http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/28/world/...kong-students/

Is this Victoria Nuland's fault too?

These guys are going to get Tianamenned

I don't know if China is that tone deaf. I wouldn't be surprised the police would join the protesters if China really deploys the military and starts killing students.

Hong Kong is not Beijing.

Yeah I don't see this happening, tear gassing, arresting, and beating people is 100% tho.

From what I can gather from HK papers, two things struck me as remarkable:

1. Businesses losing money are still supportive of the protests.
2. Hong Kong, for the most part, is still functioning on the strength of its public transportation despite the shut down of public highways.
3. Bankers, who are hurt most by this, are actually fairly supportive because they think this will help them longer term. The general feeling is China has been siphoning business off to Shanghai since the handover.
4. Very few people are actually supportive of China. Those that we'd call "loyalists", including Leung CY, the current head of HK himself, argues more from the perspective "China won't budge and we can't win."

Basically, I get the sense the students in the streets are only the tip of the ice berg.

I'm no expert on China, but I recall reading somewhere that China has a long history, (as in thousands of years long), of rulers being overthrown by force; so there is great fear and paranoia among China's leaders of political protest leading to bigger problems. If all this is true, it would explain things like Tiannamen. Chinese leaders will not tolerate dissent or "democracy" as they view it as a direct challenge to their authority and control. In democracies we have routine revolutions (called elections) where leaders who have gotten out-of-touch with their people lose their jobs. In dictatorships, changes in leadership are usually accompanied by violence. (Was it Chairman Mao or Joseph Stalin who said: "Power comes at the barrel of a gun!?" meaning that political power is gained and maintained through the use of force and violence - when necessary.)

If these protests in Hong Kong continue, I have a feeling they will be dealt with very harshly. China's leaders do not want this "disease" spreading to the rest of the country. I suppose a clash like this was inevitable ... it's the young and idealistic (the students) versus the old, entrenched (and privileged) ruling class. The latter group has the guns, tanks, and bullets; so guess who will probably prevail?

Nothing is impossible, but this is probably why a violent revolution here in the United States is so unlikely. There are so many people with guns and ammunition that any foreign army who tried to invade and occupy us would be dodging a mountain of hot lead served at high velocity. In countries like China and Russia, there's no 2nd Amendment for a very good reason.

grizy:

I get the sense that we're about to witness a repeat of 1989. When one side won't budge and the other side can't win, the side with the guns and bullets tends to prevail. Right now the police are trying to gain control of the situation by arresting as many of the students as possible and throwing them in jail. If that doesn't work, and especially if the protests continue and grow, the next step will be a bloodbath. The communist leaders in Beijing are paranoid about this kind of protest getting out of hand. If they have to, they'll crush it unmercifully.

Here's an interesting article on Hong Kong from the UK's "The Economist" magazine.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/anale...kongs-protests

The key to how this is ultimately resolved is in the final sentence of the final paragraph. If the protests begin spreading to the mainland, the communist leaders in Beijing will unleash a bloodbath in Hong Kong. Just as in 1989, China's authoritarian leaders will not allow a "democracy protest" to seriously challenge their authority.

China is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

They can't allow HK to have full democratic elections as this would set a bad precedent for the mainland.

They can't give in to the protestors as this sets a bad precedent for any future protests in the mainland.

They cant violently crush the protests as this will cause capital flight in HK and crater the economy there. HK has thrived on being one of the few places in the east Asia where the Rule of Law, an independent judiciary and certainty of contract enforcement exist. If the mainland moves in heavy handily it will spook the markets and the trickle of companies and capital to Singapore and the like will become a flood.

No easy way out for the PRC, other to wait it out and hope the protests dissipate.

That's the obvious option since a lot of people do feel nothing will be accomplished and it's hurting business.

But that option can translate to protests in rest of China.

I think that's the ultimate nightmare for Beijing.

this is true of everywhere when considered over a period of thousands of years.

Me too! That is why my post is so short!

Not if there's enough support from the rest of the free world.

Something just occurred to me.

Some of the party elite in China was part of the Tiananmen Square protests (students from best universities, dah)

Some of them definitely went to school in US.

How that translates, I don't know.

I have a hard time thinking there's going to be a Tiananmen Square style crackdown, but I also don't see them allowing this to build to a Tahrir Square / Maidan festering wound type of situation either. The wisest play is not to panic and to manage it, sort of like Bloomberg handled OWS, which was to let it more or less burn itself out, but that may be too weak looking for the CPC.

Most of the rest of the "free" world wants to keep their economies moving, and are willingly complicit with the Chinese authoritarians who ensure just that. When business leaders talk about not wanting so much "uncertainty" in the market, they frequently look at China with an adoring eye.

I predict bad things for Hong Kong. Probably not Tiananmen bad, but look at how well the land of the free dealt with WTO/OWS/Ferguson protests. If that's the model of how the "nice guys" act, I'm not optimistic.

This is an absolute nightmare scenario for CPC.

Seeking crisis management tips from Michael Bloomberg?

Only if they care about being seen as deferential of human rights.

They care enough to pretend Tiananmen didn't happen. This will be a lot more public hence the dilemma.

They will have no problem pretending nothing happened in Hong Kong after they beat down the protesters and kill a couple to make a point. The only thing that is saving Hong Kong so far is that the Chinese elite use Hong Kong to transfer their wealth out of China. They are afraid the rest of the world will stop that as a punishment for violence against Hong Kong. But at some point the risk of losing their power will outweigh the risk of not being able to bank as easily anymore and they will act swift and violently.

This is correct. Chinese authorities are blocking news of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook and other social media. They're trying to keep news of the unrest from seeping into the mainland consciousness. At the first signs of unrest (or actual protests) on the mainland, they'll move quickly and decisively to crush dissent in both Hong Kong and wherever it is occurring on the mainland. They'll only let it go so far before they crush opposition.

Maybe they will do just that, but they will have to go "The Full Putin" and start blaming the US State Department for the unrest. I just hope they don't invent a way to blame the Japanese for this, or wag the dog on some bull**** with Japan, that's going to be fun for no one.

I don't think they will need to do any of this. China controls the news a lot better than Russia. Most Chinese don't understand what the people in Hong Kong are protesting about to begin with. And the protests will be shut down long before that changes. News on how the protest was shut down will never reach mainland China.

This doesn't disprove what you're saying about China, but bahahahaha I just read this headline: Russian State Media Portray Hong Kong Protests as U.S. Plot