Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

If they were armed this would have been over a long time ago. China would have gone in with tanks and the army, or even air strikes. Once you take up arms against the government that’s not a protest, that’s a civil war.

Or, given alliances and treaties, the spark setting off a world war.

Air striking the people would be just the beginning, not the end

The world would react quite brutally I imagine to another massacre from China - especially one on this potential scale.

Tanks, the army and air strikes have all been used against a well armed populace in the middle east for quite a while now to little lasting success.

Putting aside how insane air strikes would be in Hong Kong, you’d probably see more Guerrilla warfare, if the citizens were armed.

They successfully swept Tiananmen Square under the rug without much internal fuss, so I wouldn't underestimate the Chinese state in this regard.

Also, "the world" is too homogeneous a group to predict it would all simultaneously go after China for some single incident.

Who is in the world? What would their motivations be for "reacting" to China? And more importantly, what counter-motivations exist that could sway them from doing so?

If you take all this into account, you'll find the group willing to go "against" China for anything is actually very small.

Edit- Added section responding to the "world" comment.

China is putting millions of Uighers in concentration camps[1].

The response from the international community has been crickets chirping.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...

Air strikes in Hong Kong? So the government would destroy the very thing they are attempting to keep from rebellion?

> China would have gone in with tanks and the army, or even air strikes

Thereby ruining the very thing they want to control and profit from.

That's the thing that the "They'll just send in the army, LOL" folks don't seem to get: bombed out cities and a population under armed guard aren't very economically productive and, on top of that, you need to station military units there to keep a lid on things which is also costly.

I think that this is a very old perspective on Hong Kong, whilst before it was an integral part of their economy, now that is much less the case.

As this vox article states correctly, Hong Kong used to make up 1/5th of their entire GDP. But with expansion and growth in cities across the country, it is now but a minor component of their economy. In the grand scheme of things it isn't a large enough chunk of their economy that they couldn't afford to lose it. Especially not if the balancing act is, bomb this one city and regain political stability vs massive instability for the greater entity.

[0]https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-1...

This is too simplistic a calculation. If Beijing shows that Hong Kong can write its own rules just by brandishing some weapons, then it's setting a precedent to lose every other major urban center.

For Beijing, the destruction of some parts of one urban may be exactly the price they're willing to pay to maintain their grip.

A single bombed out city is a small sacrifice to make an example for the rest of the nation.

Absolutely, yes. It would be an example to anyone else thinking of rebelling.

And yet we had exactly that happen in Syria.

What would they do? The us economy is utterly dependent on Chinese manufacturing.

Killing armed rioters would get much less condemnation than killing unarmed protesters.