The stage is fast being reached where China will have to send in the PLA troops to restore order and prevent the destruction of the city of Hong Kong. When that happens the freedoms its residents have enjoyed under the 1997 hand back of the former British colony will probably end. The rest of the world will grudgingly give approval because Hong Kong residents are now rioting for an unattainable cause.
Initially, they wanted an end to a new law that could see Hong Kong residents moved to mainland China to answer for crimes committed in Hong Kong. The Beijing Communist government keeps tight control of its courts and the conviction rate is near a hundred percent. Hong Kong residents feared dissidents would be swallowed by this corrupt system and simply disappear permanently into a gulag somewhere in a remote part of mainland China.
They had a win when that law was withdrawn - but not abolished, and that is where the mood of the rioters changed. Vast crowds have swarmed through the city, week after week setting fires and in open combat with the police. Public utilities have been smashed and fires lit. Commerce, which is the life blood of Hong Kong has virtually come to a standstill. That mood is now demanding that Hong Kong be granted stand alone freedom as a separate nation and that is something that Xi Jinping will not allow.
There is no question about Hong Kong being legally a part of China. It was hived off as a temporary British colony as settlement of the opium wars and when its lease expired and it was handed back a " one country, two systems " law system was supposed to grant freedoms not attainable on the mainland for fifty years. That expires in 2047.
China has long threatened to go to war and invade Taiwan, that other enclave island to which the defeated Nationalists retreated when they lost the civil war. Taiwan has enjoyed its freedom because it has the protection of a treaty with America which would bring that country to its defence. There is no similar arrangement pertaining to Hong Kong.
Xi Jinping has been patient in the face of what is a clear challenge. The PLA is grouped at the border with Hong Kong and the rioters would be wise to back off and negotiate with the mainland Communist regime. Unfortunately, it is university students who are now heading the riots and this is the same quest for freedom that ended in mass bloodshed when troops and tanks crushed a call for political freedom in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Unfortunately, a bloody end to this unrest now seems inevitable. The big difference with Tiananmen square is that this time most fair minded people will agree that using force to restore order in Hong Kong is reasonable. The Hong Kong residents are destroying their city !
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