nothing has changed.
> I think the important question is: Why is it trendy on the Internet to claim democracy is so ineffective, when the reality is manifestly so much better?
I deeply resent the insinuation that I'm somehow happy that nothing has changed, or/and that my stance isn't genuine; it's got nothing to do with being "trendy". Rather, you and I simply see things very differently.
You're really missing the news. For example, look up what is happening in major cities, especially the new wave of progressive DAs.
This is simply a false, anti-democratic trope. Protests interfere with everything from traffic to economies. And much more, they express intent to the leaders: Do something or be voted out of office, because we are motivated. The history of change through protest is very long.
I don't think bombing Syria was ever a particularly serious notion for the UK. If the US had pushed us to though, we obviously would have.
That's quite thick agenda for these millions, heh.
Cellphone footage of the protests would emerge now. I don't know if this would have changed anything, but I often wonder.
I felt alone and only later learned there had been large protests basically everywhere.
A more generous line of thinking would be 'do peaceful protests help bring about change?', which many in the west would probably agree to, and many in HK probably not. And they'd both be right - peaceful protest likely works better in certain contexts (democracies) than others (authoritarian regimes).
In the case of Hong Kong, clearly Carrie Lam never lost confidence in the PRC's ability to keep her in power, so she and the other loyalists in the HK government never put up meaningful opposition.
But yes, I think that's the basic idea. There are many levers to political power. Sometimes people think that authoritarians rule by fiat, like a god, but they also are balancing and managing many political factors (though not so much the free will of the people).
Multiple overlapping reasons, some of which include:
- the military overthrows the rest of the executive/legislative powers
- Gross incompetence resulting in the government's self-destruction
- Financial collapse
- Secession
- Very strong external pressures (invasion, economic destruction, etc).
- Multiple violent insurrections straining executive resources and undermining the rule of law, allowing other groups to fill the role of the government.
Note that those necessary to take power are not always the same as those necessary to keep it; people often end up with something different than what they bargained for.
An excellent read: "The Dictator's Handbook". To say that politics is a dirty business is an understatement.
- multiple military mutinies, now suppressed, check
- the entirety of NK civil administration been sent to firing squad, or gulags multiple times, and rebuilt anew every time it fails
- financial collapse — you will never financially collapse if you can steal
- secession, you cannot secede in NK, even individually. They have machinegunners at the border, shooting everybody trying to run away
- NorKo been under every international sanction imaginable for 70 years.
- There are insurrections in NK almost every day. They are crushed, all, and every.
My point is, dictatorships, and monarchies do not simply topple, they have to be toppled.
That's not what secession means.
Sometimes in authoritarian regimes, a portion of the territory under controls realizes it is powerful enough to be its own master. The ensuing conflicts might then topple the whole thing. That's how the Ottoman Empire fell for example.
Disintegration is always a risk for large entity.
Yes, by those next in line. They fall when those one step down from power takes it. That they might use the average citizen to gain power and that it might make it better for them than before is a side effect. It's the same in democratic elections. The average citizen never get the power, it is transferred to someone who might or might not be more aligned with their wishes.
They don't topple, they are toppled.
In retrospect, yes, it's fallacious thinking from the protesters if they thought they could successfully press for change just via the protests. But that's in retrospect, previously it might have worked. But as you suggest, the Chinese state is in a position where it doesn't have to care and will happily exterminate the protests. Only answer then is violence, but in this situation the only actors capable of that are other states. In which case, peaceful protest, not fighting back seems the logically correct thing to do -- the protestors require the moral high ground and to focus attention on the issue, which they did very successfully. Whether that has much effect -- probably not, China is ridiculously powerful, but they couldn't do much more (I mean, taken to Gandhian logical extremes, recognition of the failure of the non-violent protest should have been followed mass suicide of all the protesters, which is grotesque but hey, that's Gandhi for you).
Not exactly, it actually did work at least once. Protests in HK had been previously successful at stopping a national security law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_(Legislative.... The official protest demands were actually pretty modest, and I think even the biggest one (a fully elected government) is actually called for in the Basic Law.
> But as you suggest, the Chinese state is in a position where it doesn't have to care and will happily exterminate the protests.
It's worth noting that one of the protest anthems was "Do You Hear the People Sing?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Hear_the_People_Sing%3F) from Les Misérables, which is (in part) about a crushed pro-Democracy movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_the_ABC, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Rebellion).
Edit: but that isn't nonviolent protest, it's just leaving your home. It doesn't cause any political change, and it's not at all the logical extreme of nonviolent protest (the logical extreme is stupid, and seems only to have ever been carried out by millenarian cults, but hey ho).
I would love to give those people a home. People seeking freedom are the ones I want in my country, much more than the powerful people trying to seize more power for themselves.
> [The Spectacle] defines the program of the ruling class and presides over its formation, just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries.
Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWorld.
Do you think that the West exported this spectacle-based theory of change?
"Jihad and McWorld are two sides of the same coin. Jihad is already McJihad" https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm
The protest itself is not effective, or at least doesn't change the current day order. But it signals an important opposition to a certain rule that a smart politician should pick up.
> The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes.
You are wrong. China does care a lot for its image. More than you'd expect. China does give a bunch of money to improve its image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foreign_aid); certainly less than the US but it is sizable and also smarter. They are building popular stuff (like hospitals) in the middle of nowhere and making lots of fanfare about it as well as putting their flags. And no, these are not loans, these are grants (ie: free money!).
The coronavirus and current US-led media campaign did damage the Chinese reputation a lot. But here is where you might be lost: China doesn't really care about the educated western population and the western population in general.
> The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.
It's a process. Protests are a manifestation of discontent, and are a good indicator when no transparent voting mechanism is in place. It gives the US good leverage against China by weighing discontent. Sure, it makes no changes, but that's because we live in a distorted world where democracy for small countries is possible.
Democratically, independent and small countries like New Zealand are only possible today because of the world order the US has placed. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping China from walking to New Zealand and declaring it New China.
This sounds a bit outlandish to me. I respect what your sub message might be but in real world scenario it's quite exaggerated.
I thought it's worth having an intellectual debate to encourage a better world for everyone, not just polarised opinions that's all.
A collapse of the current status-quo (pax-americana) will force a re-organization of the world map. There is a reason why some countries have disputed claims that they didn't act on (although, militarily, they are within their reach). Such an act will have consequences on the world stage (UN) unless you have a veto-friend.
But if this system is no longer enforced, we'll be back to circles of influences; and any military action that has a positive yield will be executed.
This "but protests must be peaceful!!!" attitude that persists in Western countries and grew in popularity with the '68 generation is actually reproduced by (mostly conservative) politicians these days, as it's easy to simply ignore a peaceful protest.
Just compare worker protection and social security regulations in France (where unions and people literally fight, to wide approval in society and media) vs Germany (where the population is kept docile and any protest that even only looks non-peaceful gets decried in media).
This can be probably applied on a lot of other former colonies.
Also, former Czechoslovakia in 1989 - the loss of communism. A lot of people back there think mass peaceful protests finished the era. But the fact is, the army declared 100% support of ruling communist party, and they would go with tanks to major cities if ordered and crushed the crowds. After shooting would start, there wouldn't be protests anymore, possibly civil war but highly asymmetric since civilians were not largely armed).
The reality is, eastern bloc was disintegrating due to weakening Soviet influence and its own incoming dissolution. This was in place for last 5 years and top folks knew it (albeit news blocked it all for common citizens to keep things quiet). Once the puppets lost the puppeteer, they didn't feel so confident (which is great, no need for another Yugoslavia back home).
First, that's speculation about an imagined history, not evidence. Regardless, protest can be an influence without, by itself, being decisive. Protestors don't have absolute power (a horrible idea, even to most protestors!). No single factor is decisive by itself.
It's hard to organize a protest if there's not already a societal development for that cause.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-str...
There's also the dynamic systems viewpoint: between two "attractor states" the tipping point sits on a locally almost flat region. So a transition from one "stable" potential well to an other goes through these confusing no one's lands. Sure, the speed of transition is unknown, and obviously depends on a lot of things like how strong the attractors are (how deep the wells are), and how strong is the societal push - to push society uphill.
But just as there are no protests in North Korea, there is no need to protest for free speech in the US. (That's a crude analogy, yes. I know that free speech is a hot topic nowadays, but the point I'd like to make is that the "political speech against the state is protected by the state" is absolutely unquestioned, the debate is about how tolerant folks ought to be of racists/homophobes/xenophobes.) And between these two extremes there's a lot of countries. And somewhere in the middle it seems that protests happen, but it doesn't matter. (Eg. in Russia. Protests happen, but Putin is still king. Similarly in China [0] ... but in both cases it seems that the authoritarianism is getting stronger. But we don't know what society thinks. Are they getting completely brainwashed, like in NK? [1] In Russia and Belarus people seem to be aware that it could be better, but the current power structure is very efficient in crushing opposition, so people instead drink a lot and die early.)
[0] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/college-merger-protes...
Marginalized people usually serve as a sink for the rage and violence of people who are in power but are still bitter because an imperfect world remains perfect. Usually, these marginalized people simply eat those injuries, protecting society's stability. With riots; with graphic images of police beatings and murders plastered on TV and the internet; with infrastructure shutdowns; with resumed talk of things like police reform, social justice, and reparations, these people instead conserve and then redirect that rage and violence back out to the larger society to deal with. It's understandable that many do not like this disturbance of their peace, but that's kind of the point. And BLM et al. are not manufacturing it out of whole cloth; it's simply the intolerable oppression of an imperfect society, visited upon people who are used to shuffling it off onto lessers.
You must be one example of somebody that live mostly in peaceful democratic society. You've never seen actual blood, war, limbs, raped girls, beheaded people? heads rolling and kicked down like a soccer ball? girls with vaginas stuck by sticks? I've seen a few, and it happened in a city, in.a.fucking.riot You wanna know how many people died? 1500 fucking people you fucking idiot. In a big fucking city. The army had to come down to quell the riot.
BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise we normal people don't give a fuck about their message is. There are many people out there than just Black people. A lot of immigrants for example, don't generally give a shit about what happened this past 2 years about BLM this BLM that. They just want their stores not to be burned by these uncivilized people. No they don't have fucking insurance you fucking idiot.
BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise be prepared to be gunned down. I don't care who he/she/it. Travel my property, burn my property, get ready for a lead in the head.
I am not a Trump supporter, and as a matter of fact a Democrat, voted for Biden. but I'll lick Trump's boots and vote hard hard hard right if it means that I can prevent of defunding the police and keep the order.
The politicians that do not condemn the riot and supporting defunding the police are simply out there for political points. They need to go down!
The very good news is that those aren't realistic risks in the U.S.. Beyond mass lynchings in the South (e.g., Tulsa) - a major exception - they haven't happened in US history, and even then I haven't heard of horrors that extreme. And note that those mass lynchings (and individual lynchings) were conducted by the people in power, not protestors against it.
We can't gun people down because we are afraid. Someone breaking a bottle or a window shouldn't be killed - that would be murder. The people in power often are the worst threat to order.
Consider the disorder people suffer when they are oppressed and abused, often physically, by the state, for example when police beat, shoot, and arrest them for things they didn't do, and they are imprisoned for much of their life. Do those people deserve justice and order like you and I do? Should they be able to walk down a street and conduct their lives in peace? If you get assaulted by a police officer or a mugger, what's the difference? (In fact the former is worse - you can't fight back, and the consequences are imprisonment.)
> A lot of immigrants for example, don't generally give a shit ...
Can you back this up, both that immigrants have opinions that differ from the public and that they match what you say?
Immigrants are also targets of police brutality, and have a whole division of government, ICE, that under Trump seemed to embrace cruelty toward them.
Now imagine that instead of post-war British, the colonial regime were held by their contemporary Stalin. How much would a peaceful protest achieve?
They simply had no capacity to control a country like India on the other side of the world in their state at the end of WW2, so might as well save as much face while they can.
It does seem like opposing nonviolent and violent factions who reject each other works better than just one.
Northern Ireland, Malcolm X/MLK, etc.
My opinion is that the fear of marxism permeating the civil right movement (especially the BPP) and starting to reach the Latino and disfavored white people (the "rainbow movement" if i remember correctly) did strike fear into the US government (hence the assassination of Fred Hampton, who really started this). This fear allowed to Civil right movement to be successful, because ethnic tension, while useful to exploit a minority, is not worth the danger to the social order.
Most of people in China understand the value of rule of law. And we never deny that the environment there is far from any democratic western society. But if you read the article and are the readers of the mentioned media outlets you would agree a bit that those are a little dubious (Post852, Winandmac Media etc, Apple Daily included). It's definitely not good to have a sweeping ban, but pretending all non-mainland chinese media is pro democracy and liberal values and not populist (sometimes provocative and radicalised) to attract viewers is a little naive in my humble opinion.
Well, you can express your point of view, but don't tell everyone else what they think. If imperfection were a sin to deny rights and power, then who would have rights and power? Certainly not the Chinese government!
Again, how do you know what I think? I'm not as dumb as you think.
> Any chinese will know for sure they will be shut for some reason such as crossing a redline. Whether that's right or wrong it's your judgement.
It's not my judgement, it's a matter of human rights. Whether I judge it so or not, those people have a right to act and speak freely. It's not up to me (or you or the CCP).
Without a precise definition we cannot have a fruitful discussion.
Sure in a western democracy it's fine (given that there's at least some alignment with party interest). But once it gets a lot of attention and an influencer status then the authoritarian gov won't let it grow further without consequences for sure. 'Redline' is a bad term but it's usually separatist, discrimination speech etc. Not all 'pro-democracy' media are targeted because they are simply not big enough yet.
Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily defending any side, just want to discuss more nuances.
If you mean that in a democracy, publications need "at least some alignment with party interest", that's certainly not the case. However, given the multitude of political interests, the publication is bound to align somewhat with someone.
(Also, I disagree with the term "western democracy": Taiwan is Chinese and has a thriving democracy, as did Hong Kong until recently, plus there's Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia, India, Chile, Benin, etc etc. Democracy hasn't been 'western' for generations.)
However, I wonder a bit if this thread is becoming overly critical. I am aware that in any dictatorship, they allow some outlets - as long as they don't grow too powerful, as you say.
That's a false equivalency, like saying 'people in Pyonyang aren't perfectly free, nor are people in New York, so it's basically the same.' It's not at all the same.
Unless you are drawing an equivalency between the CCP censored and created information on one hand, and the New York Times and Jonathan Spence on the other, I don't see what the point is.
'No information is perfect'? A similar claim is, 'no composer writes flawless music', but that tells us nothing about anything; it fails even to distinguish between Bach and me.
It's not fallacious. It has worked in the past and continue to work even to this day. Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; when they are allowed in the first place. Violet uprisings rarely lead to positive change and mostly end up in either worse conditions or disaster.
Most Western governance are inheritors of violent revolutions of some sort, which people tend to be aware of but take for granted. The US has made it a point to elevate the right to bear arms as a natural right. The UK on the other hand arrest people for tweets. HK never had guns to begin with.
Are they? Remember, a successful violent "protest" is often just retroactively called by a different name, like "revolution" or "coup d'état", it's not as if they're fundamentally different things. How do you compare those to successful peaceful protests?
Mobs don't win wars, they merely destroy and the rest is left to fate, often with disastrous results(see Libya as an example).
Mobs can't sit at the negotiation table
Mobs can't agree to treaties and enforce them
Mobs can't form proper functioning and recognized government.
You seriously can't think of any counterexamples to that? Like maybe some French (contemporary and historical), German or Russian counterexamples?
People always forget that the Russian Revolution was followed by war between the Whites and the Reds.
First, it's not 'westerners'. Democracy and peaceful protest are embraced throughout the world: All of North and South America, with few exceptions; almost all of Europe; Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines to extents, India, countries in Africa, etc. And protests happen outside democracy and go back long before it. Gandhi was protesting in a dictatorship; MLK was too, in many ways (it was in many ways a dictatorship for African-Americans).
But what an odd world we have become, where people go out of their way to tell each other these things contrary to what is all around them. As a simple example, look at all the policing and legal reforms, all the social changes, that have happened in response to the George Floyd protests. The Arab Spring happened not long before that. People invest enormous amounts of time and effort in changing public opinion, and causing/stopping protest. Despair seems like a dumb, unpleasant trend.
The people in power want you to think you are powerless; it obviously suits them for you to believe it. Similarly, to suppress votes they say 'your vote doesn't count' - something I've encountered in poor communities. The power is actually yours. History is filled with protests changing the world.
Governments have power only from the consent of the governed. Like the fiat power behind currency, the government's power comes from people giving them that authority - the government says you must do X, and people choose to listen. They don't have nearly enough other power to survive without it, including - or especially including - non-democratic governments. If nobody listens to them, who are they? Just some people talking (ironically, similar to what authoritarians try to say about protestors - nobody listens). What is their authority? And if people don't go to work, if the streets are filled with protest, then it affects many more interests than those in office. You can see why some in power try to spread this idea that you have none.
Protests also demonstrate and galvanize public opinion. People sitting home and feeling alone and powerless are no threat; other people telling them that that they are powerless are ideal. When people see others taking action, when they see they are not alone, then they act.
Sure, life is more complicated than that. Few things happen only because of a protest, but that's just because the world is too complicated for simple solutions. But to say protests aren't a huge factor is really a fantasy of authority, and they push it for a reason. The world is yours.
I mean we're talking about the same government on the bad side of the Tank Man photo. I think that's kind of obvious.
The difference is in HK I don't think people were anticipating China to completely break the Basic Law and the handover agreement. They were protesting the elected HK government, not Beijing directly.
I don't think it's ever been correct to say the HK government was elected. It had some elected elements, but they were never in the majority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Ko....
IIRC, one of the five protest demands was for a fully elected government.
IIRC, they're structured so Bejing's allies would control those seats, with few exceptions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_(constituency)). I think most of the "voters" are representatives of industry associations and the like.
HK government was never elected. Beijing was always pulling strings from behind
This wasn't case in later stages of the protest, or even early stages. The protestors were gambling against Beijing in the first place, since they clearly didn't trust the local governance nor its ability to meet their demands. And it kinda made it obvious for the latter stage of the protest, that the attack was focus on CCP directly.
Do racists happily admit that they are racists though?
No it was not. Stop peddling CCP propaganda.
I guess some protesters are peaceful, but some are not. Some police are calm but some are violent. Different countries apply different filters in order to get their expected views of Hong Kong.
To use outliers as a counterpoint is meaningless at best, subversive at worse. I constantly see people pointing to the ugly end of bell curves and throw their hands up and say, "both sides are the same" or "it's too complicated" or "it's impossible to know the true story." No, this kind of smug apathy is just a silent approval of the status quo, that it's better to just let things be than to push for messy-but-necessary changes.
You realize they just occupy an university, make molotov inside it and throw it at the garbage truck driver that just want to get home right? It's not "a few person" things.
My account age don't really have any relevance in the argument huh.
The notion that "violence is the way" is retard as fuck. Its not 1960, you don't throw molotov, threaten the Goverment and expect they will bow for you. The only thing you are doing is making the citizen's life miserable and force them to join your battle.
I know it's hard to believe but not everyone are so free care how can I insult the Goverment online everyday.
I understand you are making a stylized appeal for liberal political change via violence. China's leadership has peaks and troughs of liberalism, and violence there, in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and in many other places around the world was followed more often by a hardening, not a softening, of daily life.
Violence in Hong Kong would delay liberalization and usher a vicious and oppressive crackdown.
> legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.
Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize.
What leads you to think this will be the case?
The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. There doesn't seem to be magic formula, and as technology disrupts human interactions it feels like existing liberal democracies are at risk.
I want to share your optimism. Orwell's vision of the future being a boot stomping on a person's head forever feels a little too close to being a reality.
I don't think passively waiting for more benevolent masters is a winning strategy.
I think success largely depends on how democracy arrives - we've seen time and time again that forcing it upon a country (whether by military force or the more skullduggerous, CIA kind of force) is doomed to failure. I believe it needs to come naturally, slowly, over time.
However, it's also a common error of the privileged to consign the suffering to wait for a slow, gradual process that results in their entire lives passing by, and those of their children and grandchildren, etc.
It is more likely there will be a contest for power.
It could become violent, though that is unlikely. In that event, I see no reason to ensure like-minded Chinese are sufficiently armed, or at the very least informed. China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shift.
The Chinese government sustains itself in power through economic growth and nationalism. That then leads to the two most likely factors (in my opinion) to lead to its eventual downfall – (i) if economic growth gets replaced by stagnation or even decline; (ii) a national military humiliation, such as if an attempt to conquer Taiwan turns into a costly failure. And I think either or both factors is likely to happen eventually, but still that could be many decades away. 10 or 20 years from now, the CCP will most likely still be going strong.
On the world stage the focus is on the CCP and China's political regime because it makes selling anti-China campaigns and measures to the public much easier but it is a red herring. If tomorrow the whole of China became a democracy very little to nothing of their key policies and aims would change, the difference would be that the US would have a harder time explaining to us why China is "evil" (the reason being simply that they are getting too powerful for the West).
Is that simply because India is weaker? Or is it because India and the West are closer in values? India has a pluralist political system; China doesn't.
(There are of course some doubts about what direction India is going in given the Modi government, but even given those concerns, India still has far more of a pluralist political system than China does – BJP is in opposition in 7 state legislatures. In China, opposition is illegal.)
But this is irrelevant. In general political regimes hardly matter. The US are best friends with some of the most backward and repressive regimes on the planet, and ruthlessly torpedoed democratic regimes.
It's a matter of interests. India is much weaker than China and is not assertive as a global power. It's not a threat. It also shares interests with the West, not least containing China, with fewer competing interests.
I'm sure that India and the Indian understand China and the Chinese when it comes to the struggle of freeing yourself from foreign imperialism and of fighting your corner.
I think the contemporary US does have a political preference for democratic regimes all else being equal. When the US gets cozy with non-democratic regimes – for example, Middle Eastern states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States – there is usually some other motivation which is felt as more pressing than the desire for democracy – oil, containment of Iran, keeping Israel safe and secure, fears of religious radicalism and terrorism, the fear that if the general populace were allowed to vote for whatever government they want, they'd elect Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. It is not that the US doesn't care about democracy at all, it is just that sometimes it cares about other things more.
> India is much weaker than China and is not assertive as a global power
The Chinese government has attempted to interfere with Australian domestic politics [0]. Obviously that upsets the Australian government (and many people in Australia), and sustaining the US-Australia alliance requires that the US take Australian upset seriously. Some Australians find it particularly offensive given China's hypocritical preaching about "non-interference". The Indian government doesn't make any comparable attempts to interfere with the domestic affairs of US allies, which is part of why the US and its allies have much better relations with India than with China.
[0] see e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence... https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/beijing-controls-chi... https://www.csis.org/analysis/countering-chinas-influence-op...
No idea why you would say that. China's policy focus would immediately change. Domestically it can no longer afford to focus solely on middle/upper-class growth due to the need to appease the majority of the population still living on low wages. The transparency of the decision making would also cause a lot of domestic policies to be revisited. Currently these decisions are made with the public in the dark. That would no longer be acceptable in a democracy.
On foreign policy and the geopolitical front, China will almost certainly pursue a reset with their neighbours. Whether this results in closer cooperation with the west, or continued antagonism remains to be seen. The Chinese military isn't in the same position as the USSR back in the 90s, and China will not inherit the position as the superpower heading the communist regimes. In any case, it will translate to real changes in how China deals with border issues and military expansion in the South China Sea.
I was focussing on foreign policy and geopolitics, which really hasn't changed much since before the PRC.
For instance their policy in the South China Sea is not something dreamt up by the CCP. The "9-dash line" predates the CCP and the PRC. It dates back to the ROC and as such is still the official policy in Taiwan as well (they keep quiet because they are too weak and don't want to piss off neighbours). What's happened is that China is no longer weak and is now able to reassert itself. In a democratic China it's almost certain that nothing would change in the South China Sea, and that has the full support of the Chinese public.
> Whether this results in closer cooperation with the west
This would not because, as I mentioned, the political regime is a red herring here. The antagonisms are caused by China's growing strength and power. China asserts its interests, which are not aligned with the West's. This is not caused by the CCP, this is the profound geopolitical reality.
What's happening is that a superpower that is not Western (in a general sense of European, Christian culture) is appearing, this is more profound than political regimes, which are actually quite superficial. This has not happened for centuries. People have been conditioned to believe that everyone will align with the West and that being a democracy means aligning with the US, but why would that be? That's just propaganda dating from the Cold War, really.
> it can no longer afford to focus solely on middle/upper-class growth due to the need to appease the majority of the population still living on low wages
They are already doing a lot to "appease" the poorest. Economic growth has benefited them a lot and the government is also doing more to alleviate growing inequalities because they know very well that they have to. They are certainly not focussing on "middle/upper-class growth".
I also don't buy the assertion that China's rise as a superpower is somehow more profound than other countries (such as Japan). That just smacks of neo-orientalist sinicism. China's development is modelled on the same export model as Japan's and South Korea's. The difference being whether other advanced economies are willing to absorb and support that model for the remainder of the time that China needs to pivot before succumbing to the middle income trap.
And to your last point, China's GINI coefficient bottomed out in 2015. It has since been rising.
They are occupying the area to assert their claim. I don't see how that would change. They would not abandon their newly built bases or stop Navy patrols. That would be contrary to their sovereignty claim.
There's a lot of propaganda on this topic and people are falling for it. But the reality is that China is only following a standard, tried and tested, way to assert sovereignty claims: They occupy the place.
The neighbouring countries, including democracies, are doing exactly the same.
> I also don't buy the assertion that China's rise as a superpower is somehow more profound than other countries (such as Japan).
It's obviously different because China is a superpower. Japan and South Korea are not, they are too small, they both fell under the US's dominance, in part by military means. China is directly challenging US's dominance because it's actually larger than the US are and the Us cannot bully them into submission. That's what's new. The US are used to be in charge, like the Europeans used to be before them. A period of absolute Western dominance that started almost 500 years ago is coming to an end.
They can stop expanding military bases in contested areas for a start. That's already a big change in policy.
> A period of absolute Western dominance that started almost 500 years ago is coming to an end.
What makes China a superpower and Japan not? What economic indicators are you using? Or the UK, France, and India for that matter? Nuclear powers that are able to flatten the population centres of countries on command.
Treating 'The West' as a monolithic entity is just the mirror image of neo-orientalism. In terms of alignment, the ideological chasm between the 1st World / 2nd World during the cold war was larger than the gap between China and the other advanced economies currently. China, having reformed its economy, is more similar to Spain, which resolved a lot of its geopolitical problems after the transition to democracy in the late 70s and early 80s.
The only baggage that China has in terms of geopolitics is the constant navel gazing at the 1800s and Qing's humiliation by the colonial powers. This is a Chinese nationalist narrative that is stoked by the party, but one that doesn't resonate at all with the younger generations.
If you believe that Xi Jinping has Chinese’s best interest at heart, and he believes that in 2018 China was still under turmoil that only he can manage to get them through, and that he was still (relatively) young even now. Then it is conceivable he would step down in a few years or so in his 70s. Yes, it’s best if your President can’t change the constitution at will, but that has never been China and the situation might not be that big of a shift
It didn't change. It's foolish to not to acknowledge that communists been in power in China all along.
Hu, and Wen were just very convenient fronts the party let the West, and its populace see, while it was pulling strings from behind, and bidding time for the comeback in force.
The West, its politicians, its generals, its intelligence analysts, and its civil society, have been completely bought into that laughably trivial deception.
I don't think sanction is right, and I don't think sanction does anything good to countries being sanctioned. And I believe when people's living standard rise, every country will be more democratic and fair.
Is China's political system the reason US is not happy about? I don't think so. It was the same political system 10 years ago, 20 years ago. The reason is that China is stronger now. Unless US has a direct influence on China, it will not tolerate a competitor regardless the political system.
Neither country can cripple the economy of the other through sanctions without broad international support. I suspect that in the decades to come, neither nation will command the level of respect required to garner said international support.
Based on what evidence?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-viole...
Bonus:
> the techniques were on full display in British police violence against miners during the 1984-1985 strike
I don’t mean to offend, but your comment is so short that I can tell what kind of context you are trying to add.
If you're in the oppression business you have to be a bad one.
We all wish there weren't oppressive regimes, but there are.
It's a very powerful symbol that if things don't work out violence is on the table and people are going to be held accountable. For those who know a little French history, you know that those French people don't fuck around.
Absolutely nothing to do with "the people" holding "government" accountable.
However you re so very right: protests movements in the west are barely responsible for change. What s responsible for change is slow and long discussion among the population, progressive education, love of the debate rather than pursuit of efficiency, and in general the acceptance we re all part of the nation, not just a minority group.
When most chinese will see us as them and we ll see them as us, then it ll get better. Until then, we cant even start a debate: we're trators, they're invaders.
By then, many Hong Kongers had been protesting, arrested, beaten and worse. The reason we Hong Kongers did not and have not stopped is because there has been no justice for them.
That's the principle behind 5 demands, not 1 less.
I agree that some systems are better than others, and there is still hope for better ones to come. But let’s not kid ourselves into believing China has done anything terrible that the USA has not already done in spades.
> it’s hard to say at the scope of world powers
No it's not, at all. Some governments and forms of government are far more corrupt than others. Nobody compares Sweden or the US with Russia or Nigeria.
> They span the gamut, and they span democracy through authoritarian regimes. The only difference is how it’s conveyed/portrayed to citizens ... let’s not kid ourselves into believing China has done anything terrible that the USA has not already done in spades.
Nobody's kidding anyone; unless you look back centuries, China does things - such as in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Tienanmen Square - that the USA never does. There's no comparison. The USA is not about to round up the populace of a region and put them in torture and reducation camps.
I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective.
This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes.
The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.