I live in HK since I was born and is still in HK now, I agree that there are gaps between the western media and the reality, but I think they are not far from the truth.

I was not involved in political activities at all, but still went out to protest for the first (and last, currently) time in 2019. The situation escalated quickly, and for reasons that I cannot understand, some protesters started to act violently, which we know from history that the CCP will not compromise and protestors have no chance of winning the fight... And then there is the national security law, using the pandemic as an excuse to ban every protests, etc. People either leave or become silent.

Actually I am not sure why I would want to write this, perhaps I just wanted to say something like this for a long time but was too afraid to. Some of the protesters were illogical at the time, so saying that their action is naive and will only worsen the situation may cause me trouble. Writing these now may trigger the police, although I don't think they will arrest me due to this alone.

Thank you for your reply. I agree with it. I am non-native, but I lived in HK for many years during the protests. (Frankly speaking, I am a die-hard social liberal!)

I also lived in Hongkong during the last rounds of protests. One of the comments I frequently heard from foreigners from stable, highly-functioning democracies: "I cannot condone (support) violence during political protests." On the surface, it sounds great -- very pithy (short, succint)! Then, I thought a long time about it. Peaceful protests mostly do not work in non-democracies (dictatorships). For me, this is the reason why transition to democracy in Taiwan, (South) Korea, and Indonesia was so violent. (OMG: Go and read about Korea. It reads like a civil war. Protesters stole automatic weapons from police stations to used against the police. It was crazy!)

If readers are unfamiliar with the transition to democracy for these three countries, or the current state of affairs, I strongly recommend a "rabbit hole" deep-dive on Wiki. You will be impressed! And when you observe these three democracies from afar, you will be further impressed by their passion to create a great society that is governed by the people. People in their 50s sound like high school students from highly functioning democracies when they discuss government affairs. It is very inspiring!

A different angle: When you live in a highly functioning democracy, protests of any size always capture the attentions of politicians (members of parliment, etc.). Why? Because they represent the people, and they can lose the next election if they do not listen. In low functioning/non-democracies, protests can be ignored and protesters arrested / beaten / gassed. Why? Because accountability is so low.

I will never forget walking through a Hongkong wet market to buy groceries (veg, fish, etc.) and being tear-gassed by the HK riot police. Yes, I regularly attended protests, but on that day, I was simply shopping for a weekend meal. Their annoucements were only in Cantonese. The domestic helpers (Indos and Fils) in the market were terrified. It was an all-out assault on humanity. I sent careful documentation of the event and evidence to the police, but my complaint was entirely ignored. I knew this would happen, but still, I filed my complaint.

At the peak of the 2019 protests, there were unjustified, daily beatings by police of protesters. An unimaginable amount of mobile phone video footage was captured, but not a single HK police officer ever faced the court system for their appalling behaviour. They was an incident on the HK metro where police officers boarded a train to confront protesters peacefully delaying service. It was a particularly grotest display of police brutality. They swung metal batons at unarmed civilians causing so much harm. (These YouTube videos were later used in Taiwan election adverts!) It does not mean that every protester was innocent, but you will never win peacefully against a dictatorship. Sadly, violence is required. (See Burma / Myanmar!)

At some point, HK gov't pledged to create an international council to help them decide how to handle arrests on both sides. Once the foreigners selected saw the total lack of accountability, 100% of them resigned from the board. It was a collassal embarassment to the still paper-thin democratic system in HK.

Yes, it is hard to win peacefully against a dictatorship, but I don't think the chance of winning via violence is high either. I am kind of gave up at that point, not hoping for something better, just wish that the situation would not worsen too much.

To be honest, I think technology is increasing the power imbalance between the public and the ruler. We have AI for surveillance system that can track the activity of every single citizen. The media and social media can overload most of the people with useless information, distracting them from the important issues. Advanced weapons so people have no chance in winning the fight if the authority don't care about casualties.

Were they plants by the ccp to justify violently putting down the protests?

That's the wrong thinking. During the BLM protests, there were almost certainly people who went too far, or took advantage of the chaos to create mayhem. They were not plants by the conservative right, it's just a natural thing that happens, people are unreliable like that.

During the HK protests, I can imagine the same thing happening. Actually, in only a few cases where a strong leader and organization is involved (MLK, Gandhi, etc...) can protests be largely peaceful and more effective (not giving the other side an excuse to crackdown without losing face, and even these movements weren't perfect).

I like your post, and I feel the same. If 100K protesters show up to protest about a police killing (BLM, et al), but 5 misbehave, does that mean all 100K are bad people? Of course, no. I would say exactly the same about the police. I write this as someone who respects the work that police do to secure our communities, but I also strongly support the BLM protests against grotestque police brutality against black and brown people in the United States.

Of course in a large crowd there's going to be a violent minority - that's just statistics.

Yet, planted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur are a well documented and widely used tactic. It has proven to be effective in many cases to justify a reaction in the eyes of public opinion.

> Yet, planted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

A planted agent definitely in the realm of possibility, but it is just more likely that some kids took a chance to get angry, violent, and cause chaos. Some combination could also have happened (e.g. a plant takes advantage of enraging people who are already closed to being enraged). In all cases, better leadership and some practiced discipline that comes with that could have helped avoided the problems.

You can't run for the local legislature unless you are approved. They stop some people from leaving at the airport if they protested. They arrest you for minor acts of resistance like the color of your shirt. They removed statues that were commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. If you are a westerner then maybe you can keep living your life though.

The fact that you can talk this nonsense here proves the difference between HK and the west.

> Your country does all these things.

You're simply not being serious. In the US you can commemorate any massacre that happened in the US. In Hong Kong you're no longer allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

Who isn't being serious here?

In parts of USA you are forbidden from glorifying the biggest separatist crisis, the Civil War. The US government actively destroys monuments to the separatist side of the civil war.

Please, get a broader perspective.

This is a flat out lie.

You can absolutely glorify the south in the civil war, and people do it. You can even do things that most consider abhorrent, you can glorify slavery if you want, speak positively about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. You can glorify the assassination of any US president who was assassinated in fact. Some people won't like it, but you can do it and no state goons are going to come disappear you in the night. It is not illegal anywhere in the US.

Do any of those things publicly in the average US city and let me know how that works out for your career (and therefore ability to afford housing and healthcare).

The government allowing you to celebrate slavery doesn’t mean fellow citizens are obliged to employ you. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from repercussions.

This supports my thesis that America's primary value is anti-authoritarianism and doesn't actually care about human rights.

The diminishment of authoritarianism is a necessary precondition for human rights.

Complete nonsense. Authority is necessary to guarantee human rights when you are dealing with groups of more than ~1000 people. Anarchy at that scale leads to massive human rights violations.

Americans/Anglos are historically inept at governance and concluded that all governments are inept and evil.

I believe we’re facing a language barrier, not a core philosophical disagreement.

Authoritarianism is government by absolute (or near absolute) control of a single body. North Korea, China, Russia being prime examples.

De facto or de jure?

If de jure, than neither USA nor PRC are authoritarian because both have multiple political parties.

If de facto, than both USA and PRC or authoritarian. USA in particular is governed by an unelected establishment of NatSec/Finance/Oil elites; an oligarchy in the purest sense. Who elected Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan to orchestrate the Ukraine wedge?

In the US elected representatives in a few places have decided to remove statues of proponents of slavery, after significant public pressure. This is not happening to statues commemorating deaths of soldiers or protestors. And nothing stops you from waving a confederate flag and "celebrating your heritage" if that is your belief system. Actually, the state-funded police department would at least pretend to send officers to separate you from counter-protesters and attempt to make sure both sides are protected. This seems quite different from removing statues commemorating student protests (that went bloody due to state violence)

I guarantee you that more Chinese people approve of their government's approach to separatism than the Americans do.

i.e. more Americans per capita support the Confederacy than Chinese support Western separatist movements in China.

If you have been to both places, this should be obvious.

That is true (and pretty obvious), but the attitude to separatism was not remotely relevant to my argument, which is the whole point.

If most people support it, then it is the will of the people. To oppose that would be undemocratic. Not that complicated.

On the contrary, an equally important base principle of the modern democracies coming out of the Enlightenment is that the minority should be protected from the "tyranny of the majority"[1]. Don't get me wrong, it is easy to agree with you that the majority of the Chinese people might enjoy the strong-arm stability provided by their totalitarian government, but there is no way around the fact that minority opinions in China frequently get brutally stomped out, while minority opinions in (flawed) democracies like the US have many (imperfect) protections.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Maybe no country should do these things.

Maybe start in your own country instead of a distant country that just happens to be the primary enemy of your own authoritarian regime.

I have relatives in Russia. There is a big gap between how they see the current world and how it's reported in the western media. For them Russia is the last really independent and free country in the world.

> independent and free

If we interpret this to mean independent and free to set its own foreign policy, independent of conformance to the global rules-based order, then I think it’s true. There is pride in answering to no-one. Unfortunately they appear to be using that freedom to trample on the freedom of other countries.

And thus using that freedom to paint themselves into an ever-smaller corner.

There is also no freedom of press or politics. No freedom to criticise Putin.

Yea the country can be free of external influence, while the people are not free. Or v. versa. Or both, or neither.

To be clear, this isn’t the “I can do what I want” kind of freedom, this is the “my country can do what it wants” kind of freedom, right? Because if we’re talking about personal freedom, then can you help me understand how they square it with an admitted dictatorship and a (reputation for a) culture of “don’t make trouble, just endure it”?

Not the parent poster, but yes, I also have relatives in Russia (for a double helping of irony, some of them are ethnic Ukrainians who have fully drunk the Russian kool-aid), and yes, you are pretty much correct. They don't like to talk about domestic problems, but will happily talk your ear off about how under Putin, the south^w^wRussia will rise again on the international stage.

They are, of course, utterly delusional.

I also have friends in Russia, and second this.

Western Russia? Am curious if they have shared any thoughts on their economic situation?

Yes, western Russia. For them (and I'm afraid that for majority) there isn't much difference - they are getting their income from state and the only problem they really see is that some things are becoming suddenly much more expensive. But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times. Disappearing McDonalds, Ikea etc are just signs that USA controls the world and are lame attempts to damage Russia.

If one ever wanted to know what's happening in the mind of a frog that is being boiled slowly, this is probably the closest approximation. These people don't understand where the country is going, and when it gets there, they will not be able to recognize what events led to that place, allowing politicians to perpetuate the same nonsensical lies all over again. It sounds dramatic, but I believe the country is doomed and on its way down it will take its neighbors with it.

Can someone explain this frog in boiling water reference. I had never heard it before and now I have seen it on HN 4 times in 24 hours. What gives?

It’s a fairly common idiom in eastern US at least.

Slowly increase temperatures so so frogs in the water don’t realize they’re in danger. It’s not a real thing though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

> But for people remembering soviet times it isn't serious tragedy - they (or their parents) have seen it many times

I’ve seen this stated before but it seems very confusing. Widespread poverty sucks. There’s no way people are fine with returning to it because they saw it decades ago. Surely nobody thinks that’s ok?

It's complicated (surprise). But much of it comes from deep russian culture - there has been no private ownership concept. The tsar is the only owner of everything and gives or takes if he decides to do so. It doesn't matter how rich and/or powerful you are. People are just used to it that rulers sometimes give and sometimes take all back. "Lost everything? It's normal, life goes on."

I don’t see how that could possibly be true in western russia. Eastern Russia, sure. They’re poor and under the government boot for the memorable past. But western Russia? Like Moscow? There’s no way people still feel like that.

I'm not trying to be mean, but, perhaps your relatives are watching too much state TV. I also have relatives in there, and, unfortunately, a lot among the elder generation are irreversibly brainwashed.

The US is far from blameless about our actions in the world, but that doesn't excuse the attack on their own citizens in Russia or China. To see the ultimate difference between the US and China and Russia, make a public comment criticizing the government in public, on TV, in the newspaper. In the US, I don't lose my job, the police don't come to my house, I am not ostracized by my neighbor. Maybe I'm encouraged to write editorials to expand on my ideas or even run for office. Whether I'm supporting the current leader or government or the opposition candidate from a previous election, I'm still free. In China or Russia you are not. No one monitored my high school teachers via camera to see if they reported anything that was against the party rule.

Untill they say the word "war" in public.

I think most of us are aware of how propaganda works.

I too lived in HK during the protests. The protests were both about lofty things like political self-determination and about mundane things like access to housing.

Since the protests, their politics is completely controlled by the mainland; their last bits of wiggle room removed. I remember clearly the lead up to and results of the 2019 district election, with its unprecedented turnout and results. I'm curious what you feel the gap was since I rarely read western media about the protests while I lived there.

I've seen how local media manipulates things here in Latin America, so I'm not surprised from the inside it looked good, looking from the outside it seems like the democracy was eroded / destroyed, with Cuban-style elections where the candidates are appointed by the Chinese government.

Autonomous in name, but the politics have changed dramatically as laws have changed. It's not the same Hong Kong.

So you can pop on down to your local news stand and still find the Apple Daily?

We need more of these comments, but with video and please elaborate!

Some important things have happened since the protests.

Hard to me more incorrect. Unbelievable.