World's democracies condemned the crackdown in Hong Kong, but did nothing to impose costs on the CCP dictatorship. Instead business (read: Chinese exports) only grew and grew. Gotta empower them despots! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hong Kong's pro-democracy struggle presented an opportunity for democracies to stand up against dictatorship, but we failed miserably.

Giving the #CCP yet another free pass (after its repressive occupation of Tibet in 1950-1951 and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre) surely emboldened #putin to invade #Ukraine in 2022.

Repression of Tibetans, Uighurs, South-Mongolians, Hongkongers... or a billion+ voiceless Chinese brought no consequences, but at least the invasion of *European* Ukraine gave us Europeans a limited wakeup.

It's not enough. We could have aided developing democracies when the Soviet empire fell in 1989-1991 and *not aided* repressive regimes. Instead we doubled down on doing business without limits and empowered the likes of Chinese dictatorship.

There are things I love about Europe, and things I am deeply ashamed of. Talking about human rights while empowering despots belongs in the latter category.

Some foreign individuals did "Stand with Hong Kong" though. At least one here in Mastodon is, as always, still busy fighting authoritarian takeover. Now in her homeland of the USA.

“Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.“
— Nelson Mandela

This recap covers only the tiniest fraction of what went on in 2019 and what followed. CCP now has total control of all levers of power and influence in its #BankingColony without civil liberties. Its propaganda blaming "foreign forces" for "black-clad violence" was broadcast on all global authoritarian media. Many Hongkongers, especially youth and families with kids, have emigrated or fled the territory.

AFAICT only a small minority of Hong Kong's expats participated in the protests, but many more have since left due to the repressive atmosphere. Some sosiopathic sycophants have apparently moved there though in search of profit along with russians (probably shipping tech back to militant russia and helping skirt international financial embargoes...).

One final #trump anecdote: In 2020 when the CCP-imposed "state security law" (NSL) was coming into effect (in typical CCP style, the 'law' is *retroactive*, meaning any perceived *past* infringement can and will be prosecuted!), one of the globally famous pro-democracy faces, young Joshua Wong, tried applying for political asylum at a US mission in Hong Kong but he was denied entry by the trump 1.0 admin...

For his devotedly (he's s practising catholic) peaceful advocacy of promised democratic rights he's been incarcerated until 2029 at least. In a gaol without air-conditioning or heating more akin to a Chinese laogai. Just like all the other peaceful advocates of democracy.

“President Trump said, ‘Why don’t we just open up? Why don’t we just let a huge portion of people from Hong Kong move to the U.S.?’ And I loved it,” Pottinger told us. “You know, my view was just, transplant the whole damn city and make a new Hong Kong in America. [Trump] was like, ‘They’re going to be industrious; they’ll be great. They’ll make great Americans.’”

But Stephen Miller, Trump’s far-right political adviser, stopped the immigration scheme from going further. He was “very persuasive,”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/11/hong-kong-activists-washington-dc/675693/

A totally quick recap to those who don't know what happened in Hong Kong between early June 2019 and January 2020:

Hongkongers were promised by the UK-PRC (CCP China) handover treaty signed in 1984 that after the handover to PRC sovereignty in 1997 HKG would retain its civil liberties like freedoms of speech, media and assembly plus political autonomy with *universal suffrage*.

Initially after 1997 there remained a semblance of democracy although the legislature was always preloaded with indirectly 'elected' seats guaranteeing the CCP-aligned "popular minority" control of the legislature. Furthermore the all-powerful "Chief Executive" (essentially a governor) was supposed to be elected by the people but CCP "re-interpreted" the treaty to allow *itself* to choose the candidates! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hong Kong continued to function as Chinese dictatorship's banking colony and as a powerful tool to play around the international trading system, but instead of making progresss towards the promised democracy through universal suffrage and especially after Xi Jinping took power in the PRC in 2012 the CCP stooges running Hong Kong began rolling back Hong Kong's civil rights.

In early 2019 the "HKG govt" announced they were going to change local laws to allow "suspects" to be extradited to the notoriously unjust PRC to be convicted in CCP's kangaroo courts.

Thousands marched but the "gov't" ignored them. By early June 2019 there were tens of thousands protesting, and the HKG regime set its police force to teargas and baton-charge the pro-democracy crowds...

People were outraged and the crowd grew to hundreds of thousands marching orderly through the city's long main avenues despite the draining heat and humidity.

On June 15 a demonstrator known as the Raincoat Man (Marco Leung) fell of a high rise building during a protest. The following day saw a record *2 million* people flood Hong Kong's roads. Out of a population of 7+ million.

There would be several million+ marches in the following weeks and months, but the steadily increasing *POLICE VIOLENCE* and various legal and other threats by the regime would start scaring regular people off from joining.

(Note: my avatar here is an ambigram character combining 警 'police' with 暴 'brutality' — ACAB only applies in authoritarian states)

All the while the local regime ignored people's "Five Demands, Not One Less" and cracked down on any peaceful pro-democracy activism ever harder.

A law banning *masks* was enacted on Oct 4. A few months later when Covid-19 hit HKG masks would be both banned and compulsory...

Anyway, violent police crackdown, zero compromise by the regime and later strict Covid rules (no gatherings above 3 people!) would ensure that protesting was not only futile but criminalized. The regime was engaged in a "WHOLE PROCESS CRACKDOWN" on all remotely democratic activism.

On 30 June 2020 the HK puppet regime imposed "National Security Law" (NSL) on the city; essentially anything the CCP considers threatening or 'insulting' to its dictatorship was criminalized.

@Npars01 @eff Good point. #RightToRepair is now proven to be a necessity of #NationalSecurity for every country buying defence, intelligence, or critical infrastructure materials with any non-passive parts or any tied services from any other county.

Until they get rid of their mafia government and restore democracy and the rule of law, the #USA is now about as trustworthy a supply chain source as China under the #CCP.

Take note, #Canada. (Feel free to tag your own countries and their political discourse, other Right-to-Repair people.)

@EugeneMcParland I'm a big proponent of Tallis' "Neo-Idealism" — the idea that all democracies should prioritize supporting fellow democracies globally instead of empowering hostile autocracies.

This particular proposal was written in November 2024, not long after the last (hopefully not the very last!) elections in the USA and Tallis still presumed that the USA would in some form continue acting on the side of democracies under trump 2.0.

The audacity of of the current US administration striking bi-lateral deals with the russian despot over the heads and interests of Ukraine and Europe only weeks into taking power renders some of the expressed hopes woefully naive but it also reinforces the need for the *remaining* democracies to circle the wagons and start acting towards a common goal.

"We can show how to be good allies as the US pivots to keep China in check, and demonstrate that deterring China in Taiwan begins with deterring Russia across Europe and defeating it in Ukraine. "

With trump throwing Ukraine and Europe under russian bus with zero hesitancy, what reason do we have to think that trumpian USA would lift a finger to support Taiwan or other democracies in the Asia-Pacific against the CCP's military-expansionism?

(Note that trump is already in the process of gutting US military capability and spending in general, and co-president musk is an uncritical fan of the Chinese dictatorship...)

@mastomememakers #deepseek #AI #CCP #china #chinatech #propaganda #Tiananmen #Tiananmenmassacre

@fulelo Maybe one of the absolutely key reasons behind "Shein's success" should have been at least mentioned in passing: That the recipient countries subsidize postal shipping of these imports from a hostile dictatorship that never played by any of the WTO rules it 'promised' to follow "any day now" after quarter century now.

The probably toxic €/$20 disposable sweatshop fashion item would've cost at least double if the taxpayers in the naive recipient countries hadn't subsidized the PRC exporters. Long may it continue?

#CCP #china #shein #UniversalPostalUnion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

Scholar and human rights activist Ilham Tohti has been imprisoned for 10 years. He has had no communication with his family since 2017. He was awarded the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in 2014, the Martin Ennals Award in 2016, the Weimar Prize in 2017, the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize in 2019, and the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2019.

Learn more about Ilham Tohti at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/china-world-leaders-must-act-to-end-decade-of-injustice-for-jailed-uyghur-academic/

@nordicnews Why isn't the #CCP cooperating with #Sweden and other countries around the Baltic Sea?

Why oh why? It's a total mystery!

Īsumā, iztēlojieties "starptautisku karaoke vakaru" — Ķīna izvēlas dziesmu, dzied solo un sagaida, ka visi aplaudēs. #CCP #NewWorldOrder

@charlesmok Even Toms-#PRC-hardware-dot-com has a take...

@charlesmok #CCP #BankingColony #Hongkong