The City That Ate A Country


Why I am not more worried about China
China is caught in a peculiar situation.

On the one hand, they are a communist nation that is very nervous about American influence in the world.

On the other hand, they desperately need the money and the innovation provided by a free market.

When China took back Hong Kong, I don't think they knew just what was going to happen.

This, for example.

Tens of thousands of people marched through the heart of HongKong on Sunday to urge Beijing to introduce universal suffrage in the former British colony, in the biggest pro-democracy protest in the territory in more than a year.


Organisers of the match claimed that more than 250,000 people, many of them dressed in black, took to the streets to protest against government reforms that stopped short of a timetable for direct elections of the city’s chief executive and legislature.

The figure is much higher than the original expectation of 50,000, although the police said there were only 63,000 people.

The high turnout could put pressure on Beijing to answer the territory’s growing demand for more democracy and revise the reform proposal, academics said. China’s communist regime allows Hong Kong to keep its free market economy but it has kept a tight grip on the development of democracy since the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Universal suffrage is promised in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the territory’s mini-constitution, although no timetable is specified.

Mind you, these are just the people who showed up. There are ten of thousands more, trained almost from birth to be capitalists.

The free market, a rule of law recognizing individual rights, and democracy. This is the "holy troika," you can't have any one without elements from the others. Reduce any one element, and the others diminish.

Ever since the handover, I have called Hong Kong The City That Ate A Country. I'm confident that will be history's verdict as well.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - December 5, 2005 at 04:23 AM  Tag


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