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The Evils Of The Chinese Protest Movement

By on December 31, 2019 in Featured, General

By Theodore Shoebat

In this video I talk about the evils of the Hong Kong protest movement:

In June of 2019 there was a million man march in Hong Kong over a proposed extradition bill (called “the Fugitive Offenders Bill”) which would have allowed mainland China to extradite criminals hiding in Hong Kong. Hong Kongers protested this in fear that this bill would be used to extradite political dissidents. The goal of the protests was fulfilled when Chief Executive Carrie Lam finally announced the withdrawal of the Fugitive Offenders Bill on September 4 of 2019. But the violence of protestors has not been abated as they continue to intensify their demonstrations. As Chinese journalist Frank Ching has observed: “protests have continued and the level of violence has gone up.” 

There has been horrendous violence done by protestors. For example, there is a video on Twitter of protestors lighting a man who disagreed with their movement on fire:

Attacking a police officer:

Stabbing an officer in the neck:

Funny thing is that Americans will support this movement regardless of this violence, but would not hesitate to bash such a movement if it were Black Lives Matter or some Islamic group.

The violence done by protestors hasn’t really been helping Hong Kong but has damaged the local economy.

“We’re now seeing, really, what can only be described as mindless vandalism from the radical protesters,” said Richard Harris, chief executive of consulting investment management firm Port Shelter Investment.

According to a report from CNBC:

“Thousands of protesters blocked roads, and public transportation routes to Hong Kong International Airport, and said they hope to draw the world’s attention to their pro-democracy movement. Demonstrators were tearing down CCTV cameras, throwing tear canisters back at the police and flipping metal fences onto the rail tracks, leaving many arrival passengers stranded in the airport for hours.”

Hong Kong is now in a recession thanks to the Hong Kong protests. There are numerous reports one can read on this. According to one from the Guardian:

Hong Kong is expected to slump further into recession this quarter. GDP is forecast to have shrank in October-December, for the third quarter running, due to the pro-democracy protests that have been raging for months.

Hong Kong’s finance secretary Paul Chan warned that:

“Based on the situation of these few months, it is inevitable that negative growth will continue.

This means the government will be less flexible in using financial resources under an economic recession.”

The protest movement is even expected to intensify its efforts this week, with demonstrations expected to disrupt shopping around the New Year celebrations.

The Hong Kong economy has been hurt significantly by the Hong Kong protests, as it had to economic support package and lower its GDP forecast, according to another CNBC report:

“Hong Kong’s government announced an economic support package worth HK$19.1 billion ($2.44 billion) on Thursday as escalating political protests and the prolonged Sino-U.S. trade war weigh heavily on the Asian financial center.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan unveiled the plan at a news conference, after saying the government is expecting to lower its 2019 GDP growth forecast to 0%-1%, from the original 2-3%.”

Businesses are hurting badly thanks to the protestors. Hong Kong is a major tourist destination, but thanks to the chaos of the protests, tourists have been avoiding Hong Kong. On top of the trade war between the US and China, the effects have been devastating. As we read in the BBC:

“Growth figures issued on Thursday showed Hong Kong has entered a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

In the third quarter, Hong Kong’s GDP shrank 3.2% from the previous quarter, which had seen a drop of 0.4%.

Ahead of the numbers, the city’s leader Carrie Lam warned of a looming recession. She expects the economy to record negative growth for the year.

DBS economist Samuel Tse agrees the upcoming figures will show Hong Kong has sunk into recession – and expects more pain to come.

“We don’t think it will rebound that fast,” Mr Tse says.

…

Hong Kong has been grappling with the US-China trade war, while a weaker yuan has hit spending from mainland visitors and bruised consumer sentiment.

…

Many hotels are struggling to fill their rooms and Mr Tse says the vacancy rate is sitting around 60%.

Some hotels have slashed prices in the hopes of winning back tourists, while reports suggest many have forced staff to cut work hours or take leave to cope with the slowdown.

…

Lighter tourist flows have weighed on retailers in the city, many already battling with softening consumer sentiment from local shoppers.

Some shops have been forced to shorten trading hours while workers report fears over their safety as protests have turned violent.

According to a poll (involving 1,021 people) by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, 59% of people in Hong Kong support the protest movement, with more than 1/3 of that number stating that they actually have partook in the demonstrations.

Supporters of the protests were obviously in the majority but there is still a substantial minority that are opposed to the protests, with 30% percent saying they were not in favor of the movement. While these are outnumbered by the majority, 30% is still a substantial number. Its not as though every Hong Konger is support of this movement. Plus, only 17% expressed support for seeking independence from China. So, if Hong Kong is being so tyrannized, then you would obviously have a bigger number than 17%. Nonetheless, 17% is still substantial and it does show that separatist sentiments have intensified in Hong Kong. The separatist movement in Hong Kong is being backed by Japanese nationalists. 

Andy Chan Ho-tin, a pro-independence activist and founding member of the Hong Kong National Party (the first party to advocate for Hong Kong independence) attended a rally and the press conference, both of which were organized by the Free Indo-Pacific Alliance (FIPA), an organization that wants independence for several regions currently a part of China, such as Taiwan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Essentially, it wants China as we know it today to be broken up and fragmented.

Not surprisingly, the president of FIPA is Rebiya Kadeer, the main face of the Uyghur separatist movement that wants Uyghur independence from China. FIPA has two offices. Unironically, one is in Washington and the other in Tokyo. The vice-president of FIPA is Hidetoshi Ishii, a Japanese nationalist who is working to revive militarism against China.

Ishii is the husband of a popular Japanese ultra-nationalist named Yoko Ishii, and he regularly appears on her Youtube channel and tweets her material. In other words, the vice-president of FIPA — the organization that hosted Hong Kong separatists — is a Japanese jingoist. Just to show you how violently nationalistic these activists are, on April 15th of 2019, Ishii shared a post from Yoko praising the Japanese Kamikazes.

In August of 2017, Yuko interviewed her husband, Mr. Ishii, for the Right-wing magazine, Sankei Shimbun (JAPAN Forward) on Hong Kong’s resistance against China. In the interview, Ishii essentially said that Hong Kongers need to stop talking about how the Japanese military mass raped people in the Second World War because it is “alienating” Japan which is, to him, the biggest ally to anti-Chinese resistance. Ishii condemned the fact that Hong Kong erected a memorial for “comfort women” or women who were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese imperial soldiers:

“Japanese conservatives stand alone in confronting Beijing. And yet, some Pan-Democrats in Hong Kong recently built a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese consulate there. In effect, the Hong Kong Pan-Democrats are alienating their only real friends in Japan. In mistaking their allies for their enemies, they are only weakening themselves while emboldening their CCP [Chinese Communist Party] oppressors.”

Ishii expressing objection to the comfort women memorial is not surprising, given the fact that back in 2013 his wife, Yoko, made a song mocking the historical realities of sex slavery by the Japanese imperial military:

She also made another song praising the Yasukuni shrine (where Japanese war criminals are worshipped as gods) and mocked those who objected to it:

Ishii, in the conversation with his wife, affirms that Japan is the most powerful nation in Asia, and thus must see Hong Kong as the frontline in a struggle for domination against China. He also adds that Japan must have the military capability to attack her “enemies”:

“I see Hong Kong as the front line of our battle against the CCP in Asia. If we’re able to protect Hong Kong now, then there’s hope that we can push back the situation in Tibet, Uyghur, and South Mongolia.”

When asked by his wife, “What do you think Japan should do as a leader in Asia?” Ishii replies by saying:

“I think the biggest obstacle is the lack of self-awareness among the Japanese that we’re a leader of Asia in the first place. We can’t achieve anything if the Japanese don’t even have any will to begin with.

With that in mind, what I think is needed for Japan is to have the capability to attack our enemies. In Japan, the debate about North Korea’s extremely reckless missile launches has finally started to include questions about whether it’s time for Japan to be able to fight back if provoked.”

 

 

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