Hong Kong protests

[Hibrandenburg]

Don't think this is going to end well. Don't think it'll end like Tiananmen Square but there's gonna be a lot of people getting stripy suntans for years to come.

[lord bunberry]

Don't think this is going to end well. Don't think it'll end like Tiananmen Square but there's gonna be a lot of people getting stripy suntans for years to come.

They're pissing against the wind if they think China will ever back down.

[NAE NOOKIE]

They're pissing against the wind if they think China will ever back down.

Yeh ... every Chinese party leader wakes up in a cold sweat at the prospect of a movement like this spreading to other big cities and becoming unstoppable ...... if it comes to it they will start shooting.

From what I can see, wealth and power in China is concentrated in the big cities and the rural areas are staying poor. The gap gets wider every year .... China is not a Communist state, it is however a one party dictatorship which abandoned true communism decades ago in pursuit of commercialism.

The best thing they could do is to become truly democratic rather than continue to make fools of the people with the sham of hiding the interests of a self serving clique behind the badge of communism. If they don't the people will make them, either by actions like Hong Kong which will spread and after a lot of bloodshed lead to democracy anyway ..... or worse, a new hard line brand of old style communism will rise and they will end up standing against a wall smoking a last fag.

[snooky]

They're pissing against the wind if they think China will ever back down.

Or they might decide to offer HK a referendum based on the tried & proven 'UK method' :wink:

[Mathias Jack]

If the Chinese government had an ounce of common sense (which it looks like they don't or have never had), then they'd surely realise it's their own doing by suppressing the democratic rights of the people.

We're lucky a referendum is all we've had to worry about recently...

[Pretty Boy]

Wish HKhibby was still around to give us his thoughts on this.

He was forever telling us how crap Scotland was compared to the utopia that is Hong Kong.

[hibsbollah]

Wish HKhibby was still around to give us his thoughts on this.

He was forever telling us how crap Scotland was compared to the utopia that is Hong Kong.

I know Hong Kong pretty well, lived there for a while myself and HKhibbys pontifications always amused me, especially as he seemed to have a very sketchy idea of the place himself :greengrin

The smart thing for the PRC leadership to do would be to compromise in some way. It was inevitable that Beijing would want to vet the candidates (all political parties in multi parties approve candidates, you wouldnt get a Trotskyist on a Labour Party ticket in the UK, so it was naive in the extreme to expect a one party capitalist dictatorship not to). The question is will they ban every candidate who isnt a 100% Beijing puppet, or will they allow a little bit of dissenting voices.

One Country Two Systems was the promise in 1997 when the Victorian era treaties we extracted with our gunboats and opium ran out. Thats what the Chinese should be giving the HK people.

[Phil D. Rolls]

If only we had a correspondent in HK who could offer an opinion on the way democracy is being subverted by a foreign power.

Who knows, in time he might even branch into giving a "view from HK" on politics and suchlike in the UK.