The ultimate American imperial dream is to engineer a Chinese vassal state
By Pepe Escobar, from Cambodia – Posted with permission
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower (immortalized by Jimi Hendrix)
Nothing beats the beguiling, stony smiles at the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to plunge us back into history’s vortex, re-imagining how empires, in their endless pursuit of power, rise and fall, usually because they eventually get the very war they had sought to avoid.
The Bayon was built as a state temple at the end of the 12th century by the undisputed superstar of Khmer empires, Jayavarman VII. Its magical narrative reliefs convey a mix of history and mythology while depicting daily life in Khmer society.
We still don’t know today the identity of the faces shown on the temple’s giant stone carvings. They could be a representation of Brahma, or of Jayavarman himself – a practicing Buddhist. What we do know is that the glorious Khmer empire – incomparable in art and architecture, and even benign in the sense that the mandate for power was based on the king’s relationship with the gods, started to fade after the 15th century, dismembered by war against the Thai and later the Vietnamese.
Stony smiles “all along the watchtower”, displayed as a living commentary on the rise and fall of empires, could easily connect, geopolitically, with a touch of Buddhist impermanence, to our turbulent times of Hybrid War. And to the current American empire.
It’s always amusing to observe how US think tanks, such as CIA outlet Stratfor, constantly celebrate success in undermining Russia via this strategy.
Hybrid War on Russia was engineered in 2014 on two fronts: ordering the Persian Gulf petro-poodles to crash the oil price while imposing sanctions after Russia opposed the coup – actually a color revolution – in Kiev. Hybrid War was engineered at a Deep State level as a tool to try to smash Russia’s outstanding recovery since Vladimir Putin was elected to the presidency in 2000. The undisguised Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style goal with the Kiev coup was to draw Russia into an Afghan-style partisan war.
Of course, Russia suffered economically – but then slowly recovered, diversifying production and boosting its agricultural capacity. Yet hybrid warfare always ensures that once economic hardship is engineered, a government necessarily becomes unpopular. Then fakes and traitors are unleashed: Alexei Navalny in Russia, or “protests” in Hong Kong that the Deep State dreams would lead to an uprising in Beijing.
A small, radical nucleus of agents provocateurs in Hong Kong, using copycat methods from the Maidan in Kiev, sticks to a single-minded road map: force Beijing to commit a Tiananmen 2.0, thus elevating the all-out demonization of China to the next level.
The inevitable consequence, according to the privileged scenario, would be the “West”, as well as vast sectors of the Global South, boycotting the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, a complex, multi-layered strategy of economic integration that has expanded well beyond Eurasia.
Hong Kong, an irrelevant asset
In Hong Kong, everything is about money and then, on a secondary level, about China.
China’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of $9,700. Hong Kong’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of nearly $49,000 – higher than Germany and Japan. It is no wonder that no one in Hong Kong wants to be “like China.” So money is a key factor for Hong Kongers to fear “Chinese domination.” Only a few outsiders, such as Thai economist Chartchai Parasuk, highlight this.
Hong Kong is becoming increasingly irrelevant for China. At the time of the World Bank-lauded “Asian tigers,” in the early to mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP was a hefty 27%. Today it’s a paltry 2.7%.
Capital has been steadily moving to Singapore, whose annual GDP per capita is now even higher than Hong Kong’s. Real wages are now lower than at the start of the decade. And wealthy Chinese mainlanders are buying everything in sight, thus excluding the average Hong Konger from an upwardly mobile trajectory.
Up to now, Hong Kong’s allure, for China, was its unique position as a free-trade mega-port, the proverbial gateway to the mainland, and one of the world’s top financial markets. But that’s increasingly in the past. Shenzhen, across the border, is already China’s top tech hub, and Shanghai is being slowly but surely configured as the top financial center.
China is also being hit, hybrid war-style, with a rolling trade war plus sanctions. The ultimate American imperial “dream” is to engineer a Chinese vassal. This has nothing to do with trade. There’s no logic of avoiding a trade deficit with China only to see the same products produced in Thailand or India. What’s goin’ on is rather hybrid war all over the spectrum: attempts to destabilize and possibly defeat Russia, China and Iran, the three key hubs of Eurasia integration.
New hybrid politics
The Hybrid War strategy has created our current state of financial warfare. And that inevitably implies blowback. The weaponization of the US dollar is leading Russia, China and Iran as well as Turkey, Syria and Venezuela to seriously turbo-charge their drive towards alternatives. They could be anchored to a basket of commodities, or it could be all about gold. Wily investor Jim Rickards defines Russia, China, Iran and Turkey as the “New Axis of Gold.”
Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.
And that brings us to the necessity of reconstructing Clausewitz’s axiom, according to which, originally, war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Clausewitz argued that war is a real political instrument. Now, Clausewitz remixed should read: Hybrid War is Politics by Other Means.
The means now go way beyond conventional war, as in Khmer empire times. They mix irregular and cyber war; fake news; lawfare (as in Brazil); electoral intervention; and even “diplomacy” (of the gunboat or economic blockade variety, as applied against Iran and Venezuela).
All Along the Watchtower, the song, as written by Dylan and delivered by Hendrix as a hurricane approached, is an ominous portent of Apocalypse Now. Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history, it seems so fitting for our times of Hybrid War.
Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.
‘Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history… Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.’
Pepe Escobar puts it so poetically and with such pathos.
I visited the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom just a few weeks ago. It is indeed a poetic place. Whatever your perspective is wrt. the history of the huge site of Angkor Wat and places nearby, it is a sight to behold. Nothing comes close.
The guides will tell you that King Jayavarman VII built these places, just like our guide told us. But I can not avoid thinking that this is far too much to build in 20-30 years. There amount of stones in the Khmer temples surpasses the amount of stones in the pyramids at the Giza plateau in Egypt, and the sandstone came from the Kulen mountain ~50km away from Angkor Wat. Some of the stones are too big for elephants (we were told elephants were used for transporting stones).
The most fascinating thing, apart from the millions of unexplained 1 inch deep holes in the stones, is the presence of so-called keystone cuts. These are very characteristic features found only in a few places around the world. Peru, Bolivia, Egypt and Angkor Wat in Cambodia are among the selected few. Here is my short video of keystone cuts at Angkor Wat.
I think the khmer King Jayavarman VII built on top of a foundation that was already there, and much older than the 12th century.
Here is an article that explains how Washington is meddling in the affairs of Hong Kong:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-washington-is-meddling-in-affairs.html
While the ideals of democracy are admirable and desirable, Washington’s version of democracy is tainted by big money and has developed into a system where politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
‘Democracy’ in any meaningful form is impossible under Free Market neoliberal capitalism. The USA, whose blood-soaked banner the Hong Kong compradores are waving, and whose battle ditties they are singing, is a plutocratic oligarchy. Its ‘democracy’ is such a hollow sham that only fools or rogues still declare it the one and only example for ALL the world to follow-or else.
Or what of the UK, which never allowed the ‘Yellow Devils’ in Hong Kong even a sniff of ‘democracy’? What sort of imbecile or hypocrite would prefer a system that throws up a leader like BoJo, after one like May, after Cameron, after Blair/Brown etc, to the hugely successful meritocracy of China?
Perhaps the greatest Evil of so-called ‘Western democracy’ is the way that it divides societies against one and other, with increasingly vicious, pre-civil war, hatreds spreading widely, in ‘divide and rule’ tactics, while ALL real power belongs to the rich owners of society. As internecine hatred deepens, the rich parasites steal ever more of the common wealth and indulge their various perversions, and the vast majority sink in to poverty, malign neglect, vicious austerity and social decay. Unlike China.
@Mulga Mumblebrain
Congrats ! You digged another fine diamond, – the “REAL OWNERS OF SOCIETY” !!! Exactly one hundred percent true – we’re in the bag – it’s done – and the pale riders are already clearly visible on the horizon, riding in for the feast.
Sad to say but we really, really deserve it in full. Who knows, perhaps in a very distant future we might finally catch up with them, but you can do this only if you can stand the truth and prefer it to the sweet lie with which they win us over everytime, personally I feel it’s getting boring, really.
Everyday the News from the Radio reminds me again that I’m imprisoned in an asylum of the terminally insane.
But they won’t get me because there where I am, they cannot go, never, I know them but they know nothing of me all they can see is themselves no matter what they try and do. I can endure them, but they cannot endure me, hahaha that’s my weapon, and it’s a horrifying and devastating one !
I can remember getting into strife at school, or just being laughed at, when I asked a few simple questions about the ‘current affairs’ guff we were brainwashed with. I detected rather quickly that >90% of people did not bother using that mass of fat and gristle ‘twixt their ears. Moreover, that generation did not improve with age either, particularly those from that social milieu (upper middle subaltern class)with whom I was ‘educationally’ incarcerated. The young today look either sharper or more stupefied, depending on circumstances, but the poor beggars have no happy future in store, I fear.
Here’s an article to say US is already beat in the Middle East.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/chinas-ultimate-play-for-global-oil-market-control.html
US/Empire/Global Oligarchy is lashing out wildly like a wounded Mafia.
As Stephen Gowans states, the United States possesses international dictatorship over the world.
The International Dictatorship of the United States, Its Friends (Amnesty International, ISIS and the Nusra Front) and Enemies (Hassan Nasrallah, Cuba and Ana Montes)
https://gowans.blog/2015/10/25/the-international-dictatorship-of-the-united-states-its-friends-amnesty-international-isis-and-the-nusra-front-and-enemies-hassan-nasrallah-cuba-and-ana-montes/
This global American dictatorship, however, is one that is disguised behind the USA’s founding deceptions about Freedom and Democracy, which function as a Machiavellian mask for the USA’s lust to dominate, control, and subjugate the world–or what the Pentagon proclaims is American Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet.
America’s global dictatorship is the 1000 pound gorilla-in-the-living-room that most pro-American apologists cannot admit and attempt to divert attention from by psychologically projecting the USA’s own malign behavior onto its geopolitical opponents like China, Russia, and Iran.
This sociopathic America mentality is not limited to US political elites but includes the American people themselves–across the political spectrum from Left to Center to Right, mainstream or alternative.
Indeed, when push comes to shove, the vast majority of Americans will support their country’s world dictatorship, as it is ultimately the basis of their parasitic and jealously-guarded American “way of life.”
Moreover, the USA as a country was founded as a White colonizer nation based upon the delusions that it possesses a Manifest Destiny to steal, colonize, and now occupy what is really Native Indian, Mexican, and Hawaiian lands.
Today, America’s Manifest Destiny delusions are planetary in term of their ambitions and concealed by Goebellsian deceits about “defending freedom, liberty, and human rights.”
But America, the self-styled Land of the Free, is in reality the very opposite of what it claims to stand for.
This is the Orwellian national character of the American Empire since it was spawned over 240 years ago.
Uncle Sam was Born Lethal
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/uncle-sam-was-born-lethal/
When America Was Great, Savage White Un-Settlers Raped a Continent and Assaulted a Planet
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/26/when-america-was-great-savage-white-un-settlers-raped-a-continent-and-assaulted-a-planet/
“This sociopathic America mentality is not limited to US political elites but includes the American people themselves–across the political spectrum from Left to Center to Right, mainstream or alternative. ”
I do think American history shows so many features of sociopathy. Just one small example: I am reading a very enlightening book on the intertwining of piracy and the economies of colonial America. Much of what passes for economic development depended on one or another type of thievery and outright banditry, piracy, and mobbism. Not to mention, of course, genocide.
Still, I don’t think that I personally am a sociopath.
Katherine.
great comment – thanks for the links
And the sycophants of US power in Austfailia are as brainwashed as any denizen of Thanatopolis CD or Peoria, Illinois. To even breathe a hint of criticism of ‘Our Great and Powerful Friend’ brings social disgrace and abuse as swiftly as any critique of Israel or the Holy People who dwell there. This, of course, is the country that has numerous local politicians and presstitutes etc as ‘confidential sources’ as Wikileaks showed, and overthrew one elected PM, Whitlam, in 1975, and was probably involved in the offing of another, Rudd, in 2010, by several of those aforementioned ‘sources’. And Obama decided to use our Parliament to declare the ‘pivot’ to war with China, in 2011, as our first female PM, and one of our very worst, Gillard, looked on with doe-eyed adoration.
Yet this interference in our politics is positively welcomed by our fifth-rate ‘elites’, who grovel and abase themselves whenever they visit Thanatopia or some Imperial thug visits our shores. Meanwhile the media and the political scum compete to invent Chinese ‘interference’ in our politics, which amounts to paying for buildings on our tertiary campuses or running Confucius Institutes to increase knowledge of Chinese culture, and react in the most vicious, deranged and nakedly racist manner. Meanwhile the Chinese give us 55 billion a year in trade surpluses 1.4 million tourists per year, and tens of thousands or tertiary students, in return for which we spit in their face-‘Western Moral Values’ in excelsis.
I would advise the Chinese to do with Australia the same as I’ve advised them to do with the US. Order Chinese companies to withdraw their investments from those countries.And cut of the imports from those countries. Most anything they buy from Australia (and the US) can be bought from other more friendly countries.A lot of those imports could come from Russia,Iran,Venezuela,Cuba,etc,etc.And that investment money could be redirected to those and other China friendly countries.Sure in the “short term” China might suffer some discomfort by doing that.But in the “long term” China would benefit far more than they suffered.And it would do great damage to the Australian and US economies.
It would sink the Austfailian ‘economy’ without trace. However the Chinese are not vindictive, and will undoubtedly prefer to hope that the Austfailian public will grow brains and empathy from out of somewhere, and learn to prefer peaceful coexistence to envious, racist, hatred. Moreover, there are many Chinese living in Australia, for many generations and more recently, and already some of the more vicious Sinophobes have begun painting them as Fifth Columnists, so China must consider their situation and safety, as well.
“And it would do great damage to the Australian and US economies.”
Indeed it would. And, as in Venezuela, Iran and other countries where a similar action has occurred [it’s called “sanctions” and it’s aim is to cripple the people so they move to overturn the government], the politicians and wealthy corporate owners and investors feel no pain. None at all.
Australia is already sinking into the mire. The number of 0ver 55yr olds homeless and sleeping on the streets has escalated. Indeed, so has it among the younger cohort. I live as an expat in an “emerging” economy where my Aus dollar currently gets me 60 US cents. I can only survive because China is still buying Aus coal and gas. Should it stop, and the Aus dollar crashed to 20cents, I’ll be starving on the streets of Ecuador, so forgive me if I hope your “advise” is ignored.
Far better for China to find ways that actually hurt the pollies and their buddies, thus forcing them into a more adult, independent, and sensible mind set and actions.
Then things could improve without thousands of us dying!!!
Here is the nugget of Pepe’s article:
“Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.”
Do or die, total victory, by any means necessary . . .
The US will kill, maim, sabotage, destroy, lie, distort, fabricate and bully any and all to achieve its goal.
It must prevent “the other”–multipolarity.
It must divide the global community to prevent Eurasian Integration and Belts and Roads Initiatives.
It will continue every war, every conflict, and it will add more chaos in every region on every continent.
Containment is not just to slow China’s rise and prevent Russia’s influence.
This strategy is about total destruction (how else can the Empire continue to rule?) of Russia and China as viable superpowers.
Does this mean a hot kinetic war?
It is already engaged in several places. Many more to come in Central and South Asia, in the South China Sea, in Africa, in the ME. Wherever the US has proxies in large scale.
What about tactical nukes?
Likely option the US will use first. The Russians and Chinese would only use them if attacked in wide scale. The US will use them for geopolitical reason to justify a military need.
The Hegemon is manic, desperate, flailing, but more deadly and incentivized than ever. This is worse than the Cold War mania. This is about fundamental economic hegemony, leveraged on financial weapons (which are what sanctions are). The US has never been more exposed, over-extended, off-balance and seriously challenged by not one (like the USSR), but two (Russia and China), with others (Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela).
Using color revolutions simultaneously against Russia and China will mean a double-barreled failure. Nearly all color revolutions have failed, and these are not the first launched against the Russians and Chinese.
What then?
This is why the US is shifting its proxies into position to disrupt BRI and EAEU.
Just one other thing to watch–PMCs. The CIA has over 250,000 contractors. More formal PMCs will form another proxy force, so the public will not feel the massive warfare waged around the globe.
It is uglier and uglier all the time. The Empire is challenged, but is not wounded. Do not expect a collapse.
What might happen is the weight of all its mistakes might bog it down like the GI’s in Nam were weighted down, equipped with heavy weapons and gear that did not suit the battlefield.
The US might be fighting a financial war it is not equipped for the countermoves China and Russia can wield. Time will tell.
@L445:
My admirations on your yet-another succinct depiction of the desperation among Empire’s elites on the prospects of their loss of domination over the world at the hands of the stealthy China-Russia alliance. Agreed too that they will resort to any and all tools of the Satan’s at their disposal, including the use of tactical nukes when the needs and opportunities arise. But there might be one stretch of the Rubicon that they are still apprehensive about crossing: their homeland has thus far been shielded from being one of the battle ground, and they aren’t sure how steadfastly will their brainwashed populace respond when their oversea bases are shredded by opponent fire power and their own cities eligible for rains of missiles.
Will they become desperate enough to risk exposing their domestic territories to be part of the battle ground, now that China’s Beidou (and likely Russia’s GLONASS too) are capable of precision surgical campaigns? We shall see.
I think I have an answer for you (having lived all around the US over 14 or so years – they will act like a bunch of retarded 9 year olds.I have never seen more cowardly people than Americans. And overall more stupid and psychopath-enabling while suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Their own worst enemies
I don’t think I have met one brave person while I lived there – there is a lot of mania and loud showing off, tattoos and other self-harm, but real honor or balls are next to impossible to find.
Actually there is on old quote from about a century ago – it matches my experience completely:
The American is marked, in fact, by precisely the habits of mind and act that one would look for in a man insatiably ambitious and yet incurably fearful, to wit, the habits, on the one hand, of unpleasant assertiveness, of somewhat boisterous braggardism, of incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity, caution and subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as if he stood ready to defend them with his last drop of blood, and forever yielding them up at the first demand. George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken, The American Credo, 1920
Another Mencken beauty-‘As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron’.
Well…I have to quibble with the author’s reference to ‘total victory’ that the spent empire is supposedly aiming for…
The ruling elite are not that dumb…they know full well that there can be no kind of ‘victory’…at best they are now fighting to forestall the inevitable collapse…
Let’s take an honest look at this whole financialized house of cards…GDP of supposedly 20 trillion…PCR figures its actually HALF of that…considering the cooked numbers on inflation for at least the last decade…
Total debt of all sectors is more like 50 trillion…
Military might…totally overrated as seen in every theater where it has operated…
Technology…militarily it is dead in the water…the MIC scam designed to enrich the parasite class…combined with the dismal decline in academia in the hard sciences has left the US far behind Russia in key military technologies like hypersonic flight vehicles and scramjet propulsion to name just two…
US still has to buy advanced Russian rocket engines to launch its most sensitive national security payloads…it’s been unable to fly people into space for nearly a decade now…
In key civilian technologies like nuclear energy, the US is again not even on the map…
The only place where the exceptionally doomed empire still excels is in moneychanging and the smoke and mirrors of infotainment…although this combination must not be underestimated…the power of illusion is very important…especially when we are dealing with a Ponzi scheme…
This is why we see the lashing out with so called sanctions…which at the end of the day are basically impotent in the face of the Russia-China axis…and in fact self defeating in the long term, like any act of aggression…
Iran has called the paper tiger’s bluff and now its tanker is sailing…oil is going to China at rates probably higher than ever…
Just like gray markets and black markets spring up in the face of unrealistic government overreach…so to the global commerce is headed…once the empire of funhouse mirrors loses that last bastion of international finance…well, then it is truly well and done…stick a fork in it…
Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.
I disagree. The Russia-China strategic partnership is a consequence of short-sighted American think-tank strategies that try to keep the rest of the planet in a state of economic servitude. Unless America were to adopt a different strategy, that of one nation among many, the rest of the planet has no choice but to continue to develop an alternative center of commerce to the USD.
The demise of the dollar, or even a significant reduction in purchasing power, will cause our economy to contract, which will lead to collapse.
If the nation was mentally healthy, this realization could be discussed openly. The nation is not mentally healthy; it is driven insane by a parasite called Israel, and Israel will continue to infect the host and use the host to gain political and military cover until the host is dead. Then, the host will be discarded.
America needs to fight for its life, but instead, it is fighting for Israel.
The real question is: how will America be discarded ?
The USA will be kept alive, like a zombie, or a golem, perhaps, with the brains in Tel Aviv and among the sayanim Fifth Column and their Sabbat Goy servants. Taking over the Internet gives you a good idea of how things are designed to proceed. That is the real reason why China, Huawei, ZTE etc are feared so much.
The Empire is in a state of extreme panic because they have run into “Mackinder’s Nightmare Scenario”, a Gepstrategic Alliance of Russia, China and Iran. There is nothing they can do about it except go in a corner and pout. BTW, the former Triple Canopy Jungle has been destroyed for hundreds, thousands? of years by Agent Orange. There is jungle but not Triple Canopy.
Bob Dylan = very talented Zionist Intel lifetime actor
Jimmy Hendrix = very talented Royal Mafia court entertainer
the Last line you show is not the right lyric from the Dylan song, according to his website.
The Cantonese cnuts want to forever retain their US/UK Navy laundry contract mentality. 300 years of British colonialism has ingrained permanent kowtow into their DNA, and they don’t even want to follow the lead of the Han Chinese to rid themselves of the colonial kowtow mentality. If they don’t start/want to change they should all be deported to England.
All Along the Watchtower, sung by either Dylan or Hendriks, has always been one of my favorite songs, as well.
It is still, as Pepe notes, as relevant as ever. I prefer Hendriks’ rendition, though. Sums up our current predicament.
https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY
Lyrics:
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late
All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
When Hendrix starts up with that song it sound like tomorrow, not 50 years ago. And I don’t mean the lyrics necessarily. It seems to feel fresh every time you hear it. Not many old songs lie outside the realm of nostalgia like that.
It is clear that China is afraid to intervene in Hong Kong.
And when the West sense weakness, it is over with China.
Comment to Marko, 20th August 2019:
Why do you think China is afraid to intervene in Hong Kong ?
Why you don’t think Hong Kong doesn’t bear such an importance for China ?
Or couldn’t it be rather that China already knows who instigated/paid those “rebels” ?
And therefore has its eyes on those people already ?
No immediate action could also be an action. Who knows ?
Philosophy as well as a different way (difference as to Western way of thinking!) of reaction to certain instigated “acts” in order to achieve a more lasting result is possible.
Don’t forget that Confucian thinking differs much of Western thinking; i.e. “action and counter-action”.
It’s quite simple.
If the protests turn to a violent attack on the government of Hong Kong, then the Central Government will be asked to intervene, per the Basic Law. It will all be transparent and understandable around the world.
If the protests turn violent on other citizens or against the police, then the public opinion will sway away from the protestors. Central Government wins by default. (Rioters beating up people in the airport showed exactly that.)
If these protests continue to impact the economy (already 20-40% drop in daily trade and tourism), the working class and ownership class will drop support of the protestors. Central Government wins by default.
There is no need to intervene unless direct separatism, extremism or terrorism arise.
Meanwhile, there are no real leaders to enter into dialogue with. Most have scrammed out of Hong Kong.
The Central Government is building a legal case that the US has managed and funded and armed the protests. If leaders are left to face the music, they will be prosecuted as traitors to Hong Kong. Quite a stiff reality and irony. They think they are “overthrowing” Beijing, but it’s the local Hong Kong government under siege.
The massive support is really a significant body of populace that never accepted the return of Hong Kong, and are quite separate from the Chinese culture of the Mainland. By language, history, customs, many Hong Kongers are culturally disconnected from China, irrespective of ideology and politics.
This will run its course. At base, it was a desperate attempt to use the summer school break to pressure Beijing and to destabilize Hong Kong. But the anger in Hong Kong is economic inequality, not voting rights. And since this color revolution is doing more economic harm to everyone, it cannot continue. Hong Kong must have stability, harmony and be welcoming for tourists. Too many people suffer now. They won’t support much more of this.
I happen to be stranded in Hong Kong at the peak of the demonstrations at the airport. The result was that the protesters did not elicit any sympathy from the people who lost connections, time and money.
Larchmonter445, to be specific, I assume you are referring to Article 14 of the Garrison Law, which states:
Article 14: In accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law of the Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region, the Government of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region may, when necessary, ask the Central People’s Government
for assistance from the Hong Kong Garrison in the maintenance of public order
and in disaster relief.
Laugh of the day.
Percy Bysshe Shelley had his warning over 100 years ago – the future of the Anglo empire clearly explained.
Only no-one was listening or reading.
“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Shelley also said, ‘Ye are many – they are few’, so ‘they’ bumped him off. ‘They’re’ still at it.
An important, great actually piece of history that needs more exposure
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-eisenhower-republicans-censured-israel-three-times/
When Eisenhower Republicans Censured Israel—Three Times
The 34th president certainly did not believe it was ‘disloyal’ to question the Jewish State’s policies against Arabs in the region.
The first Arab-Israeli war had ended in 1949 along shaky armistice lines. The censures thereafter enacted were seeded by Israeli attacks on Jordan, Egypt and Syria. The U.S. threatened sanctions if the aggression continued. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles warned Israel’s ambassador, Abba Eban, against any further attacks while Eisenhower spoke darkly of Israeli “expansion.” He was supported in his position by the UK governments of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.
The first U.S.-backed censure in October 1953 followed an Israeli Defense Force attack on the village of Qibya, near Jerusalem on the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. “They shot every man, woman and child they could find,” reported Time magazine, “then turned their fire on the cattle,” while dynamiting houses, a school, and a mosque. Sixty-nine Palestinians lay dead, with no Israeli casualties. Prime Minister Churchill was repulsed by the atrocity and supported Eisenhower’s decision.
In July 1954, a self-described Israeli “terror unit” embedded in Egypt’s still-vibrant Jewish community bombed two U.S. consulate libraries as well as British civilian targets in Cairo and Alexandria. Israel’s goal was to destabilize Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government and to pin blame for the attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood. After authorities hanged two of the terrorists in January 1955, Israel retaliated by staging an IDF night attack on Gaza that killed 38 Egyptian soldiers.
The Americans didn’t believe Tel Aviv’s cries of self-defense. Following the incidents in Egypt, the U.S. again led a UN censure of Israel and warned that sanctions were imminent. Subsequently, Egyptian commandos—who had been busy skirmishing with British troops in the Suez Canal zone—responded with their own systematic raids.