Hong Kong is Scared….of the Rioters
Andre Vltchek
It was once a British police station, as well as the Victoria Prison Compound. Hong Kong inhabitants used to tremble just from hearing its name mentioned. This is where people were detained, interrogated, humiliated, tortured and disappeared.
Now, after Hong Kong ‘returned to China’, it was converted into the Tai Kwun Center – one of the biggest and the most vibrant art institutions in Asia.
This transformation was symbolic, the same as the conversion of the former British-era slums into public parks has been symbolic.
But now, as the pro-Western and anti-Chinese treasonous hooligans are dividing and ruining this former UK colony, the old-colonialist flags of “British Hong Kong” are being waved alongside the flags of the United States, while Chinese flags are being humiliated, and thrown into the bay.
Rioters seem to remember nothing about those ‘good old times’ (according to them), when signs shamelessly declared: “No Dogs and Chinese”. As they seem to close both eyes and ignore the neo-colonialism and massacres, that both North America and Europe are constantly committing in all corners of the world.
Now, the citizens of Hong Kong are scared. Not of the “government”, not of the police, or Beijing: they are frightened of the so-called protesters, of ninja-like looking young people with covered faces and metal bars in their hands.
Mr. Edmond, who works for the Tai Kwun Center, speaks bitterly about the events in his city:
“What is truly scary now, is that families here in HK are deeply divided. Father does not talk to his son. Silence reigns inside the families. Colleagues do not touch the subject of riots. The situation is thoroughly ruining our city, our society, our families.”
“If someone publicly disagrees with the protesters, they get beaten. They managed to silence people.”
“People come here, to this wonderful art center, and if they are from Beijing, they are now hiding their identity. It is because they are scared.”
Mr. Edmond keeps repeating that “disagreements should be like disputes inside the family”. He means, disagreements between the Hong Kong inhabitants, and Beijing. According to him, the outsiders should not be involved.
This is what the majority of the people feels in Hong Kong now. This is what they felt in 2014, when I wrote about another prolonged and destructive event which was sponsored by the West – the so-called “Umbrella” uprising.
They feel this, but most of them would not dare to express it. The rioters are young, in good physical shape, and armed with sticks and bars. They have no identity, as their faces are covered by scarves. They are drunk on fanatical self-righteousness; stoned on a primitive sense of purpose. Their behavior is not rational – it is religious.
I have been talking to them. In 2014, and now. Most of them know nothing about the foreign policy of the West. They have no clue about the brutality of the British Empire. They do not want to hear about the humiliation and pain of the Chinese people, when their country was invaded, broken into pieces and occupied.
They are selfish; grandstanders, and extremely arrogant.
They wave flags; foreign flags. They spit on their own banners. They do what they are told to do: by the hostile, foreign powers. And they do, what they are paid to do. It is as depressing, as it is embarrassing, to watch.
“President Trump, please liberate us!” “Please Save us, President Trump!” That is what they shout. That is what their posters say.
It is very hard to talk to them. I tried. Most of them do not want to uncover their faces, and to speak. They seem to feel secure only when in packs, in multitudes. When challenged, they reveal that they know very little, even about China; or even about Hong Kong itself.
But they are ready to preach; to lecture.
When faced with logical arguments, which they cannot refute, they become brutal.
Just a few days ago, they attacked a local teacher who was singing the national anthem of China. They beat him up. A child witnessing the event was horrified. He cried. The teacher kept singing.
They are beating those who try to make them stop destroying the city. They are beating those who are shaming them.
Whenever I manage to have longer exchanges with them, it somehow feels the same as when I am confronting religious fanatics in the Middle East. Perhaps, it should not even be surprising, as both are products of the Western propagandists and their allies.
People refusing to accept their leaflets at the airport –get beaten. If visitors to shopping centers challenge the rioters – a public beating takes place.
This covering of faces with black scarves would be illegal in many parts of the West, were the black scarves to be worn by, let’s say, Muslim women, or local rioters. But the Western media, outrageously selective in its coverage, is glorifying it here, simply because it is against the interests of the People’s Republic of China.
Chinese people, with thousands of years of culture, mostly tolerant, are not used to all this. These events of the last three months are something extremely foreign to them. Therefore, many are scared. Very scared. Desperate.
Ninjas of this nature are usually jumping and hitting in all directions, but from the screens of television sets, not right in the middle of the streets.
*
As I am filming in Hong Kong, as I am reporting for television stations, the picture is becoming clearer and clearer.
There are U.S. flags being carried, the U.S. anthem is sung, then immediately, hundreds of Western media crews start filming.
But when public property is being damaged, subway stations vandalized, pedestrians and motorists attacked, Western cameras are nowhere in sight.
If rioters were to trash Heathrow Airport in London, the army would be called, immediately. Here, the rioters are cheered on by foreigners.
It is obvious that Western mass media outlets and the rioters are working hand-in-hand. They have the same goals.
*
Fear is mixed with shame. No one in Hong Kong is speaking openly, on the record. Even on such seemingly ‘innocent’ topics like the collapse of tourism.
Those who are destroying the city, are obviously not willing to take responsibility for the hardship they are causing to its citizens.
Those who are with Beijing, those who believe in “one China”, which is the silent majority of the citizens, feel shame, because there are so many traitors living among them, in one overcrowded urban area.
Therefore, silence!
Everyone here in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, understands how dangerous the situation really is. Leaders of the riots, like Joshua Wong, are groomed by Washington, London and Berlin.
They are morally and financially supported, not unlike people like Guaido in Venezuela. Mr. Wong is known to associate himself with organizations such as the “White Helmets”, which is working on behalf of the West for “regime change” in Syria.
To damage, to break China into pieces, is now the main goal of Western foreign policy. Beijing is being attacked on all fronts: Uyghurs, the Belt and Road Initiative, Taiwan, Tibet, South China Sea, trade. The more successful China gets; the more attacks it has to face.
Hong Kong used to be a city where “streets were paved with gold”, according to the legend. Mainland Chinese used to see it as a semi-paradise. All this has changed, reversed now. Neighboring cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, count with much better infrastructure, a greater cultural life, and lesser levels of poverty.
In one of the international hotels of Hong Kong, I was told by a manager:
Mainland Chinese people do not see Hong Kong as something attractive, anymore. They do not travel here often, anymore. They are not treated well here. They go to Thailand or to Europe instead.”
The citizens of Hong Kong feel frustrated and angry. Their “uniqueness” is evaporating. They are being left behind. Poverty rates are high. English language proficiency is declining, and businesses are moving to Singapore. Hong Kong is the most expensive city on earth, and it is unaffordable for most of its citizens.
Extreme capitalism here has brought nothing spectacular to the people. It is increasingly obvious that the Communist (or call it “socialism with the Chinese characteristics”) system has become much more successful than the old British-style neo-liberalism; in terms of social policies, infrastructure, the arts and general quality of life.
The spoiled, egotistical young people of Hong Kong are outraged. What? They are suddenly not on top of the world? The Commies across the line are better at almost everything they touch?
Instead of working harder, they turn against China; against the Mainland.
They want to convince the entirety of Hong Kong and even the Mainland, that the ‘Hong Kong way’ is the only correct way. And of course, there is plenty of funding available to support their insane claims. The funding comes from the fellow-collapsing societies – those in the West.
*
Most of the citizens of Hong Kong are scared that the rioters may succeed.
They have already forced the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill, which could help Hong Kong to fight the endemic corruption and invulnerability of its business elites.
They have already managed to scare the Hong Kong government into compromises.
The rioters are acting like huge, violent gangs, and they are enjoying full propaganda support from the West.
But whether they like it or not, Hong Kong is China. Ask a grocery vendor at North Point, ask coolies, old ladies on a park bench, or an elementary school teacher, and you will understand. These people do not care whether Hong Kong is exceptional or not. They do not need to show-off. They just want to live, to survive, to look forward to a better future.
And a better future is definitely with Beijing, not with Washington or London.
They already had London. They had enough of it.
“More Beijing, not less”, you would hear if people were not scared to talk. In 2014, when things were not as extreme as now, they used to tell me.
Now, it is not easy to fight the hundreds of thousands of face-covering and metal-bar-waving zealots and fanatics. Their religion is simply “The West”. It is abstract. As are their demands. As are their violent outbursts of inferiority complexes.
Both, the local majority, and Beijing, have to think hard as to what strategy to apply, in order to protect, and to defend Hong Kong and China against those brutal, frustrated, morally corrupt hooligans and treasonous cadres.
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We saw the same thing in 1989. Vacuous juvenile thugs and rioters worshipping at the altar of their American handlers, complete with a statue of liberty. These snowflake traitors should be taught the lesson they richly deserve with however much force is necessary. They are just useful idiots in the campaign to destabilise China. Strange how Soros, the NED, and all the CIA front groups never go in for the same stunts in Shady Wahabia, where teenagers are crucified.
I thought I saw mention in this article of the various sexual assaults that accompany the riots, although perhaps that was at Moon of Alabama.
Anyway, the stories about the rapes are true, but in many cases they take a particular form, whereby the older rioters pressure and intimidate their (literal) fangirls (often underage) to have free sex with many of them seriatim (they get ‘train-lined’ in the usual porn parlance) ‘for the cause’. I stress ‘free’ because these girls are not prostitutes, merely misguided idealists. When they are treated to meals and drink and drugs and karaoke and then told, ‘We brave heroes put our bodies on the line fighting the evil Hong Kong police. You too should sacrifice your body, for us, to show your appreciation for our bravery’, they readily succumb. And often regret it afterwards.
Here is a link to one such girl telling her story.
https://youtu.be/84ssT4u_0bs
There are no subtitles, so you will need to know Cantonese. Perhaps Jen can comment on this.
My own very limited Cantonese leads me to understand her as saying that she started hanging out with the rioters, finding it all very exciting, and they socialized afterwards, when a group of rioters from Hong Kong University and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University told her that she should ‘give up her body’ for them, what with them being such heroes and all. She did it with several of them, but it is clear from the video that she is very upset, and she says two things which even I can understand clearly: ‘No one cared about me’ (she is especially upset at that point), and the sex was ‘very painful’. She is now worried about STDs and pregnancy.
There is yet another sex aspect to the riots. There are higher-class girls (more mature teens, wealthier, educated, from the tonier districts of HK) who take part in the riots as a form of ‘danger tourism’. It turns them on and they let themselves get done by lumpen filth afterwards. The irony is that there is no danger, because Hong Kong’s police are such pussycats. They might as well let themselves get gang-banged by the lowest Triad ranks after going on the roller-coaster at Ocean Park.
(Those of you who visit Moon of Alabama will recognize this quote, apparently from Pepe Escobar’s facebook, about this:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/09/hong-kong-rioters-wage-sabotage-campaign-to-press-congress-into-punishing-china/comments/page/2/
So, why wouldn’t the riots go on week after week after week? The risk of arrest is negligible, police will not administer the requisite amount of exemplary violence when they do arrest you, and the expat judges will immediately release you on bail sums that a small child could readily afford. And you can get laid afterwards, either with a naïve underage girl or a high-class danger tourist who would otherwise never even speak to a piece of filth such as yourself.
Anyone who thinks I am making this up does not understand that there is a very weird and lurid side to sexuality in Hong Kong, which you can readily verify by looking through the last twenty years of court cases on such things. If you like and admire Hong Kong women, it can make depressing reading to see how gullible some of them apparently are.
Dear Herr Ringbone,
My Cantonese is non-existent so I am checking with the folks at 21SilkRoad Facebook group to see if they can help. (Crossing my fingers.)
Many thanks, Jen!
Some of the pro-rioter propaganda here is so idiotic, irrelevant, and even contradictory to their cause that it is hard to believe HK people are so stupid and so utterly ignorant of history. Let me give the worst example I have seen here.
First, you must understand the setting. I live in a private estate with a large semi-circular plaza at the front. The space is often used collectively for fairs and celebrations for traditional holidays. But although I have lived here for five years, I have not once seen a cinema screen set up to screen a film.
But earlier this week I saw just that, with an audience of about one hundred watching it. Suddenly an awful realization hit me: as films are never screened here, this just had to be pro-rioter anti-China propaganda.
So I went to take a look. You won’t believe this. The film was South Korean. And it was obviously about one of the massacres of South Korean students by the military, probably the Gwangju massacre.
Yes, that’s right. Hong Kong people were watching a film about a US-government supported massacre of South Korean students, and reading it as anti-China propaganda supportive of their wonderful democratic cause!
As the military opened fire in the film, I rather unwisely raised my cider and announced to the audience, ‘That’s what’s going to happen to all of you if you don’t get your act together.’
I was quite right about the film being used as pro-rioter, anti-China propaganda. When it finished, there was the usual rousing chorus of ‘Heong Gong gaa jaau!’ and all the rest of it.
What morons. How can they possibly be so stupid.
Incidentally, students were also shown films about Maidan, which we all know was a straight-up colour revolution, and they were all so ignorant that they said, ‘We hope we can achieve such an outcome here in Hong Kong.’
There’s no hope for these people. As Machiavelli said in the Discourses on Livy, ‘Where the [human and political] material is so corrupt, there is sometimes no option but to get rid of the lot.’
Sorry Mods, I really hope that people realize by ‘here’, I mean Hong Kong, not Off-G! I live in HK so I make this mistake frequently. Apologies!
These pro-democracy protesters are just thugs, pure and simple. Imagine storming and destroying your own parliament, destroying infrastructure and so on. Try that in the democratic west and a lesson or two will have been learnt by now. I wonder what China’s strategy is in dealing with these thugs
Thanks Andre for your observations. It might also be pointed out that the majority of the protesters in this ‘colour revolution’, whose colour appears to be black, probably weren’t born before the British relinquished their colonial rule there in 1997. And many of those who were, were too young to remember what it was like living under the ‘Butchers Apron’.
The whole CIA playbook is there for all to see in the Hong Kong events, as outlined by many (and not so well or completely below):
1. For a regime you want to change, find a legitimate cause that people are beginning to protest about. Tick.
Ordinary people in Hong Kong have plenty to protest about, but none of that is part of this ‘movement’, even though it’s the underlying fuel: the wildly growing wealth and income disparities (20% poverty rate); totally unaffordable real estate/rent (up 300% in the last decade); limited democratic rights, which by the way are still an improvement over the former British colonial regime; prospects for young people are limited, and so on.
In short, Hong Kong has all the disadvantages of capitalism (little to no economic rights or security for ordinary people, but impunity for the capitalist class) and all the disadvantages of Chinese Stalinist rule (little to no political rights or security under ‘Stalinism lite’ in Hong Kong). Ye gods, half the representatives in its ‘parliament’ come ‘constitutionally’ from the capitalist/business class.
2. Funnel resources (via NED, USAID, etc) to your agents in the field to hijack and reorganise the protests according to your agenda. Make sure that there’s a ‘left’ veneer to the movement, with liberal use of verbiage like ‘revolution’, ‘rebels’, etc, and redirect the movement toward regime change and counterrevolution. Tick.
The rogues’ gallery of US-backed agents in Hong Kong is long, as outlined by Cohen et al., but just like the US-supported opposition in Venezuela, they display complete fealty to the US regime. They’ve taken money from US ‘soft-power’ organisations for years and they’ll never bite the hand that feeds them. They lead this movement. The US may not ‘control’ the Hong Kong protests, but they control its leaders. For anyone skeptical of this, simply follow the money (and look at all the photo-op evidence of it).
3. Have the movement engage in gratuitous violent actions and vandalism to provoke an over-reaction by the authorities in the hope that these fuel the protests further and garner international and, especially, domestic support in the imperialist centres for the operation. Tick.
As everyone with eyes to see knows, numerous actions (arson, vandalism, attacks on mainland Chinese people while waving the US flag and singing its disgusting national anthem) have been instigated that have no political purpose other than provocation. This is all very guarimba-like and follows a similar pattern (minus the snipers for now) as occurred in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ukraine.
Hong Kong’s workers movement needs to be organised by the HK Federation of Trade Unions (not to be confused with the NED-funded HK Confederation of Trade Unions) into defence squads to defend the infrastructure from these rampaging hooligans and teach them a lesson. Hong Kong is part of China and it needs to be militarily defended from this counter-revolutionary threat.
That the billionaire media are avoiding this side of the protests, as you point out, speaks volumes for how pre-programmed they now are.
4. Make sure that such efforts are backed up by imperialist threats: economic warfare and ‘targeted’ (!) sanctions, military ‘humanitarian’ (!) intervention, other sabre rattling, and so on. Tick.
5. Make sure there’s an imperialist ‘consensus’ on this. Tick. In all the imperialist centres the billionaire media speak as one on Hong Kong.
China has been in US crosshairs for capitalist restoration since 1949. Unlike WSWS and various ‘state caps’ and ‘third campists’, the US and everyone else knows that capitalism hasn’t been restored in China despite capitalism’s serious inroads, initiated by Deng Xiaoping. It’s not for nothing that the US has 400 military bases arrayed against it. The imperialists will exploit any political unrest in China to support this overarching goal.
China is the product of the futile Stalinist program of building ‘socialism in one country’ and appeasing imperialism (‘peaceful coexistence’), where socialised autarky is maintained by bureaucratic rule. ‘Free’ market measures were introduced in China essentially to discipline the working class and population overall as a substitute for real working class political power, sweetened (somewhat) by consumer goods and rising living standards.
Despite Stalinist rule and significant capitalist inroads, China remains a workers state with socialised property relations and economic planning at its core that must be defended from imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution, including this latest attempt emanating from the rampages in Hong Kong. China’s population has benefitted immensely from the 1949 revolution despite the bureaucratism and widespread political repression. Such advances would never have occurred under capitalist imperialism.
At the same time, the Chinese working class needs to overthrow the Stalinists through a political revolution to institute workers democracy so that the socialised economy, and society overall, can be run and planned rationally and democratically. For this it needs an actual revolutionary party of the Bolshevik type animated by internationalism to spread the revolution to the imperialist centres.
Hong Kong is a part of China. The CCP is the current government of China, but it is not China itself. It governs the Middle Kingdom with a system that has been called “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Note that this is not Communism, but indeed, a form of State Capitalism. Now is it rational to believe that the reign of the CCP will out last that of the Dynasties of old? Are you unaware that nothing is permanent?
Call these protestors “traitors” all you want, but to say that they are “zealots [whose] religion is simply ‘The West’” is completely disingenuous. I have heard that the protestors have a slogan, “Be Water.” I may be getting this wrong but it sounds like something the late, great Bruce Lee once said. It sounds very, very much like the philosophy of Lee, whose own philosophy, as I understand, is in accordance with the philosophy of Taoism. “上善若水,” according to 道德經. The moral vision of 道德經 is also represented in the idea that “道常無為而無不為 / 候王若能守之 / 萬物將自化.” Indeed, you could call these principles “religious,” but you are most assuredly mistaken if you think they come from “The West.”
It’s neoliberalism, Scott, it’s neoliberalism …with or without ‘Chinese Characteristics’ [Harvey].
Economic illiterates – like Andre – are so desperate for their to be an alternative to neoliberalism – they invented one in their imaginations. Then they project a Manga-like comic book ontology onto real events …the dark forces of the Western Empire struggle in vain to thwart the forces of light of the Eastern Ecological Civilisation …whose only purpose in arising is to save mankind from the clutches of their Western Imperial foes.
(To the sound of mocking hysterical laughter) I do not know who is more deluded: Andre: or his uncritical ‘comic-book’ and contrafactual sycophants?
One click away from this page are any number of links that could return us to economic epistemology and a critical realist reason. Two questions no one has even attempted to answer are: if China is ‘rising’ – how come the Yuan is falling in value against the dollar (graph below)?
And if China is part of the mythical ‘Eastern Kingdom’ – how come it got drawn into a relatively minor dollar collapse in 2007/8? Globalisation and the Global – that’s GLOBAL – Financial Crisis past the comic book economists by. Or was memory holed – in favour of fantasist projection – from a mere 12 years ago.
Why is China scrambling for dollars and selling assets to get them now? Because the whole East/West is an imagined geography is too radical a brute economic fact for many. They prefer to believe in comic book imagined Manga realities.
Unfortunately for us all: the redux of ’07 is well underway. We shall see soon enough who has a better grip on reality. But there are no prizes: we are all losers in the capitalist system. This time round some more of us might realise why.
I hear you, BigB.
Also, “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” would be the wrong way to put it in British English in semi-colonial times. It would potatively have been “Dogs and Chinese not allowed” — according to Mainland Chinese made-up fellow traveller propaganda we were fed in the fifties, sixties and seventies.
The Hòngkóng rioter thugs are “rebels without a cause” — i.e., the cind belioved ti and by reactionary imperialists. Please tell them that by the standards of their masters, they’ld end up being regarded ar just a little bit less unworthy than Blacks. ((This is my piece de coupe de crace when confronted with racist SIno-Japanese in all the East.)
This very good article is marred by one falsely-attribuded illustration: A photo of a sign saying “No dogs or Chinese allowed” (“夠輿華人不得入內”)。This is a long standing misinterpretation of what was written at the entrance to the small park at the waterside Bund guardens and esplanade in Shànghâi before the two world wars. The sign said something like this: “We humbly regret to having to remind visitors that that dogs and bicycles are still not permitted brought into the park, and that servants are not included when buying admittance on a family seasons ticket” (but stated more succinctly buath in English and in Chinese writing).
One proof of the falsehood is that the phrasing on the photo is not in the correct Chinese, where the sign for “not” (bù’/不) would have been (wù/勿or毋得).
Otherwise, a very goood and well informed article from an established and mostely accurate observer!
Andre, it happens that every anti-Chinese Chinese I’ve met is crazy about Jesus and worship US State Department officials as well.
Is that your experience as well?
I see most of the Trotskyist groups supporting yet another western backed “revolution” that they think will bring on a world revolution! Trotskyists are a special kind of cunts
This Trotskyist group didn’t, and their analysis of the situation is second to none:
https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1160/hong_kong.html
Wow one tiny group with no followers and even less views online. All Trotskyists are fake as fuck and love a good vice news and bbc led “revolution”
Yes, maybe they have a small following, but are they right or wrong? Who has a better analysis of Hong Kong?
Before WRITING these deeply ignorant idiots OFF, is it worth it, to investigate the possibility that these protesters being exposed to some radiation or chemicals causing some deep flaws in the brain wiring?
Andre again writes a rousing mythology about a dying dream narrative. Hong Kong itself is an icon of a dying economic system: soon to be historic capitalism.
The dreams of Hong Kongers – whether they be libertarian anarchists in the USUK thrall or not – are similarly ill-predicated in economic illusion. The illusion of perpetual growth. Andre’s semantic framing – the outmoded and illusionary structural framework he uses to index real event into – is flawed and economically illiterate. Sure, Washington and London represent a dying Empire and an ending capitalist epoch. Everyone gets this. But only economic illiteracy allows the semantic and economic fallacy that somehow China offers any alternative.
Economic literacy knows the dollar and yuan are fatefully interconnected. It’s not really a debating point. It’s just a brute economic fact. One that Andre denies every time to employ his fantasy narrative framing. The dollar is fucked: imploding into the overnight repo markets as we speak. This indicates a dollar illiquidity crisis (not enough dollars). Which China cannot escape. China needs dollars – not many, but enough. China has been suffering from the dollar illiquidity since last year. These three articles from SCMP address the credit crunch issue:
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3015049/chinas-concern-over-possible-us-dollar-shortage-risk-forcing
Andre’s fantasy economic calculus has the dollar falling as the yuan – and the other emerging economies on the rise. Utter illiterate fallacy: as one graph shows:
https://www.macrotrends.net/2575/us-dollar-yuan-exchange-rate-historical-chart
If you thought you had me – if you even bothered to look – the graph is inverted. The rise is the fall of the yuan against the dollar. For which China needs dollars to maintain its exchange rate. Which it hasn’t got enough of (they do not want to use their reserves: so they have to borrow dollars offshore). And there are not enough dollars: as the repo market carnage indicates. Do you want me to draw you a diagram? Andre does. Or will a cliff icon do?
Believe what you will. Downvote the bloke who keeps posting economic facts. It doesn’t matter. The economic climate is clear. The global economy is interlinked and shares the fate of dollar. The Yuan is not magically shielded from that. Only economic fantasist mythologies ignore this. Whatever is going on in HK: framing it as a semanticised, romanticised, optimised future of capitalism narrative is fictitious. Capitalism has no future. And neither does humanity if they continue to eschew critical realism for fantasy narrative. The Hong Kongers are suffering from mass hysteria. Andre frames their delusion to create a hysterical imaginary future: one that brute economic facts make look increasingly untenable.
Every loves a faery tale though.
Hello Big B. Genuin enquiery: I looked at both articles and note that there was only one mention of China’s US dollar debt holding and nothing about her massive gold reserves. Any thoughts?
Yes: there is not enough gold in the multiverse to underpin the amount of debt we or China are in. The thing about debt is that all asset classes are proxy for each other. A dollar shortage pulls them all down together. The price mechanism is the transmission mechanism, according to Jack Rasmus. That’s just a fancy way of saying it’s all interconnected.
The scary thing about the current repo market failure is that in order to get a short term loan: the financial institution has to put up collateral that can be resold to cover the loan. They promise to repurchase the collateral the next day – plus a fee. According to the Feds balance sheet: it looks as though though are taking Mortgage Backed Securities and other Wealth Management products as collateral.
In plain English: they are swapping virtual currency for worthless collateral. You need a supercomputer to calculate the risk on these products. They have sold them on so many times that sometimes they end up owning their own risk that they thought they had sold on.
How do we know this? It is exactly what happened in 2007/8. When the music stops – and it will – whichever you are left holding is worthless – a toxic asset. As there are only two banks heavily into repos – JP Morgan-Chase and BNY Mellon – they stand to be holding an awful lot of toilet paper. Talk about not learning your lesson!
Only, worse than not actually learning: the financial sector did nothing at all to deleverage (pay off some of the debt that caused GFC 1.0 – aka the sovereign debt crisis). Oh no, they rolled over the debt and multiplied it by factors of magnitude I can only guess at. But I do know that the financial economy is 73.5 times the size of the real economy (thanks to Bill Mitchell) – the one with actual transactions, commodities, services, etc. Like buying a coffee or something.
All this derivative trade is underpinned by the repo markets and LIBOR. Short term borrowing facilities to balance the books at the end of the day. If they cannot balance the books: north of $350tn of derivatives could come tumbling down.
Far from being immune to such speculative trading: China is one of the worst culprits. As is well known: they overbuilt their infrastructure by some 25/30% to save the global economy from the worst of the GFC. According to Steve Keen: countries like Australia were exempted the GFC by supplying commodities to China. Which puts quite a bit of the Pacific Rim in danger: because they are carrying all their debt forward – the so-called debt hangover. The debts are so high and the ability to repay becoming so low – there are no safe havens this time round (except perhaps Russia).
China has built a massive bubble economy on shadow banking and dodgy speculative lending. It is nowhere near as solid as people think. Keen calls it the biggest private equity bubble in history. Rasmus calls it a triple bubble economy – as it is multi-sectoral. To give you some idea: the PBoC ‘forgot’ about $37tn of off-balance debt that it had until 2016. That immediately doubled the debt they admit to – guestimated to be $90tn plus. It is not the size of the debt, but the ability to repay. Hence the dollar crisis in the SCMP articles.
So, gold. The total value of all gold ever found is $7.5tn (according to Wiki). Even if China had all of it: its a drop in the ocean. Its only value – even now it has been classed ‘money’ – is as a store of value. If fiat paper crashes – which it is – the value of gold will go through the roof. At least they have some assets to keep vital functions going in a worse case scenario. Other than that – as a hedge against the next GFC – it is worth sweet FA. And rumours of gold backed yuans or a return to a gold standard are internet memes for bed time stories.
The USA has significant debt overhang too, eh. Moreover, American is insolvent and will never pay back creditors owing $22 trillion +. Not even small incremental discharge of debt is occurring in the USA as it just keeps building as Congress takes a nap whenever debt conundrums get discussed.
The USA taught China how to speculate like a world class criminal Oligarch.
MOU
That’s what the repo markets indicate. It is more complicated than that. The US Fed is not just the backstop for the US. It is the backstop for the whole world. Which is what people do not get.
Very quickly: there are dollars and eurodollars. A eurodollar is a dollar created in the offshore Eurobond markets – using actual dollars as a monetary base. From which unregulated bonds are created and lent on …and on …and on. In short: there are many more times dollars floating around in the bond market than there are actual dollars to cover them.
Which creates an imbalance and deficit. Of up to $6.5tn on the eve of Bear Stearns – according to the BIS. In my simplex: the Fed has no choice but to cover the whole market …whether it created the money or not. Which plays actual carnage with everyones balance sheets. Which is what happened before.
So the Fed bought $4.4tn of the most toxic assets (TARPS). But the world borrowed $70tn – and gambled with it. OK, some went into real things – but most of it was squandered. So we are back to 2007. Only China is overbuilt: and the Fed has a fairly full balance sheet …and the dollar imbalance is X to the power of Y greater than it was before. And we are generally planning on the return to growth and prosperity. Someones economic compass is out of true. The repo markets carnage say it is not mine. Unfortunately for us all.
I fully agree with most of your comments on macro most of the time, BigB.
Additionally, I have been following the CB shenanigans since I watched Nixon close the gold window in 1971 whilst being lectured on Finance by my Chartered Accountant father.
Clearly, the securitization process gave us all the betting universe of dark pool derivatives that brought us all to this juncture of global economic implosion. Moreover, anyone with our knowledge base does not believe that growth & prosperity are coming back at all. We both know that this will end in kinetic nuclear world war and nuclear winter given the impossibility of appropriately addressing the intractability of debts at the sovereign level.
Like you I’m just waiting for the world to blow up now whilst I share in that knowledge base with likeminded people like yourself. Like you I am growing tired of attempting to warn the great unwashed masses that will have to learn the hard way like we did over time.
The re-write of Economics should have occurred post-Lehman Moment but the Oligarchs are not rational thinkers as they are merely speculators that have run the course to the Zero Sum end game.
It is a race to the bottom as you know.
Cheers, MOU
They did rewrite economics – with Behavioural Economics – using such insights garnered from Game Theory to make even more money. I’m kinda hoping we’ll skip the whole thermonuclear ending …going out, not with a bang: but a whimper. Preferably after I’m long gone.
We have the capability to turn this around; even at this late hour. We’re not the only ones who can see what comes next: everyone can feel it, if not admit. The myth of eternal growth is a weak one, epistemologically. Maybe we can see through it one day? That’s my little bubble of hopium, anyway.
Cheers, BB.
I’m purely Quantum Behavioural Economics which is my own variant of Behaviour Economics. Lehman leverage at 44:1 blew the system architecture that essentially was built by Goldman & JPMorgan right to smithereens. I know you are adept like myself, BigB. You cannot entertain the idea that this is not going to go kinetic & thermonuclear given that the Fractional Reserve System is designed only for growth. If deflation hits an economy that has undergone the secular finance process of securitization in an environment that is built to be supported off of growth alone there can only be one end result. That end result is zero sum.
You cannot own a bubble of hopium when I will snatch it from you, BigB. All you need to do to keep yourself sane is to remember Clerk Maxwell & the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Maxwellian Demon let the gas out of the chamber just like Maxwell hypothesized the little bastard would do in a closed-lopped system. You cannot defy the laws of Thermodynamics, BigB. I realize that you want to have some hope but hope is not a plan as you are very well aware given your Finance background which is similar to mine.
Epistemologically, we are at Six Sigma Event for all systems keyed & indexed to the whole global architecture of Fractional Reserve Banking, and sundry servo-systems/cybernetic systems.
If man had the brains for the system rebuild that we need to have in place they would have sought us out, BigB.
The elite don’t have a clue what hit them back in 08. They don’t understand the whole architecture, or the sub-architecture. They still don’t understand how to restore equilibrium, and as a result there is only disequilibrium & market decoupling.
If you think that you have some hopium left in your bottle that I just poured out onto the floor of epistemology you are mistaken.
There is no probable, or possible way that Rothschild Bank et al. can reflate an entire global macroeconomic architecture & landscape with new growth that is organic. The Fractional Reserve System under the thumb of Dr. Alan Greenspan was excessively inflated on the asset class side of economic building so much so that the global economy cannot survive the corollary deflationary headwinds let alone the reality of true deflation instead of just no growth.
Summers has pushed Secular Stagnation for a reason. Look at what Greenspan did vis-a-vis the Greenspan Put. How many decades did he simply engage in asset inflation and Fed Reserve money-pump ‘Puts’? Remember that Dr. Feelgood Greenspan always had the fix, and the Monetary Heroin.
When Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism hits the stage we are at right now it blows fat tails on myriad distributions all over the entire world finance architecture to level the landscape like Madelbrot hypothesized via Misbehaviour of Markets.
There is no possible way out of whole system breakdown, BigB.
Sorry to burst that bubble on you, buddy.
Cheers, MOU
BigB: “If you thought you had me – if you even bothered to look – the graph is inverted. The rise is the fall of the yuan against the dollar. ”
I bothered to look, and I understood that the graph showed a relentless self-depreciation of the yuan from 1981 to 1995 (to make Chinese goods cheaper hence increase exports?); followed by a neat flat plateau from 1995 to 2005 (consolidation?). I remember vaguely loud cries of pain from Clinton and Bush regimes for China to strengthen the yuan so Ussies would buy less Chinese crap and more “good old American crap”. Which the Chinese obligingly did from 2005 to 2015 (China no longer being so dependent on exports to U$?). So far, IMO, thirty years of rational behaviour by a developing country.
But I do not understand China’s renewed depreciation of the yuan since 2015, nor its borrowing of U$D rather than dumping them as before. Sounds unsound to me. Just my 2pennyworth.
Vex:
What you call ‘consolidation’ is called ‘pegging’. China deliberately devalued the Yuan (vertical line on graph) to create a favourable price differential between the Yuan and Dollar (CNY and USD). Favourable to both sides, I might add: as 49% of Chinese imports are from outsourced American firms (plus a good deal of trade by stealth coming in from Canada and Mexico. Think Mexico has the capacity to be America’s biggest trading partner? It does when a lot of the goods are ’round-tripping’ from China).
All the noise about China ‘manipulating its currency’ (pegging) is just noise. As Jack Rasmus recently tweeted: what does Trump want them to do – let their currency freefall? Which would collapse the global economy and collapse the USD? Which is exactly what will happen if China cannot get enough dollars to maintain the value of the CNY – at around 7.1 to the USD (they’d prefer >7 – but cannot commit their reserves …not just yet. The party hasn’t started yet: they don’t want to drink all their booze just yet!)
So the CNY is pegged to the USD (officially, now ‘unoficially’ (ie they sometimes deny it – which fools no one) – which is good for both (despite the political chatter – American crap IS Chinese crap re-imported). They maintained are near constant exhange rate of 8.2 throughout the noughties. The CNY appreciated in the run-in to the GFC (the next small plateau). Confidence in the USD was shot away: which favoured the CNY (continued appreciation). China initiated the recovery with the greatest public works campaign ever. They also invested heavily in (cheap; firesale) stock – like Fanny Mae and Freddy Mack.
I think that there is a reasonable consensus that without China: there would have been no recovery. The other factor of note was that investors wanted a quick return on money they may have lost. So they took the ‘free’ money – QE money that was meant to re-stimulate the US economy – and invested it abroad. Which created the Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and BRICS …seeded by surplus USD ‘free’ capital. Which again favoured the Chinese sphere and the CNY.
Happy days to around 2013-15 (there are no exact dates). In this period: China stopped building (or scaled down the rate of overbuilding). Which caused a commodity market downturn. The phenomenal over-expansionism slowed down: and the full carnage of the GFC became apparent. But not to investors. They had literally trillions to play with. Fuck tying it up with sweaty labour or having capital tied up in smelly factories and noisy machines. Not when we can make money from money in the offshore derivative casinos.
And lest anyone says otherwise: China joined in. Very generally; they do prefer tangible assets. They have invested heavily: but not necessarily well. The big burden is all that unsold infrastructure that is consuming a huge amount of growth in repayments. It’s now turning into NPLs – non-performing loans. The party isn’t over: but the booze is running dry. As a tortured analogy: remember when you’d nick the Advocaad, Babycham, or Ouzo you’d never normally touch? That’s the global economy. And China is firmly at the party, so to speak. The dollars are running dry.
One of the effects of which is counterintuitive: investors invest in dollars. The CNY – and EMEs – are starved of currency and begin submerging (the current depreciation). So investors invest even more in USD denominated assets (the future depreciation). Once it starts: its a death spiral. And it started in the repo markets last week. According to Rasmus: they’ll have to start QE4 for real soon. Sort of like a middle of the night booze run – in my tortured analogy. If the shops stay open. Which is where I got to above. How much shit collateral can you keep taking for booze (stop it!)? It was only 12 years ago FFS! Someone is bound to remember what happens next – refuse shit collateral – and crash the party.
And if China can’t get anymore USDs: they’ll have to commit their reserves. I cannot predict what will happen. No one can. History never repeats: but it sure does chime. The fuckers took our future and gambled it away. Someone is going to have to pay. Which will be us with another lost decade …and another. I can’t be the only one who is getting sick of this game.
BigB, I do not understand economics but it seems to me you are saying that China is now financing infrastructure by borrowing from Rothschild banks. In other words, China works for Wall Street — and may have been doing so ever since Kissinger-Nixon initiated U$ firms outsourcing their capital for hardware manufacture to China. This can’t be good IMO.
Re debt, all I know is an old joke: if the debtor can’t repay, that’s the creditor’s worry. Could you kindly remind us what unheard of action Iceland took about her debt after a great crash (2008?). They did not accept the solution proffered to Britain by financial genius Gordon Brown. The Icelanders did something so outrageous that Brown threatened to unleash his Anti-Terrorist squad onto them. I am not clear what Iceland did about its debt but I guess it wasn’t “Quantitative Easing” ie borrowing even more from Rothschild banks.
You don’t understand economics: neither do I! What the hell are they playing at?
There is no economic simplex. The USD and CNY are so interpenetrated they might as well as considered as a symbiosis. Which goes right down to corporate part ownership. The USD has very little penetration into the mainland; but the intermingling on the littoral periphery – the Special Economic Zones that have stalled in the current economic crisis – threatens the onshore CNY to.
Many of the reasons are outlined in the SCMP articles. One of the things to highlight is ideology. They believe that ‘printing’ CNY causes inflation. So they borrow USD as collateral and convert it into CNY (which makes the currency fragile). Don’t ask me why: it is pure neoliberal dogma. Michael Hudson and PCR have said quite a lot about this: there is no real reason for it other than neoliberal ideology. So much for communism? Does communism even have an economic theory of its own?
Compared to the mainland CNY: the USD colonisation is admittedly small. But it is significant – because the PBoC cannot ‘print’ USD …or HK dollars (which is another significant trade no one is accounting for). If there was a crisis in the SEZs it would quickly transmit onshore (where all the NPLs from public works are – off-balance) …or vice-versa. It’s a juggling act – keeping all the plates spinning (Jack Rasmus has written often about this in deep economic detail). If there is a crisis in the American banks – which there is (overnight repos are now being extended to 14 day repos – no need to indicate why) – China loses its export market and access to dollars. It is so complex though: absolutely no one – including central bankers – can comprehend it all. I haven’t even begun to include Europe, Australia, or Japan. The risks are incalculable at this point. And the weakest link in the finance chain impossible to pinpoint. Hence: the ‘Black Swan’ – expect the unexpected. It is all interlinked globally is my point.
As I am keen to point out – for epistemic reasons if no other – the idea China will float away to a NeverNever land of economic harmony with nature is not going to happen. So why pretend it is? There is no need to demonise or glorify any particular nation. Doing so skews economic realism away to overt ideological idealism. The economic elite of nearly every country play their part in the global hegemony of capital over humanity. The few that do not are sanctioned out of existence. The obsession with capital accumulation has destroyed humanism and the environment. And its own economy. A bit of economic literacy and humanistic realism might enable us to pinpoint why? Pretending everything is on the up and up for an imagined Eastern territory seems increasingly silly as that economic fantasy – and humanities future – is pouring down the toilet of the – now extended fortnightly – repo market.
I’m afraid China is not walking away this time. They do have the capital facilities to cushion the worst of the blow. As a complete guess: they may have to write-down or write-off debt. Who knows? But we in the UK are massively exposed through HK, Barclays, and the criminal HSBC to a Chinese slow down. And we do not have the capital facilities to fight it. Which is my main point: capitalism entails poverty, austerity, and impoverishment for us all. So why do we support it?
And in the final analysis: the UK caused this. The City that is. Some 70% of Eurobonds and 45% of derivative trades take place in London every banking day. A) we don’t ever see a penny of it – and children die in poverty in the shadows of a vaunted financial services institutions …and B) it impoverishes the entire world. When the shit hits the fan: who pays the bills? Many: with their lives.
And that is why I am an anti-capitalist. They buy and sell our future and risk the lives of the many – so they can gamble till the system crashes. Then transfer the debt onshore to socialise their losses. It was only 12 years ago, FFS! It’s happening again. When are we going to say: “No: never again”?
For humanities sake?
Systemically. the weakest link across the global economic system & Fractional Reserve Banking is sovereign Debt-to-GDP & the $1.9 quadrillion estimated notional dark pool derivatives universe.
Nothing in existence compares to the systemic risk of the dark pool derivatives universe. Buffett said these were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and everyone went back to sleep thinking Uncle Warren Buffett would bail everyone out if it ever failed.
Warren Buffett has pulled Berkshire Hathaway off the table to the tune of something on the order of $55 billion cash so that when the stock market blows fat tails in October he will then be able to swoop in and buy up everything for pennies on the petro-dollar.
Weapons of mass destruction in the Finance sector are derivatives hiding in dark shadowy places like the Non-Bank Sector of Finance in the USA & China.
Imagine that you are Wily Fox walking through the derivatives universe and there is no light of day to guide your path to the exit. The only way to see where the exit is can be found in lighting a match to see.= but if you light that match it will set off all of the derivatives given that they are armed with fuse that ignites if lit by a match.
Can the Wily Fox find the exit without lighting a match given the universe is completely dark and no light exists?
MOU
BigB, Thanks for that reply. I get the part about China foolishly buying U$D; also partly agree that if world trade stops then New Silk Road infrastructure will be less useful. But I think Russia and China (and Cuba and Syria and Iran) have enough Socialist / Communist know how to fall back on their own resources. Also there is a reservoir of self-help in tough little countries like Iceland, Yemen and others of that ilk in Africa and Asia. Likewise, I guess, in some of the “Flyover States” of the U$A. Israel will be OK because Zio Capitalists will shield her from great financial recession as they did in 2008.
It is the great “fiat-money” civilizations that will feel the shock, like last time: the ones centred around the big bright city lights.
On a final optimistic note, PollyAnna wishes to see more Communist / Socialist governments arising from the shock, as they did in the first half of the 20th century. There is an interesting question on this in today’s Saker: “Why do 21st century civilizations hand over money to private firms to supply public utilities for private profit when 20th century civilizations handed over the same money direct to public utilities with no profiteering middlemen?
Iceland declared bankruptcy Chapter 11 and then reconstituted the banking system nationally so that the people of Iceland owned the banks. They sent numbers of bankers to prison and avoided being labelled terrorists by Gordon Brown & his Oligarchs in the EU.
KPMG set Iceland up to be the patsy and I’m sure the Finance minds of Iceland have figured this out so that they could launch counterclaims against KPMG Accountants & Lawyers that sold them a bill of goods pre-GFC so that KPMG could rake in the profits by using Icelandic people as Greater Fools for their ruse of global asset theft.
MOU
Thanks, MOU. Icelanders are an interesting and rather tough ethnic group, who have been selected by an arduous journey to a land which grants rewards to those who respect its special environment. I read a book once which compares the Icelanders to the Jews in this respect. Apparently, at the time this book was written, Icelanders had the same percentage of Nobel Prizes as Jews had. Looking at these two groups today shows what different uses people can make of their abilities.
I don’t stand in judgement and throw stones lest stones be thrown at me as I am judged. Iceland is a very cool place indeed. Geothermal is mind-blowing and the wealth of resources in also pretty stupefying too. Your PM married a Canadian woman from a small town near to where I now live. The First Lady of Iceland is a CANUCK, eh.
🙂
MOU
Your feelings are well developed. The same feeling is prevalent when looking at the Three Towers, Libya, Vietnam, John Fitzgerald, Robert F., Colin Powell, Tonkin, Guaido, Ukraine, Brexit – there is no end to it. This feeling has become the predominant feeling of any awakened person on the planet. How many are there? A few hundred? A few thousand? How many are there that get the exact same feeling whenever the Western fascist regimes dish out their fascist propaganda and let lose their fascist Schäferhunde?
No, actually these young criminals in Hong Kong are not Schäferhunde. Schäferhunde are disciplined. These are undisciplined dogs. They will bite the hands that feed them. These are the moderate rebels of Hong Kong. It is their choice only, how to end up in this fake uprising. An uprising that exists only in fake Western regimes’ propaganda rags. More than a few thousand people can no longer be fooled into believing the fascist propaganda coming from Washington, London, or Berlin. More than a few thousnad know that the Western regimes are nopthing but fascist shitholes. A stain on humanity. Turning to shit everything they touch. The inverted Midas. The wanna be emperors that turn everything into shit and people in their regimes are like: “Oh, new shit! That’s great! We need more shit in our lives!” And more shit it will be, because shit is the only thing the fascist West can manufacture.
It is omnipresent in fascist Western regimes. People eat it. They smear it on themselves and others. They wear it. They drink it. They breathe it. For those Westerners everything looks, tastes and smells like shit. That is the reason why they are generally with the shit faces called ‘moderate rebels’. As moot and as futile bad wishes might be, but I wish for all the shit to return to where it originated from. To saturate the fascist Western regimes until it levels off on top of their preposterous fake-freedom towers.
And do yourselves the favor and read ‘Iron Heel’ by Jack London. It will help in waking the up in regards to the fascist lies about everything.
Boycott, divest and sanction Western shit.
Should be added for clarity:
China vows to retaliate as Hong Kong bill advances in U.S.
Every downvote is a badge of honor. And it shows how many fascist stooges are around. Keep it up pathetic peddlers and regime installers. You really suck.
It’ll be the fake lefties who think you’re supporting “oppression” of some vague kind they can’t describe
It’ll be people devoid of reason and critical thinking. Fake lefties – fake anything. Just fake. Fake humans, for a true human being does not accept any collateral damages for profits. Not one human life is ever ‘worth it’ to be extinguished for the profits of the owner class. Not a single one.
There, NTO1, you have more upvotes than downvotes. This is OffG, a Truther site.
NTO1, it’s hard to boycott oneself. I think we must Remain & Reform from within.
When thinking it through, it may exactly what is necessary. The “hard to boycott oneself” part. But that’s what it might take and it wouldn’t be depending on ulterior inspiration.
Just boycotting ourselves in regards to what we would deem boycottable (sic) in others – aw we are all one in the first place.
We will feel/fare better if we boycott unhealthy food – without prejudice. When we boycott what makes us ill, or causes us to suffer, will that not target those who make us ill and cause our suffering for a handful of dollars? Nowadays pennies to the dollar will suffice to through people under the bus. What are we to do about the arms industry’s share holders losses when there will be no new war?
What will happen to the poor shareholders of Bayer/Monsanto if glyphosate would be banned because it is carcinogenic to the highest order?
The best boycott may simply be to exclusively buy what is good for the planet and life in general. But then again, without stickers that make that clear, the individual cannot think all that out on itself. The government will fix it…and it does, as everything is fixed aka rigged.
“throw people under the bus” and a few other typos. Apologies, but at least these are my typos – after I turned all ‘auto-dismember’ off.
@NTO1: “Just boycotting ourselves in regards to what we would deem boycottable (sic) in others”.
Interesting counter to the old complaint “It’s hard to boycott oneself”. Of course! one’s country is _not_ oneself. One can select things in one’s country that one does not like, and avoid them. One can go even further along this path of selective internal BDS: one can select traits in oneself that one does not like and avoid them.
Trojan Horse can take many shapes.
When Egyptian territory was returned from israeli occupation, we heard that the land was left infested with large rats. Hong Kong seems the same.
“What is truly scary now, is that families here in HK are deeply divided. Father does not talk to his son. Silence reigns inside the families. Colleagues do not touch the subject of riots. The situation is thoroughly ruining our city, our society, our families.”
Like Western families re 911. Wise Solon of Athens who invented democracy (one of The Seven Sages) made it a crime to hide one’s political opinions. Democracy is “the best form of bad government”; hidden agendas turn Democracy into the worst form of bad government — as we in the West are seeing.
This is the guy who wrote, a few weeks ago, that extradition from Hong Kong to China would be no different than between different US states or European countries. Laughable and an insult to his readers’ intelligence. So treat his meanderings with suspicion.
Mr Vltchek, why are you doing Beijing’s dirty work?
I think you meant to write “extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China”. Hong Kong is not a country.
And just what is your business with China, that you are getting so exited, don’t tell me you love and care for Chinese people!
Currently, a person from Hong Kong who committed a crime in Shanghai cannot be extradited back to Shanghai for prosecution if already returned to HK.
Is there any other country where someone is able to commit crimes and becomes immune from prosecution simply by living in another city?
The British version of hasbara has arrived! Hello 77th brigade scumbag!
Admin:Any further content-free abuse spamming will be deleted
Fuck you Admin go on be like the guardian and censor away then we will know you’re just corralling us!
Hong Kong is Scared….of the Rioters Andre Vltchek
Andre into humor, surprise!!
No worries, uncle Xi is not scared of anybody and will deal with any Party line dissident voices. The Taiwanese are anguishly watching his moves here and will vote accordingly.
If the CPC would allow freedom of expression followed by free elections no Chinese would have to look outside. The Bogey is not in Washington but in Beijing once again after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Democracy is messy but a good safety valve and keeps minds and hearts happy, not only stomachs and hands.
Yes, China has a millennia long tradition of totalitarian rule but once this could change step by step…
you’re really not fooling anybody, hasbara troll.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566
What, Israel is behind me and the Hong Kong protesters?
Sorry I forgot, Israel is behind EVERYTHING bad, it is the Devil.
Than it could also be behind Milosovic, check your dreams…
Milo, may I suggest also the descriptive term ‘hasbarollockser’: One who pretends to be ‘explaining’ but is in fact talking bollocks – wilfully. Seems that Off-G’s work has established rapidly a reputation for such good quality reality-mining that it’s been marked and assigned it’s own hasbarollocksers by Tel Aviv Central Troll-Farms, Inc.
Having to make up paper-thin tendentious shite, to attempt – ineffectually – to counter the density of good sense and reality-awareness that’s – mostly – on show here, must be a distinctly uninspiring career choice. Poor hasbarollockser! 🙂 But it does give the odd good laugh to those who aren’t fooled.
I’d be pretty sure that Andy is nothing to do with Hasbara whatsoever, based upon his postings for a long time.
I agree with that comment Andy, but China, for all its bad side, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty.
Western style democracy is broken and it will not come to China, and conversely, Chinese communism is a special and unique hybrid and won’t spring up in the west.
The left is so desperate to believe in the sanctity of China that they perform daily contortions on the situation in Hong Kong and ignore reports of prison camps in Eastern Turkestan and genocide in Tibet. Nearer to home the China Commission sits in London and hears reports from defecting Chinese doctors appalled at the forced organ donations from prisoners of conscience, a trade claimed to have led to a million deaths. I view that as willful ignorance.
There is no civil society or rule of law in China and those lawyers who try to defend people whose homes have been taken from them by a rapacious Communist Party find that the ‘social credit’ system set up with the help from western companies such as Cisco Systems and Microsoft, has just denied them the ability to use their telephones or to travel. Despiteanti corruption campaigns from Xi Jinping Communist Party corruption is massive and well placed families have the means of transferring their ill gotten gains out to the west where they can enjoy them unhampered.
So, having seen Hong Kong being awarded protections from the way Chinse subjects are treated for fifty years under the ‘one country two systems’ agreed with the UK in the leadup to Hong Kong’s return to Communist China, I wish Hong Kong protesters well.
Genocide in Tibet!? Hahahahahahaha oh god. And the left hate China!? it’s a small handful of Marxist Leninists and a few others who like China! The mainstream left like the entirety of the right hate China because they’re told to. Puppet! Go on YouTube and type Michael Parenti Tibet Dalai Lama and see what you hear! Sheep
Funny how when my pal went to China with his Chinese wife and children he loved it! And here’s the Michael Parenti Video seeing as you’ll be too scared to finding the truth! https://youtu.be/SRJdqkjmiKI Funny how Tibet’s was always Chinese under the fascist Chang Kai shek but was magically an independent nation when the communists kicked the child raping Buddhists out! Weird that ain’t it?! But you A) probably won’t watch the 6 minute video and B) will just claim it’s made up because it’ll hurt your emotional little brain
The United States of America did the same thing to Ukraine during Obama’s term of office where John McCain was visiting Ukraine and fomenting the regional strife just as the USA is doing today with Honk Kong protestors turned USA Fascists with weaponized help in the form of CIA propagandists visiting and working with leadership of the protests.
The Hong Kong protests are all about Trump and nothing more than that. The people of Hong Kong are not afraid of the protestors whatsoever. The Hong Kong Police do not fear them and neither does governance. It is a Show Trial of propaganda designed solely by the CIA & Pentagon.
Trump is the biggest asshole in the world and the protestors feigning pleas for Trump to support them are paid actors.
MOU
”The United States of America did the same thing to Ukraine during Obama’s term of office …”
Yes, that also occurred to me. The Maidan events which took place in 2014 had been meticulously prepared and stage managed for a number of years prior to these events. NATOs soft invasion was spearheaded by various NGOs backed up by western governments, viz, the US and the EU. Also being groomed by their western instructors were the neo-nazi paramilitaries – Praviy Sektor, Svoboda, and the Azov Battalion which was formed form various nut-case factions during the course of the coup.
These preparations were taking place as early as 2010. I remember my wife and I were travelling on a train from Donetsk in the east to Chelmenitsky in the west, when a large group of 20-something young men boarded the train at Dnepropetrovsk. I thought that they were a football team. They claimed to be students but there were no women or girls among them. This seemed rather strange to me. But during conversations with my Ukrainian wife it came out that these young warriors were coming home from their training camps, after being trained and instructed in military training and urban insurrection.
During the huge demos that took place in Kiev the EU flag waving majority who imagined what a wonderful life was on offer in the EU; but these idealists were unceremoniously shoved aside by these right-wing insurrectionists who transformed the whole politics of the Maidan.
And the result of all this upheaval? A failed, poverty-ridden state, in hoc to the IMF, ruled (if that’s the right word) by oligarchs, chief of which is Igor Kolomoisky, various bent politicians, and neo-nazi thugs.
It’s not too difficult to imagine the Hong Kong ‘idealists’ dreams of freedom, democracy et cetera, ending in exactly the same manner.
Re Ukrain. It should be pointed out that the Right Sector, Svoboda and Azov who you mentioned, would march through the streets of Kiev covered in Nazi regalia, right arms raised in the Nazi salute shouting “Death to the Jews”. Most of the media in the west called them “ultra nationalists”. Not Nazis or even neo-Nazis but ultra nationalists! Last week, in fact, I read an article describing them as “extreme nationalits”.
And these are the same journalists who accuse Jeremy Corbyn, a principled man who has fought racism all his life, antisemitic!
They were extreme terrorists and not nationalists at all. Just text book garden variety Psychopaths.
MOU
The text book Psychopaths & Fascists that were recruited for Maiden were infinitely much more violent & bloodthirsty than the protestors in Hong Kong are capable of being. It is not possible that the protestors in Hong Kong are anywhere near as truly violent as Maiden became in the final autopsy.
And I’m a Remote Viewer that actually viewed that incident you mention where you were on that train. I fully believe you know because I remember Remote Viewing you in that situation on that train.
I kid you not, Francis.
I also Remote Viewed Maiden later on interrogating a guy & threatening his life in a room where they used a nail gun to staple him hands to a wooden floor. Those Maiden goons were extremely viciously violent people. Perhaps the most violent beings the USA has ever employed to create regime change anywhere IMHO.
Cheers, MOU
EDIT:….’know’ should read ‘now’ instead, sorry.
MOU
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Hong Kong in May 2019 where he met one of the “pro-democracy” leaders Martin Lee.
Another “pro-democracy” leader and supporter, the media magnate Jimmy Lai, met Pompeo and US Vice-President Mike Pence in Washington DC in July 2019, and also later met the then US National Security Advisor. As the State Department reporter for Bloomberg noted at the time, that level of access to three senior US government officials by an overseas non-government visitor was quite unusual.
Did Trump know about these meetings? It’s quite possible he did and also possible that he didn’t, given that just two months later Trump walked Yosemite Sam Bolton off the plank.
Yosemite Sam went out guns blazing like all deep state actors do. Yosemite Sam was booted because of his trigger happy personality which is not exactly something that America wants to get branded with if they ever do go kinetic war because sovereign litigators would end up blaming America for installing such a trigger happy psychopath like Yosemite Sam to begin with.
Yosemite Sam was just an actor in a power play that the State Department runs to intimidate their adversaries. Realizing that they have taken the threats of trade war too far the administration of America has opted to turf Yosemite Sam so that they look more conciliatory in trade negotiation tactics. If Sam is onboard everyone can ascertain an obvious stance by the State Department that they will take America to war with China & Russia if they don’t get a trade deal. Now that the admin realizes that they pushed China too far with threats via Yosemite Sam violence they got rid of him and he exited stage left to be replaced by a Mormon that does not have a track record of being a warmonger like Yosemite Sam is, and always will be.
When you see a character like Yosemite Sam playing cards in the CIA lounge of the Council on Foreign Relations you know he is just a state actor.
He read his lines and played bobble-head potted plant too.
Andy Warhol said we get 15 minutes each, Jen.
Cheers, MOU
For a start, Beijing could do with them what it already does in Xinjiang province with radicalised Uyghur terrorists: separate them by sending them into other parts of China, put them all into re-education camps, teach them Mandarin and provide them with vocational skills.
And how would you feel if your government forcibly moved you to another part of the country and forcibly “re-educated” you?
As Andre Vltchek details in his article, these protesters are ignorant of Chinese and even HK history, and are estranged from their families. Somehow they have been brainwashed by the HK education system. One way to deal with them would be to separate them from the toxic environments that have made them what they are, give them opportunities to acquire vocational skills and learn Mandarin so they can get work (Vltchek has mentioned their English is poor and I know from other online sources that their knowledge of Mandarin is also poor: this means their work prospects are limited to HK, and if HK continues the way it is going now with all its problems, it is looking at an impoverished Third World future) and interact with Chinese people so they can see for themselves what China is really like.
You got any better ideas than this?
Not too sure myself about this and difficult for the average punter to get a handle on who these people are and what exactly motivates them. Of course the evidence shows US and UK interference. One thing that has surprised me is the restraint of HK police and China – a good thing if they can show restraint and keep a lid on things. An informative article which helps my learning but as Andre may be suggesting, solutions (including dealing with foreign meddling) may require study and separation of the trouble-making from the genuine issues.
The good thing is the world is wising up to ‘regime change’ and seen the disastrous consequences on the lives of people. The violence from these protesters and waving US/UK colonial flags leads me to think the incentives on offer from foreign parties may outweigh any consideration for the lives and futures of fellow HK residents.Perhaps identifying and cutting off these lines of support is a good place to start and then see what you are left with.
If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong, you’ll have seen that it’s extremely high density, there’s no escape for the HK police, I would expect that everyone knows where they and their families live. That’s a very strong incentive to not beat up your neighbours.
Of course everyone knows where the HK police and their families live, that is why the “pro-democracy” protesters are targeting and threatening them.
The Chinese irony being that it is little more than 100 years since the Boxer (anti-foreigner) Rebellion was brutally ended, and western missionaries were hiding in fear; Mandarins in Szechuan & Yunnan were beheading rebellious Buddhists, Muslims, & hooligans, fathers were selling their children into slavery for a sack of rice or a box of opium, etc..
The ebbs and flows of recent Chinese history…
Multi-Cultural good for the West or India, bad for China and the Muslim countries: Lefty hypocrisy.
Close the border to China.
Close air routes except for freight traffic.
Close the sea routes excep for freight traffic.
Turn off all communications with the rest of the world.
Let them get on with their internal fight, thereafter no external influence from anywhere allowed, including China.
…those are ideas for a discussion, not all necessarily what I would do if it was my choice.
An open-air concentration camp where the general public of some 7 million as well as the police are at the mercy of gangs of young brainwashed thugs barricading the streets to disrupt traffic and throwing poles onto railway lines to derail trains is not my idea of a better idea.
Far better to arrest the hardcore gangs committing violence and sabotage and put them in prison, and then separate the youth from the systems that have made them what they are and taught them what to believe. The HK education system needs examining and reform; and the HK govt should also require that charities and NGOs show transparency in their funding and register as foreign organisations if over 50% of their funding comes from overseas (the US and Israel have similar laws), and expel any groups that refuse to obey the law. A lot of churches and foreign religious organisations might be forced to leave.
The HK govt also needs to reform its taxation laws so HK is no longer a tax haven with all the problems that tax havens have: astronomically high property prices and a severe housing shortage for those unable to afford buying or renting their own homes. This is actually the most acute social and political issue in HK.
I agree with your sentiment, but Guangzhou (Canton) Province and the southern regions have always been Cantonese speakers; quite distinct from Mandarin.
As long as China continues to be a wall-to-wall restaurant, there will always be a job for these hooligans, whatever language they speak..
My Uyghur neighbors, and the 23 other ethnic minorities who constitute my neighborhood, do quite well running their own shops and businesses, and they speak their own languages; neither Cantonese or Mandarin..
I don’t know, why not ask some of the many people who were forcibly moved to the midlands and the north from London during the last 9 years?
Good point
Will you advise the same re-education camps for Western XR protesters? Or for non-integrating minorities in the West like some Muslims or Central American gangs?
Maybe they could just be corralled into a Gaza type concentration camp and gunned down by thugs with British sniper rifles and dum dum bullets.