demi7en 🎗🇪🇺@hkfp Under despotism all decent people who dare to voice opinions are persecuted.
@thejapantimes LOL. After CK sold the *strategic* port in Panama to muricans the CCP sent them a memo they wouldn't dare ignore: Consider the strategic interests of the Chinese dictatorship OR ELSE...
"Hong Kong, the freest economy in the universe"
@heidilifeldman PS. #Hongkong acts as the Chinese regime's #bankingcolony, now busy building CCP's ties to the global network of anti-democracy autocrats.
Without effective and clear-eyed sanctions and embargoes crime will continue to pay handsomely. And not just the USA but all democracies will face well-funded enemies intent on disruption, division and worse.
The time for pulling the plug on hostile 'economies' was over thirty years ago. Yet here we are still feeding the beast because "cheap eggs" essentially...
@w7voa Just a day earlier the CCP-installed Hong Kong administration came up with new laws protecting the Party-state from disobedience: Businesses can be held liable to draconian punishments for any missteps (even perceived hostility towards the dictatorship) *by their employees or even contractors*.
Think about it.
Of course the CCP knows from experience that democracies aren't willing to stand up against them and disrupt all the business over mere run-of-the-mill despotism.
They had countless reasons to stop collaborating over the decades already and never did. 🤷♂️
https://www.biglychee.com/2025/06/09/still-at-the-starting-stage/
@georgetakei Reminds me of Hong Kong during the 2019 anti-dictatorship protests. The regime banned wearing masks, but, as diktated by the CCP in Beijing, in early 2020 wearing masks was ruled compulsory.
That in itself isn't insane (see: "Wuhan virus aka Covid19), but the "law" making mask-wearing illegal remained in the books and was even enforced!
In the end Hongkongers lost their fight for the promised democratic rights and civil liberties.
You don't want that happening to your country. You really don't.
@w7voa Fun fact: Most likely inspired by this, the Chinese Communist Party has come up with a concept called "soft resistance" in Hong Kong.
That means any demonstration or expression of civil liberty the regime can conceive as a slight to their dictatorship.
@arstechnica He was admittely appreciated in his native Hong Kong until he turned into a firebrand communist party stooge.
Now it's quite the opposite. He's loathed.
(Not sure about the timing, but his son was caught in the PRC in possession of cannabis which might have something to do with his radicalization, but now he's a full jingoist little pink.)
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/
@thejapantimes More manipulation of international trade and finance through an artificial 'SEZ'?
#WTO and 'free trade' are truly wondrous things; esp. for all autocrats and oligarchs.