China rules out democracy in Hong Kong, and how it would be an honor to be on the CCP watchlist

So, China (well, the Chinese government) has just gone and proven once again that they're a bunch of big fat jerkfaces. After years of promising Hong Kong that democracy was on the horizon, they've now yanked that away and offered a pathetic booby prize: a committee can select nominees that have Beijing approval! Whee! Free at last, free at last!

I'm not sure if China is surprised or not that Hong Kong has correctly figured out that this is not actually democracy, but I do know that this doesn't change my very low opinion of China. In fact, it's only made it stronger:




Seriously, if saying openly (which I am now) that I hope the CCP is overthrown and that they are an incompetent government that lacks a proper mandate to lead will get me on their watchlist, then it is an honor to be on that list. (I'm not sure if I am, but if I am, or it ever happens, it only confirms that I was right to say that the CCP is that bad. They stifle freedom. If they don't like me, it is an honor not to be liked. Toeing their line means accepting the unacceptable.)

In short, fuck you, Communist Party of China! 凸益凸 ~~ I hope you die a hard political death.

As noted by Michael Turton, the general punditry have "just figured out" that there is a connection between what happens in Hong Kong and what could happen in Taiwan if Taiwan accepts the idea of becoming a Chinese buttmonkey I mean SAR.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked that a group of people - most folks who are not in the Taiwan blogosphere or not  Thinking Taiwan (which is excellent), basically - have been caught with their heads up their asses yet again. They are uniformly terrible at writing on Taiwan - even the major news outlets. The New York times publishes foofy hot-springs-and-food pieces and could stand to publish more hard news, the WSJ has long since sold its soul if it ever had one, the Reuters editors insert all sorts of wrong bullshit into articles about Taiwan (e.g. calling Taiwan "an island that split from China over six decades ago after a civil war" which is simply historically false - during and before that war Taiwan was Japanese and before that, it was briefly independent after 200 years as a part of imperial China - a government that no longer exists - in name only. China declined to defend or effectively govern it in any sort of centralized way even in the 19th century which is why Japan was able to take it in the first place). And don't even get me started on The Economist, where everyone who reports on Taiwan should be fired via defenestration from the highest possible floor for their idiocy and lack of journalistic integrity in reporting objectively.

But, I still feel sad that I have to file this under "No shit, Sherlock" and marvel yet again that the lackluster punditry and joke academics who claim to "know" Taiwan hadn't picked up on this before. What can we learn from this? Don't trust the lackluster punditry and joke academics.

However, what bothers me more is what this says about China's attitude towards Taiwan.

Someone, somewhere, in the CCP, must have woken from the chemical party long enough to stop and think "hey, if we tell Hong Kong it can only have Fake Democracy, that'll piss off Taiwan because more people will figure out that when we forcibly annex our Chinese Brothers Across The Strait, that the first thing we'll do is slowly dismantle their democracy and put Fake Democracy in its place. There are still some people who don't fully realize this yet, and it's better for our plans to take Taiwan that a few people be delusional about what Chinese rule means. So, how do we handle this?"

I mean, they must have known that the bait-and-switch they just pulled in Hong Kong, which hasn't been working so well in Macau, either, would wake people up to what Taiwan's future could look like as a Forcibly Annexed Peacefully United "province of China".

The fact that they did it anyway is really scary, if you think about it.

It means that they don't think Taiwan is enough of a flight risk that they have to carefully tailor their lies message to appease the Taiwanese into continuing to believe that being a Chinese SAR would be "that bad". It means they think they've got this one in the bag, that Taiwan will soon enough be theirs for the taking. It means they can do whatever bullshit they want to Hong Kong, and that the reaction of Taiwan isn't important enough to cause China to change its strategy so as to "court" its neighbor. Read one way, it seems they no longer think that Taiwan needs to be convinced that it would be okay to be an SAR - they think they'll get Taiwan no matter what.

And that is horrifying.

Seriously, fuck the CCP.

I can only hope that either my interpretation is wrong, or that their hubris will be their downfall.