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Let's talk about China

not-bono-ever said:
From tiktok

View attachment 250708


The PRC must be shitting themselves now
Click to expand...


Hey! That's Alex! Grandma Wong! She's such a sweet, and strong, human. She's been a stalwart of the democracy movement here for over 15 years.

Unfortunately, she was arrested (again,) last week. It's fucking shameful. :(

en.wikipedia.org

Alexandra Wong - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

It makes me both smile (and wince,) when I think of her - which is daily right now.

(And, BTW, in case any weird Tankies are posting ... the UK flag doesn't represent some nostalgic desire for colonial rule, it's rather a reminder to, and a slap to the face of, the UK govt' for abandoning five million Brits to the CCP mafia.)


...


Edited 'coz, as Argonia highlighted, I forgot my ...


Woof
 
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I'm delivering this from the Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), since it's been a worthy and credible, independent Hong Kong voice since 2014. Small and fragile. Good people ... hkfp.com ... (A good place to follow).

The author of this piece has been one of my favourite academic commentators on Hong Kong affairs over the decade. Suzanne Pepper is well informed, politically insightful and adds a strategic perspective. She also has a (weekly?) blog (there'll be a link or search it). I'd recommend her. She has her finger on the pulse and and her insights add value.

hongkongfp.com

How Hong Kong's national security law and common law system collided head-on | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

Enforcing Hong Kong’s new national security law may not be so easy after all. On the face of it, political life here has been turned upside down in just six months. The new law was promulgated by the central government in Beijing on June 30 last year. But trying to enlist Hong Kong’s existing...
hongkongfp.com hongkongfp.com


There she is ...

Suzanne Pepper is a Hong Kong-based American writer and Hong Kong resident with a long-standing interest in Chinese politics. In her book, 'Keeping Democracy at Bay: Hong Kong and the Challenge of Chinese Political Reform', Pepper addresses debates surrounding democracy and dictatorship.

Her blog ...

follows the developing story of Hong Kong’s democracy movement as it struggles to maintain its coherence amid the growing pressures of integration within the Chinese political system.


Stay strong peeps and, remember, be nice to each other. ;)

Woof
 
And in case anyone hasn't watched it yet (you should, it's really good local filmaking, a vignette of five shorts from 2015, won Best Film at the 35th HK Film Awards, despite many CCP plots to stymy its release in HK - it's never been seen legally on the mainland - )

...

Anyway ... "Ten Years" was supposed to happen in 2025, not fucking 2020! 🙁 Worth watching but chilling. The old Auntie in the last of the shorts hauntingly reminds me of our own Grandma Wong.

en.wikipedia.org

Ten Years (2015 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


Little did we think it would happen so fucking fast. :(

Beware the rise of facism young people. Learn from history. Never think it could never happen "here".

Blessings one and all.

G'night. Rest well. Keep thinking. 🐬


Woof
 
It's a huge and positive step to allow Hong Kong nationals to move to the UK, though it is of course a tragedy that people feel forced to leave their homes. I hope they will be made welcome. Some will argue the Tories are doing this just to make up for a post-Brexit shortfall in cheap migrant labour, but this is above all the right thing to do. Fuck Xi Jinping.
 
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ska invita said:
It's a huge and positive step to allow Hong Kong nationals to move to the UK, though it is of course a tragedy that people feel forced to leave their homes. I hope they will be made welcome. Some will argue the Tories are doing this just to make up for a post-Brexit shortfall in cheap migrant labour, but this is above all the right thing to do. Fuck Xi Jinping.
Click to expand...
Not if the Chinese government have their way:



www.irishexaminer.com

China will no longer recognise British National (Overseas) passport

Rolling coverage of the international stories of interest to our readers
www.irishexaminer.com www.irishexaminer.com
 
teuchter said:
What does this actually mean? Why does it matter whether or not China recognises it - is the implication that they'd not let people leave Hong Kong if they had one of these passports?
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yeah thats what ive taken it to mean - getting on a fight will be impossible, so if you want to travel you have to get a Chinese passport, with visas for flight to UK probably monitored and restricted.
then if you do turn up in the uk you wont have a BNO passport to claim 'asylum' with

thats my guess
 
ska invita said:
yeah thats what ive taken it to mean - getting on a fight will be impossible, so if you want to travel you have to get a Chinese passport, with visas for flight to UK probably monitored and restricted.
then if you do turn up in the uk you wont have a BNO passport to claim 'asylum' with

thats my guess
Click to expand...
But wouldn't these people have a Chinese passport anyway, or be able to get one?
 
Can Hong Kongers claim asylum in the UK? Personally I think a moral case can be made that that they should be be able to, if they currently can't.
 
So re passports it sounds like people will be able to leave Hong Kong on an ID card, but wont be able to come back in on a BNO passport.
Suggests to me that the route would be
1. Leave HK on a BNO
2. Stay in UK 5 years unable to go back to visit even
3. Apply for citizenship. Eventually get it (add a couple more years)
4. Get a British passport
5. Be able to return to visit using a British passport

It isn't clear to me if you can have a Chinese and also a BNO passport - I think not, but not sure

Also an issue is what rights people will have in that 5 year pre-citizenship stage within the UK.
 
Pickman's model said:
People who read the book Gomorrah or saw the 2008 film of the same name will remember that there have been for years Chinese workers effectively slaves in europe
Click to expand...

There is a city just outside Florence called Prato which is famous for this. Enormous textile factories mostly run (and owned) Chinese people, in order to charge "made in Italy" prices for clothes made very cheaply. Health and safety standards appalling and there have been awful incidents of fires and factory owners locking the doors with workers inside. Not that these get much mention in the press or place in the Italian historic memory of domestic mass murders, which is what they are.

There isn't even a Wikipedia page about it. Just a one paragraph mention in this long article.

www.reuters.com

Insight: Italy's Chinese garment workshops boom as workers suffer

Shen Jianhe lost both her job and home when Italian police shut down her garment factory in the Tuscan city of Prato.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
Talking of Prato, my relative Iris Origo wrote a book about it in the medieval period.

www.penguin.co.uk

The Merchant of Prato

This extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century. Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a...
www.penguin.co.uk www.penguin.co.uk
 
I find the lack of reporting and interest in the story bizarre , seems a really big deal to me.

"300,000 Hong Kong residents expected to flee to the U.K." press reporting. Fact is no one knows how many will come.

What happens when people arrive? The government is effectively inviting as happened in Windrush generation. Not everyone in HK is a rich banker, theres a lot of poverty there. Can you only come if you have enough money the same as other current rules?
 
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ska invita said:
I find the lack of reporting and interest in the story bizarre , seems a really big deal to me.

"300,000 Hong Kong residents expected to flee to the U.K." press reporting. Fact is no one knows how many will come.

What happens when people arrive? The government is effectively inviting as happened in Windrush generation. Not everyone in HK is a rich banker, theres a lot of poverty there. Can you only come if you have enough money the same as other current rules?
Click to expand...

No, no income/job requirements I can see. If you have BNO status and the fee (£250) you're granted a 5 year visa. You can then apply for settlement, which requires:
Then you can apply for citizenship the year after.

www.gov.uk

British National (Overseas) visa

Apply for a British National (Overseas) visa (known as a BNO visa) to live, work and study in the UK if you or a family member are from Hong Kong and registered as a British national (overseas).
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
 
Reported today that New arrivals will have to support themselves but will be able to access schools and the NHS, after paying the £624 annual immigration surcharge.

Sounds like no access to any benefits?

Also there is at present no government employee working on help with integration/support
 
"Under the visa scheme, those hoping to move have to show they have enough funds to sustain both themselves and their dependents for at least six months."
 
1024px-China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png


China's population is set to start declining this decade.
They will soon have a rapdily ageing population. This is the data from 2020.

2021's data shows a large drop since then.

But data released Monday by the Public Security Ministry showed that 10.04 million births were recorded in 2020 — down from 14.65 million in 2019.
Click to expand...
www.voanews.com

China Records Fewer Births in 2020 Than 2019

A number of countries have recorded a decline in births since the pandemic began
www.voanews.com www.voanews.com

They have problems of high housing costs, women needing to work, women getting educated and a developed world demographic age spread with a developing world economy. I.e. its not Italy or Germany (both face similarish problems) with their per capita GDPs. More over much of China's growth is aimed at being internally driven but the young debt raising and spending 20s and 30s will not be there in the numbers. They can still theoretically increase their economy by moving "up the value chain" and having better trained, more productive workers earning more. But they are also likely to dragged into the middle income trap, where a country finds its work force being paid too much to compete in the cheapest fields but not able to really break into higher end manufacturing and design quick enough to make up for that. This is where their weird spat with America is hurting them. They are getting blocked from many of the fields they want to move into.

In 10 years time their pensions bill is going to sky rocket. Their health care costs are going to go up rapidly and even now the bargaining power of their labour force will be increasing as there are less and less 20 somethings entering that force.

I strongly doubt that China will surpass the US GDP anywhere near as quickly as everyone seems to assume. The US does import a huge amount of people that it integrates into its society every year. Its path to continued growth is clearer.
 
ferrelhadley said:
1024px-China_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png


China's population is set to start declining this decade.
They will soon have a rapdily ageing population. This is the data from 2020.

2021's data shows a large drop since then.

www.voanews.com

China Records Fewer Births in 2020 Than 2019

A number of countries have recorded a decline in births since the pandemic began
www.voanews.com www.voanews.com

They have problems of high housing costs, women needing to work, women getting educated and a developed world demographic age spread with a developing world economy. I.e. its not Italy or Germany (both face similarish problems) with their per capita GDPs. More over much of China's growth is aimed at being internally driven but the young debt raising and spending 20s and 30s will not be there in the numbers. They can still theoretically increase their economy by moving "up the value chain" and having better trained, more productive workers earning more. But they are also likely to dragged into the middle income trap, where a country finds its work force being paid too much to compete in the cheapest fields but not able to really break into higher end manufacturing and design quick enough to make up for that. This is where their weird spat with America is hurting them. They are getting blocked from many of the fields they want to move into.

In 10 years time their pensions bill is going to sky rocket. Their health care costs are going to go up rapidly and even now the bargaining power of their labour force will be increasing as there are less and less 20 somethings entering that force.

I strongly doubt that China will surpass the US GDP anywhere near as quickly as everyone seems to assume. The US does import a huge amount of people that it integrates into its society every year. Its path to continued growth is clearer.
Click to expand...

Pre-lockdown total fertility rates (TFRs) among the Chinese in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia were in the range 1.1-1.3. It was probably little higher in China. Now it could be as low as 1. Few industrialised nations seem able to keep fertility rates at replacement level - Israel and North Korea are exceptions. What will the Chinese government decide to do about it?
 
Every time some CPC bootlicker on Twitter who claims to be a leftist starts their shit in my feed, I always ask about why billionaires are even allowed to exist in China. Interestingly, I don't get the usual denial (CIA propaganda!!1!1!!), or the desperate attempt to argue that it's actually all part of the plan to build the future socialist utopia by being the biggest capitalists in the present. So far I've only got stony silence instead.

Evgv-XBn-WQAAb-GHp.png
 
Flavour said:
There is a city just outside Florence called Prato which is famous for this. Enormous textile factories mostly run (and owned) Chinese people, in order to charge "made in Italy" prices for clothes made very cheaply. Health and safety standards appalling and there have been awful incidents of fires and factory owners locking the doors with workers inside. Not that these get much mention in the press or place in the Italian historic memory of domestic mass murders, which is what they are.

There isn't even a Wikipedia page about it. Just a one paragraph mention in this long article.

www.reuters.com

Insight: Italy's Chinese garment workshops boom as workers suffer

Shen Jianhe lost both her job and home when Italian police shut down her garment factory in the Tuscan city of Prato.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
Click to expand...

The links between these sweatshops and the Camorra was one of the focuses back in the early 2000s, of Roberto Savigniano's books and subsequent film Gomorrah. Tim Parks · Talking Corpses: ‘Gomorrah’ · LRB 4 December 2008
 
Today is an important anniversary.

Please. Please! PLEASE!

Invest just two minutes of your life to watch this time lapse video (about 6 - 8 hours, condensed into two mins’). It’s truly stunning. Genuinely awesome. Unique.

On this day, two years ago - 16th June 2019 - two million (+1) of us (over 25% of the entire population of Hong Kong,) marched, entirely peacefully, for democracy in Hong Kong.

We all know what the CCP’s response was and what followed.

We will never forget. We will never forgive.

Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.

Keep the faith.



🐬

And remember; be nice to each other peeps.

Blessings one and all.


Woof
 
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