[JohnnyB]

It pains me terribly to see what's happening in HK these days. Hong Kong has been a second home to me for the last few years, I'm still an HK resident and it's a place I was hoping to move back to next year. It's a special city in the world and I feel like I am watching its death in real time.

I don't support violent protest, but the percentage of protesters that have been engaged in aggressive violent action is a small sliver of the whole. It's also a case where it's difficult to tell how much is genuine recklessness and how much of a role is being played by agent provocateur. Having 2 million people peacefully take to the streets and ongoing large peaceful protests clearly suggests that the concerns are held by a much larger body of the population than just the relatively few violent protesters though.

The response of the HK government has been useless throughout all of this and Carrie Lam's inability to even answer the question of whether or not she has autonomy to act as the Chief Executive suggests there will be no response or engagement from the HK government. Beijing is in control of the response and is not going to bend.

The Chinese state media has been building such a dramatically negative narrative about what's going on there that the support for mainland Chinese military intervention is higher and higher inside China. Chinese media is representing the protestors as anarchic violent rioters that are destroying HK society and as also hated by the residents of HK. They're also really playing up nationalist sentiments about around the “one China” idea to further rile up domestic appetite for intervention and there has been no shortage of media being shared in China of troops and military equipment on the Shenzhen border doing military exercises set to soaring overtures as background music to instill pride in the Chinese military. The fact that the majority of mainland Chinese have no way to know more than one side of the story and that what they're being shown is designed to stir up a demand for intervention doesn't bode well.

It feels like watching a repeat of 30 years back and I'm afraid the HK I love may not be there to return to a year from now.

There is video of a Chinese general speaking in June of this year about the situation in HK, saying that the people of HK need to be brainwashed and referencing what Deng Xiaoping said back before the handover that first HK just needs to be taken and then all the promises about how it would be treated could be broken later. This, I think, is the approach now being moved towards under Xi Jingping.

As the rule of law dies in HK, HK dies. There will be more capital flight, more businesses relocating to places like Singapore and HK could have a currency crisis as it loses the peg to the USD. This death of the city will be used domestically in China to erase the memory of HK as a thriving city with Western influence and Western rule of law, clearing that blotch upon Beijing's face and pride. It will also be used to show how Western powers can't be relied upon by Asian allies in the region, thereby weakening confidence in American influence in the region and putting more pressure on other countries in the region to be close to China.

I really, really hope this is not how it plays out, but things are looking pretty grim right now