Beijing Warns Hong Kong Protesters: Don't 'Play With Fire'
Amid weeks of mass anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong that have frequently turned violent, Beijing on Tuesday issued a stark warning to protesters: "those who play with fire will perish by it."
The remarks, at a news conference in Beijing, were made by Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council. He said China has "tremendous power" to put down the protests and warned that anyone who engages in "violence and crimes ... will be held accountable."
Asked if he could rule out the use of military force in Hong Kong, Yang told journalists: "We will not let any acts attacking the principle of 'one country, two systems' go unpunished." "I warn all those criminals: Don't misjudge the situation or take restraint as a sign of weakness," he said.
Yang's comments came a day after Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam, vowed to restore order in the city after nine weeks of nearly uninterrupted demonstrations. Speaking on Monday, the embattled Lam said the Chinese territory was "on the verge of a very dangerous situation" — words repeated verbatim by Yang.
See also: Hong Kong Strike Sinks City Into Chaos, and Government Has Little Reply
Hong Kong's Stock Rout Enters 10th Day, Worst Streak Since 1984
Hong Kong Protests Broaden Despite Police Crackdown
Related Stories
YouTube Disables 210 Channels That Spread Disinformation About Hong Kong Protests
YouTube said on Thursday that its site was used to spread disinformation about the mass protests in Hong Kong, days after Twitter and Facebook cracked down on thousands of China-backed accounts that compared the demonstrators to terrorists and accused them of being at the whim of foreign interests.
In a blog post, YouTube said it had disabled 210 channels this week that had uploaded videos about the protests in Hong Kong. The channels had worked in a coordinated fashion to spread disinformation, the company said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, did not specify when the channels were taken down.
Shane Huntley, a software engineer on Google's threat analysis team, said the channels that were removed were "consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter."
Facebook and Twitter said on Monday that they had removed thousands of accounts that originated in China and that acted together to amplify messages and images portraying Hong Kong's protesters as violent and extreme. It was the first time that the social media companies had removed accounts linked to disinformation in China. At the time, Twitter said it had "reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation."
Also at The Guardian and Reuters.
See also: The People's War Is Coming in Hong Kong
Hong Kong: British consulate employee Simon Cheng detained in China
China's arrest of a Hong Kong man puts spotlight on a controversial shared rail station
Previously: Extradition Law Amendments Protested in Hong Kong
One Million People Protest a Proposed Extradition Law in Hong Kong; Gov't Acquiesces, for Now
How Hong Kong's Protestors Are Hindering (and Hijacking) the Tools of Surveillance
China Warns Hong Kong Protesters Against "Playing With Fire"
China Says Sino-British Joint Declaration On Hong Kong No Longer Binding
Hong Kong Airport Paralysed for a Second Day by Protesters; US Naval Ships Blocked
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:12PM (12 children)
If Beijing begins a military crackdown, they risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
If they don't crackdown and rescind the extradition policy, they risk emboldening many hundreds of other factions and communities on the mainland that will see that Beijing can be cowed.
The good news for the rest of us is that whatever Beijing does here will probably help us. If investors flee HK's markets, Frankfurt, London, Wall Street, and other financial centers will benefit. If Beijing does another Tiananmen-style crackdown it will weaken them a lot in the trade spat with Washington. The same things happen if Beijing does back down.
The ancillary benefit for us regular schmucks is that the protesters in HK are pioneering new tactics against what is a more formal police state; should help us when things hot up in the West.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:28AM (6 children)
No they don't because the capitalist west has no intention of giving up those tasty, tasty golden eggs.
There are not "many hundreds of other factions" in China. In fact China is pretty well united. with the obvious exceptions of the Uyghurs, Tibet and Hong Kong.
The Uyghurs are not going to do anything, because they're a long way from anywhere, Tibet is the same, and Hong Kong is too small to stop the Chinese military if they decide to kill everyone.
The west will wring their hands and do nothing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:21AM
True, unfortunately so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:17AM
And Taiwan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @09:12AM
This was repeated to you over and over until you believed it, it is false and many other things you believe based on that premise are false. This makes you easy to taken advantage of financially and politically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:20PM (1 child)
If that were true, then Tienanmen Square would never have happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:44PM
China is a lot more prosperous today than back then. Most Chinese people now are a lot happier with their lot in life, and have a lot more to lose should the shit hit the fan.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:23PM
Not so. The Western press doesn't report on it, and the Chinese government certainly doesn't like news of it to get around, but there are many mass protests on the mainland. It's the reason why a few years ago Beijing was forced to undertake its anti-corruption campaign to execute provincial and municipal cadres (the Central-Party connected ones with great guanxi survived, of course, no matter what they had done). The fact is the Chinese polity is riven with fault lines. In the past it has in fact been split many different ways as formal states, but they have never really gone away and new ones have been added in modern times. For example, people make much of the ongoing wounds of the American Civil War, but China has about 15 of those situations extant. They're all separate from the Uighurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, tribes in Yunnan, and Hong Kong you mentioned, which are a given.
In short, people who think China is a united monolith don't know China at all.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:22AM
I think when comes right down to it, they can survive losing HK as a finance hub. It is a giant golden goose relative to folks in HK - against China as a whole, it is just 1 goose in a big farm.
China have more to lose in the alternate scenario.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dw861 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:36AM
Not exactly, or at least, not as much as in the past. When HK was transferred back to China in 1997, it represented 30% of Chinese GDP. Today, it is some minuscule fraction of that. Here is a very out of date article from 2014. The number for 2019 will be even smaller than those quoted here.
https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-18-percent-of-chinas-gdp-now-its-3-percent [vox.com]
At this point China does value HK as a portal linking mainland stocks to international sources of capital. And as a conduit to allow the renminbi some hope of becoming an international reserve currency. However, all the latest news that I've read from China would indicate that these economic aspirations play a distant second/third to national unity. Ie, less emphasis on the "two systems", and more emphasis on the "one country".
Other points are quite insightful, and I would mod the post up if it weren't already at max 5. If things go badly here, with much violence, then it will only hasten the emergence of an economic wall between China and the West.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @09:57AM
Right .... except HK is very much not a police state. There is more restraint there than in the US.
Many? Many? Like many good people on both sides?? right...
Except HK is not nearly anything like that. It never laid golden eggs in the first place, and now businesses side-steps HK entirely when they can go directly to mainland anyway.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:10PM
Middle of the road alternative, maybe? How about a police presence, and ongoing tough talk about gangstas and hoodlums and boogeymen? An occasional cracked head in an alley, and other not-necessarily lethal encounters. With enough attitude adjustments, HK would begin to see things Beijing's way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:05PM
Between trade-wars, this HK spat, and signs of a national recession; China's leadership is probably quite nervous right now. They must feel boxed in.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:12PM (8 children)
The Chinese who prided themselves with 3k history, go straight down the road that Stalin paved.
Keep it up, and you'd finally end up the way the Roman empire did.
Makes me hungry for kong-paw chicken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:32PM (1 child)
Are you sure it's chicken and not snoopy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:43PM
Actually, it might be Sylvester.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:52AM (1 child)
The Chinese have never not been on the road that Stalin paved. In fact, it's more accurate to say Stalin went down the road China paved.
They did invent a tasty cuisine, gunpowder, and many other useful things, though, so there's that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:27PM
Decisive Tang strategic victory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:46AM (2 children)
A slow decline and final downfall after hundreds of years of existence?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:30PM (1 child)
More like, a once virile empire switching from conquest to commerce ushering in a death by a thousand bureaucrats who ultimately grant power to religious fanactics through the three emperor's edict consigning it to the abyss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:33PM
*three emperors' edict
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:54AM
They built their own road. Look very much alike with the Stalin's for anyone outside their system, but hey!, it has typical Chinese decorations [wikipedia.org] and it's theirs, the world under the heaven [quora.com]!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:48PM (3 children)
🇨🇳🚔🇭🇰💪🏼,
🇨🇳 🔮 💣 or 🤷♂️
⚡🇭🇰 or💰?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:55PM
Self-awareness, not just for nuns and monks! Try it out today.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:34AM (1 child)
And for the rest of us old farts, an easy to convert to English,
http://decodemoji.com/ [decodemoji.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:24AM
That site made less sense than guessing the pictures in context. Or maybe i then need to translate millenial to english?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:40AM (2 children)
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:56AM
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=soylentnews.org [chinafirewalltest.com]
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=slashdot.org [chinafirewalltest.com]
http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=nytimes.com [chinafirewalltest.com]
Still good. I'm guessing the firewall comes into play only after a website starts getting a reasonable amount of mainland visitors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday August 07 2019, @09:55AM
All righty then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:05AM (1 child)
What the HK protesters want to achieve, really?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:23PM
Subjection to mainland Chinese law. The key issue being protested is extradition. If/when extradition is put into play, then Chinese law will trump (lol, there's that word/name) HK law.
"Mr. Yee is wanted in court for expressing political opinion on the internet that is frowned upon by the authorities."
"But, Mr. Yee is a HK resident, and he broke no laws here."
"Ahh, yes, but you signed this extradition agreement. Mr. Yee must answer in court for his actions."
"But, but, but . . "
"But me no buts, just deliver Mr. Yee to us tomorrow morning, and we'll take him off of your hands."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:23AM
I saw a documentary on the Tiananmen square massacre years ago on the BBC that boiled down to the Chinese government being slowed forced over a couple of weeks into the action they took.
I am in no way defending the massacre, but according to the documentary the government had been quite prescriptive about how their tolerance was going down and how they felt they had no options at the end.
Hopefully, with the world stage watching they will not go so far this time.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:49PM (2 children)
Chinese leadership has the advantage of not having to worry about getting re-elected.
This is also true in the context of the trade war that has now crossed over into RMB currency devaluation. This could cost Trump more than just a defeat in trade policy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:09PM (1 child)
On the flip side, if mass rioters overthrow them, they could end up jailed or torn to shreds like other dictators have. If an elected leader gets voted out, they still have their mansion and freedom to come and go.
Therefore, although the chance of losing power is less than in a democracy, the consequences to the loser are much greater. Thus, it balances out a bit.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:44PM
> If an elected leader gets voted out, they still have their mansion and freedom to come and go.
Well, usually, unless they will be facing criminal charges.