SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Hong Kong pushes bill allowing extraditions to China despite biggest protest since handover
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam vowed on Monday to push ahead with amendments to laws allowing suspects to be extradited to mainland China a day after the city's biggest protest since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
Riot police ringed Hong Kong's legislature and fought back a hardcore group of several hundred protesters who stayed behind early on Monday after Sunday's peaceful march that organizers said drew more than a million people, or one in seven of the city's people.
"I don't think it is (an) appropriate decision for us now to pull out of this bill because of the very important objectives that this bill is intended to achieve," a somber Lam told reporters while flanked by security and justice chiefs.
Also at NYT.
See also: Here’s How Hong Kong’s Proposed Extradition Law Will Impact Its Competitiveness
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 11 2019, @08:26AM (4 children)
For the most part they were treading a slow road to liberalisation, up until the Poo.
Any idea why the Poo got selected and all these decades of slow liberalisation got the quick reverse?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @08:50AM (3 children)
China is seeing how long prosperity can substitute for liberalization. Compare to the dissolution of the Soviet Union or other situations.
If liberalization/political freedom isn't a requirement for economic prosperity, they might be able to keep it going for a long time. But if they foul things up, the consequences could break the system rather than lead to a change of leaders as in most democracies.
Pooh had to do a little work to consolidate his power, but now that he's done it, we'll see if he can do what's required to keep it (and how he will select a successor if applicable).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:04PM (1 child)
Theoretically, it's not. Only the control of parasites (corruption) and elimination of dead wood (old, deprecated practices) are necessary. But those two are a very hard thing to do without political freedom.
By the by, corruption is hard to avoid even in democracies, no matter what name you chose for corruption - e.g. bribes, lobbying or super-PAC.
The death of "empires" is never nice, but it's as inevitable as the extinction of mega-fauna. An empire is a huge ossified structure too slow and heavy to move ahead through time.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:27AM
Right after I defeat compound interest and infidelity.
Hold your breath now!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:25AM
Fair enough, but also contrast.
There's no equivalent to Poo in Russia. At least no one even moderately successful.
Which is actually a possibly important point to notice. Russia and China are similarly beset by Oceania, but there is no Russian Poo.
I think the reason is that Russia has been an Empire, and learned what it cost.
China, you can certainly call an Empire without being exactly wrong. There is Tibet, there is the western desert, there is 'inner' Mongolia, a few Russian towns, a few Korean towns, a few towns where at the least north Vietnamese gangsters seem to operate as natives.
I'm no fan of the PRC, but I so advocate perspective.
Stack em up against the average European power and they seem positively self-absorbed.
Poo has come the fore, to the chagrin both of foreign investors and native 'liberals' equally, as a result of western escalations in the south China sea and Taiwan straits.
That's stated in their terms, but I think it's important it be confronted in their own terms.
They aren't going to back down on core sovereignty issues, and they have the technology and the industrial capacity they don't have to.
Are we really willing to pay the bill to hold them down? For what benefit exactly? For just how long?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?