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

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628 points nodea2345 | 7 comments | 01 Oct 19 11:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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loquor ◴[01 Oct 19 16:03 UTC] No.21126953[source]▶
This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons:

1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984.

2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget. China, in comparison, systematically rooted out these values since the Great Leap Forward. The happenings at Hong Kong and Xinjiang epitomize that.

I do think China's expansionist policy bodes poorly for all of humanity.

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parliament32 ◴[01 Oct 19 16:23 UTC] No.21127255[source]▶
I'm usually not a huge fan of the US rolling in and stomping out governments (and installing their own, of course), but this is one faux-dictatorship where it sorely needs to happen. Some actual democracy would be amazing for these people.

With the recent "trade war" and whatnot the stage has been set pretty well for a US intervention.

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1. umvi ◴[01 Oct 19 16:38 UTC] No.21127450[source]▶
You can't force democracy upon people that don't want it and aren't ready for it - it ends disastrously. The US tried to do that in the middle east and failed miserably.

The only success story seems to be South Korea, but I would argue they wanted democracy and fought alongside the US for it.

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2. dragonwriter ◴[01 Oct 19 16:45 UTC] No.21127546[source]▶
> The US tried to do that in the middle east and failed miserably.

The problem was less with democracy and more with trying to impose a common state on a set of opposed communities that had previously only been “united” in the sense that the one the US was least friendly toward was effectively oppressing the others, and even that might have been successful has the US had needed its own past occupation experience and preserved and reformed state security institutions rather than disbanding them with no transition plan, leading to an internal war before the US even got started with establishing democracy.

Not, to be sure, that that makes the idea of the US trying to impose democracy in all or any part of the territory of the PRC even remotely sane.

3. parliament32 ◴[01 Oct 19 16:47 UTC] No.21127576[source]▶
>middle east

I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic, but although the new governments didn't really work out, didn't the mass murders and other atrocities stop with the removal of the old dictator? Those countries may not be "stable" (yet), but is the situation really worse that it was?

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4. Lunatic666 ◴[01 Oct 19 17:05 UTC] No.21127794[source]▶
I'd count Germany as a success story, too! First country where democracy stuck after the Americans installed it.
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5. selimthegrim ◴[01 Oct 19 17:09 UTC] No.21127845[source]▶
Uh, Weimar republic?
6. luckylion ◴[01 Oct 19 17:17 UTC] No.21127935[source]▶
> but is the situation really worse that it was?

Was Saddam torturing a limited amount of dissidents and his sons raping and murdering people as they pleased better or worse than ISIS ruling significant parts of the middle east? Was Gaddafi better or worse than Libya in civil war, slave markets being revived etc? Was life under Assad better or worse than civil war in Syria?

Even with bloodthirsty dictators, there's usually a way to make it worse, and NATO/US is pretty good at finding it.

7. mparkms ◴[01 Oct 19 21:49 UTC] No.21131086[source]▶
The US had very little to do with democratization in South Korea and were perfectly happy to prop up authoritarian regimes for 30 years before mass protests finally led to free elections. The Korean War was fought to stop communism, not spread democracy.