NO PEACE
INOSLAV BEŠKER WRITES FOR GLOBUS: ANOTHER BATTLE FOR HONG KONG A new episode in the Cold War between the USA and China
The announced Chinese national security law for Hong Kong is provoking renewed protests in that former British colony that has long served as the main trade gateway of the People’s Republic of China.
Last year’s mass protests in Hong Kong erupted when a local government, heavily relied on Beijing, drafted a law that would allow the extradition of convicted persons from Hong Kong to mainland China. The law was withdrawn, but not definitively repealed. The current announced law is even worse: it would allow the arrest and punishment of those who would oppose Chinese laws in the most normal democratic procedure, because that could also be incriminated as an attempt to secede Hong Kong from China. And slightly more violent protests could be treated as terrorism. With easily conceivable court consequences.
So now it is not just about democracy, vaguely in general, but the right to publicly advocate views that are not to Beijing’s liking. And that's terrible.
That bill served U.S. President Donald J. Trump as a wonderful occasion to put pressure on the Chinese, but not to support Hong Kongers in their rights, but to further soak the blood of the Beijing-led regime of Xi Jinping .
Trump's national security adviser Robert O'Brien has threatened that Washington will impose sanctions on China and Hong Kong if Beijing passes a national security law on Hong Kong territory - Hina reported. "It's hard to see how Hong Kong will remain an Asian financial hub if China takes it over," Robert O'Brien told NBC, adding that it would be a "big mistake for Beijing."
The concern for the democratic rights of the Chinese in Hong Kong, where protesters are exposed to police pressure, arrests and trials, is certainly commendable. The problem is that the police reaction to the protests in American cities after the heartless cold-blooded and somewhat sadistic police assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis markedly unmasks Washington's alleged concerns for democracy and human rights around the world. The system is different, it doesn’t need to be proven, but the style is damn similar.
Chinese authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong claim that the new national security law in Hong Kong will endanger only a handful of troublemakers who threaten China's national security vain laborers, yet it is not the first time, at least not in propaganda, from the Inquisition to agitprop, that a handful of unadapted justice is a violent adaptation of the supposedly adapted). They further say that this is necessary after the fierce and occasionally violent anti-government protests that hit Hong Kong last year. Exactly what American sovereignists are saying in the midst of fierce and occasionally violent protests against police brutality, and above all impunity, across the United States now. Trump wasn't evacuated from the White House on Sunday because he was threatened, not even because he threatened the protesters that he would let bloodthirsty dogs on them, but to illustrate how the security of the States was endangered, and not of the poor peripheral blacks. And Richard “Tricky Dick” M. Nixon won the election when the protests frightened a peaceful citizen.
Hong Kong (actually Xianggang) is a specific Chinese city. It has about 7.5 million inhabitants, of whom 92 percent are Hani (Chinese). It has the world’s tenth largest gross domestic product of about $ 65,000 a year. For comparison, China's GDP per capita is sixty-seventh in the world and amounts to almost $ 21,000, less than Croatia's (slightly more than $ 29,000 guarantees Lijepa Naša the fifty-fifth place in the ranking).
The British noticed its geoeconomic potential while it was a small fishing island settlement. When China lost the Opium War (1839-1842), which was imposed completely unjustly by the Melbourne government (because China prevented English illegal imports of opium into China), it had to cede Hong Kong, which has since been a crown colony. It has been joined since 1860 by the Kowloon Peninsula, and since 1898 by the New Territory, leased for 99 years. The People's Republic of China and the United Kingdom met in 1984 - when they were led by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher - agreed that China would take over Hong Kong in 1997, which would become a separate administrative area of China, and that for the next 50 years it would retain a capitalist economic system and internal autonomy with multi-party democracy, independent judiciary, freedom of speech and legislative autonomy.
It was a time when mainland China, recovering from the "Cultural Revolution", was ruled by pragmatic Deng, when China was still economically and technologically backward, when porto franco in Hong Kong suited it economically - but there was also a political moment. Namely, the People's Republic of China, declaring the policy of "one state - two systems", calculated that it would succeed in returning the island of Taiwan (or Formosa) to its sovereignty, where, having lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party, the former Chinese dictator Jiang Jieshi Chiang Kai-shek). His regime lost the right to Chinese membership in the United Nations and a permanent seat on the Security Council in 1971, when Nixon agreed to take over the Mao regime of the People’s Republic of China. At that time generalissimus Jiang or Chiangalready dead, his son and heir Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988.
Deng introduced elements of Western capitalism into Chinese state capitalism (his thesis was known that it did not matter whether a cat was black or white, but whether it hunted mice). It can be deduced that he thought it would be possible to merge the capitalism of Taiwan and Hong Kong, economically developed but in smaller areas, with Chinese party capitalism, led by the national red oligarchy (which itself was then personally oriented towards enrichment).
On the other hand, the United States, at a time of concessions to Beijing, passed the 1979 Law on Relations with Taiwan, which states that endangering the social and economic status of the Taiwanese population would be a threat to the United States, binding the president and Congress on "appropriate action."
By the way, Taiwan's gross domestic product per capita is - according to the IMF - between twelfth and thirteenth in the world and amounts to more than $ 57,000, Hong Kong is between tenth and eleventh with about $ 66,500, and far ahead of it is Macau (Chinese: Ao Men), with more than $ 113,000 (Qatar alone has even more, and above 100,000 are only Luxembourg and Singapore, ethnically also a predominantly Chinese country).
Taiwan has never agreed to join a "one country, two systems", not least because the United States never thought of giving up the geostrategic positions guaranteed by its military presence in Formosa, which Washington has a wealth of state-of-the-art weapons. There is no shortage of strong hands in Taiwan either - President Tsai Ing-wen is certainly not a pattern of indulgence - but the covid 19 crisis has shown that the Chinese system there is more effective than the mainland Chinese, that it is, if not better, certainly less bad. Simply put: the tiger is more agile than the hippopotamus, which can be deadly by the masses (who does not believe, let him ask the Tibetans or Uighurs, and not all Hani are the same).
The key clause of the 1984 agreement, that Hong Kong will retain a capitalist economic system and internal autonomy with multi-party democracy until 2047, is the basis for various international reactions regarding the escalation of the crisis in Hong Kong.
This is exactly what US President Trump is using, who has announced that he will deprive the Chinese trade and banking center of its privileged status in trade with the United States, which it enjoys as a porto franco. Admittedly, he did not say when, thus holding his threat like the sword of Damocles over Xi's head. However, observers say the threat is not very effective, as China is now far less dependent on trade via Hong Kong than in 1997.
It is also unfortunate that quite a few Hong Kongers have nothing against Beijing’s dominance. The protesters are by no means a "handful", but they are not the majority either. They are damn right in one thing: the spread of Beijing's supremacy will reduce the space for pluralism and democracy, for freedom of speech and legislative autonomy. Their opponents see no danger in this, which they could bitterly regret.
To make relations more murky, it should be noted that the Legislative Council in Hong Kong was not elected directly, on the principle: one citizen - one vote. Members of the Legislative Council are also elected by functional units composed of professional and special interest groups, so they are accountable to their narrow corporate electorate, not to the general public. It is these corporately elected members who have continuously guaranteed a majority in local government since 1997. Most professional groups have a vital interest in a good and harmonious relationship with the authorities in Beijing. The head of the executive branch is not directly elected by the citizens, but by politicians and corporate members of the Election Board. In short, autonomous government in Hong Kong is not representatively democratic, but hybrid with a crucial share of corporatism. It favors one-party authoritarian regimes, so it was introduced by fascist Italy, and one of its variants was the delegate system in Yugoslavia under the 1974 Constitution; which combined Confederalism and corporatism. And Mao's first heirHua Guofeng and the long-running Deng after him, objectively copied and even successfully developed some elements of Titoist one-party capitalism.
Demands that all these functions be elected in direct elections have been persistently rejected. This, logically, frustrates a section of the population, especially the educated youth, to whom it does not suit that their political rights remain a coin for bribing interest-bearing corporations.
Hong Kong is - if you look at it more broadly - just an episode, but a significant one, in the Cold War waged on several parallel fronts by the United States and the People's Republic of China. In the foreground are their leaders, Trump and Xi, both with the reflex of wounded beasts: President Xi saw Washington's aggravation against China as a personal attack and accusations that China, temporarily concealing data on the penetration and coverage of the covidvirus covid 19, brought all makes the world and blames the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and President Trump notices that the pandemic is crumbling his economic successes for which he was not credited and seriously threatening re-election, so he panicked and hectic looking for scapegoats where he can and cannot.
One of the areas of this conflict is Europe, where China is showing its kind face: conquering economic space, not shying away from dumping, focusing particularly on ports (using them as if they were Monopoly stations), fraternizing both left and right. China also uses Africa, an area that Washington no longer really considers, but it is also used in the Pacific, where the USA smokes cold after Pearl Harbor. And Xi is a finger in Taiwan's eye, no less than Cuba was once Kennedy and all his successors except, to some extent, the prudent Obama.
Trump is currently focused on the November presidential election. He’s not a favorite, but it wasn’t 2016 either, so he was elected anyway, even though he had three million fewer votes.
Hong Kong and China (as well as North Korea at one time, which can easily jump out of a bundle of foreign policy cards at the right time, as well as Iran, another in the ghost poker) therefore serve as a God-given distraction from domestic political trouble.
Trump got the biggest one for himself, thanks to his narcissistic arrogance: he underestimated the danger of covid 19, which undermined his main trump card, knocking down social gross domestic product and quadrupled the hitherto record low unemployment rate. In 2016, Trump could blame all possible foreigners and international treaties for unemployment, especially in the Midwestern United States, chanting, "America first!" (so to speak: “über alles”), but it’s a little harder after four years of rule, although he also blamed China for the coronavirus (for him it’s the “Chinese virus,” and he obsessively repeats it, with a serious expression on his face).
For four years he has been tormenting his European partners, who, and due to innate stinginess, have left their defenses in the hands of the United States for 75 years after World War II, whose presidential election they cannot influence. Now, when Europeans would welcome him to show his domestic audience that under him America finally rules the world, Angela Merkel showed him a fresh figure, refusing to attend the G7 summit, a group of seven industrialized countries in the second half of the twentieth century. no more, especially after the Chinese invasion). Like a fox under too tall grapes from Aesop’s fable, Trump said the G7 was no longer important anyway, and postponed the promenade of the mighty, for a month or a fall. By the way, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also showed him the figure .
He also managed to turn his main ideological-propaganda instrument, Twitter, against him, through which he shamelessly spread an incredible pile of recent lies, and then threatened to "regulate" it when he became the company's chief boss Jack Dorsey for the first time (and so far only). came up with and decided to state that some of Trump’s claim in the tweet was unfounded in the facts. Earth, open up! For Trump, the freedom to lie is the essence of freedom of speech.
Trump has brought several of his trade skills into politics (eg the view that bankruptcy is good if it enriches it and impoverishes partners, that it is necessary to threaten and blackmail in order for the agreement to look positive to the extorted, that it is good to borrow over your ears. because it will be paid for by someone after him anyway, and the like). In politics, it turned out, it is not quite the same, because it is a system of connected vessels, and where the valves are closed - osmosis is not excluded. In politics, nothing is bought forever. But Trump sticks to the trade logic demonstrated by Ante Todoric (and he borrowed in 1970 and 1971): if he passes, a handful of beards, and if he doesn't pass, he'll let Joe Biden wipe the blood behind him.
Nor does Xi refrain from threats if he thinks they serve him, whether or not he can put them into action. But he pays attention to subsidiarity, so he delegates the most difficult words to his subordinates, leaving himself free to correct either the sights or the fillings. "China will attack Taiwan if there is no other way to prevent its independence," Li Zuocheng , chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of the Central Military Commission , threatened a few days ago. - so Deng in the time of his rule left it to others to be heads of government or state, and retained only the crucial duty of chairman of the Central Military Commission).
China is also strengthening its military presence in the South China Sea, establishing itself on uninhabited islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. It is an obvious trend of suppressing American supremacy in the Pacific, where Trump - probably unwisely - undermined the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement.
China does not stop building its navy, so every four years it adds tonnage and lethal power to the entire French navy. It is also present in the Indian Ocean, it also appeared in the Persian Gulf. It seeks to install itself as the strongest superpower in the world, which is easier to achieve in military than in economic relations (remember the Soviet Union).
From a European point of view, both Trump and Xi are behaving insufficiently responsibly, too aggressively. Once upon a time, while that word had a different weight, we would say: insufficiently cultural, but in Croatia it would be hypocritical to invite other politicians to be cultural. Not even those on whose culture our survival depends, at least to some extent.
We do not plead for the Union to compete with bastards. But perhaps it would benefit more cohesion and less imitation of bastards, more audacity in investing (not just money) in its own economic and security strength. And in education.
In all this, one should not be deceived that either "Brother Xi" (as he is called in Belgrade) or "The Donald" are independent variables that operate guided by their own abilities and their own temperament. Personal traits give color to their voices, but the score they sing is dictated by the long-term economic, political and geostrategic interests of two superpowers: ancient China, which rises again and aspires to the first place in the world it broke the bones not only of Tibetans and Uyghurs, but especially of those Han who would be a little particular, from Hong Kong to Falun Gong), and the last arrived America, which has no way of realizing that, given its size and scale, it is insane to give it up. from the Western coalition, to feed on sovereignties,
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