Showing posts with label carrie lam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carrie lam. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Carrie Lam, What Took You So Long?



After months of protests, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam withdraws controversial extradition bill The decision to cave in to one of protesters' five core demands marked a dramatic U-turn for Lam, who for months has refused to withdraw the bill. ....... Pro-Beijing lawmaker Michael Tien said that Lam's withdrawal may not stem their anger. "I believe the withdrawal of the bill ... may be too late because this movement has become more than the bill," he said........ Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Lam said she had not "contemplated to discuss a resignation" with her mainland superiors. ...... Many will be asking why it took three months of unprecedented unrest, violence and damage to the city's economy for the government to upgrade the bill from "suspended" to "withdrawn," despite repeatedly insisting that it had no future and would not be reintroduced. ....... Lam may be hoping that the move will put a lid on the protests ahead of October 1, when China will celebrate National Day and mark 70 years of the People's Republic. ...... "The nature of the protest movement has transformed over the last 13 weeks," said Adam Ni, a China researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney. "She will have to take further steps, such as setting up an independent inquiry into police conduct. If she does not take further steps, then we can expect the protests to continue."

She should have taken this step within a week of the protests starting, at most. But three months!? By now the key demand is universal suffrage. And there she has no authority to accept the demand. Only Beijing can do this. Or what?



Hong Kong And Beijing: The Water Will Break The Dam
Hong Kong Chief Executive Can't Choose To Quit
Steve Bannon, Hong Kong, 1989, And The CCP
Hong Kong Protests: The World Should Not Watch A Possible Massacre
Why Hong Kong Needs A Directly Elected Chief Executive
The Hong Kong Protest Lacks Political Sophistication
Hong Kong: The Shenzen Angle
Could Andrew Yang Become President?

This move by Carrie Lam shows victory is in sight for the Hong Kong protests. The movement is not asking for Hong Kong independence, but it is asking for universal suffrage. I read that to mean, all members of the Hong Kong legislature need to be directly elected by the people as the Chief Executive. This is the key demand. I support it 100%.

The Chinese mainland itself has to move towards directly elected leaders. Ultimately.

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Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Hong Kong And Beijing: The Water Will Break The Dam

I am trying to understand what might be going on.

Xi Jinping is the only one who can decide. But he is acting above the fray. And the way the system is designed, people who report to him are trying their best to make him look like the tough guy he is supposed to be.

That works if all you have to do is wait. In a few weeks, the whole thing will fizzle out.

Well, it has been more than a few months, and the whole thing is only gathering more momentum.

The political system in China is not designed to respond to what has been happening in Hong Kong. What has been happening is under the full glare of global media, old and social. The whole thing is being webcast live. The Chinese communists don't know how to respond.

Hong Kong is a bigger threat than Donald Trump and the trade war. It is like Beijing is having to fight two wars at once, neither of which is military. A military war would be relatively easy. This is a phantom war.

The system is inflexible. Formally withdraw the extradition bill and the whole thing might go away. But they can't even do that. The system is that inflexible. It will break, but it will not bend. The folks in Beijing are naive in thinking the breaking point is far. Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.

How might this whole thing play out?

One fine morning the protesters wake up and realize they don't want to do this anymore. This is what Beijing is counting on. This is the least likely scenario.

The other extreme is Beijing sends in troops. This would be the stupidest move on their part. That will end communist rule inside China, guaranteed. The CCP will not celebrate a new year.

The moderate scenario is where Beijing starts by accepting the key demand. Or it even accepts all five demands and claims it a victory for one country, two systems. But this makes too much sense. If they were to do this, they would have done it already. The political system in China runs like a rhinoceros. It does not know zigzag.

I feel like Beijing might have already entered a no-win phase in this situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Although I can't be too sure. And I have not been reading enough on the details.

We will know when the dam starts to break. It might be in the form of one arrest too many, one beating too many by the Hong Kong police. Or support protests in the other cities of the world. Or the protesters managing a complete shutdown of everything in Hong Kong, the airport, the stock exchange, everything.

While Beijing moves towards October 1 like an ostrich.



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Hong Kong Chief Executive Can't Choose To Quit

Hong Kong leader says she would 'quit' if she could, fears her ability to resolve crisis now 'very limited' Protesters have expanded their demands to include complete withdrawal of the proposal, a concession her administration has so far refused. ....... Lam suggested that Beijing had not yet reached a turning point. She said Beijing had not imposed any deadline for ending the crisis ahead of National Day celebrations scheduled for October 1. And she said China had “absolutely no plan” to deploy People’s Liberation Army troops on Hong Kong streets....... Lam noted, however, that she had few options once an issue had been elevated “to a national level,” a reference to the leadership in Beijing, “to a sort of sovereignty and security level, let alone in the midst of this sort of unprecedented tension between the two big economies in the world.” ...... In such a situation, she added, “the room, the political room for the chief executive who, unfortunately, has to serve two masters by constitution, that is the central people’s government and the people of Hong Kong, that political room for maneuvering is very, very, very limited.” .....

The Chinese government rejected a recent proposal by Lam to defuse the conflict that included withdrawing the extradition bill altogether

...... But she said China was “willing to play long” to ride out the unrest, even if it meant economic pain for the city, including a drop in tourism and losing out on capital inflows such as initial public offerings. ....... “Nowadays it is extremely difficult for me to go out,” she said. “I have not been on the streets, not in shopping malls, can’t go to a hair salon. I can’t do anything because my whereabouts will be spread around social media.” ...... Lam, a devout Catholic, attended St Francis’ Canossian College ..... After studying sociology at the University of Hong Kong, she went on to a distinguished career as a civil servant in Hong Kong. She was elected city leader in March 2017 by a 1,200-member election committee stacked with Beijing loyalists....... On July 1, 2017, the day she was sworn in, Lam donned a white hard hat as she walked with Xi to inspect the new Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, which physically links Hong Kong to mainland China. ....... Lam and her government later came under fire for banning the party and the disqualification of pro-democracy lawmakers. ...... Pollster Robert Chung said Lam’s success in pushing through many controversial proposals bolstered her belief she would be able to ram through the extradition bill....... At the meeting last week, Lam said the extradition bill was her doing and was meant to “plug legal loopholes in Hong Kong’s system.” ....... “This is not something instructed, coerced by the central government,” she said........ “And this huge degree of fear and anxiety amongst people of Hong Kong vis-à-vis the mainland of China, which we were not sensitive enough to feel and grasp.”




Let that sink in a little. Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong Chief Executive appointed by Beijing, is saying she does not have the option to quit. Everyone has the option to quit. But no, not Carrie Lam.

She just made a strong case for why the Chief Executive for Hong Kong needs to be someone directly elected by the people.

Not only can she not quit, obviously she thinks she does not have the option to privately tell people in Beijing that, hey, maybe you should get someone else. They are not listening. Going public with the opinion, she calculated, was her best chance to be heard in Beijing. That is dysfunction.

Meeting the five demands of the Hong Kong protesters keeps intact one country, two systems. There is no loss of face for Beijing in accepting the five demands. But not even the top demand has been met after all these months. Beijing is so divorced from Hong Kong realities. It is as if Beijing were London, and Hong Kong was Delhi.

Maybe the shelf life for communism is 70 years. That is how long it lasted in Russia. It has been 70 years in China. All the Hong Kong protesters have to do is stay put.

I don't blame Carrie Lam. She does not have the power to accept or reject the demands. The whole thing is above her pay grade. Whereas the committees in Beijing act like deer in the headlights. They know they are powerless in the face of the protests. They think if they wait long enough, the whole thing will go away. Wishful thinking.
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Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Why Hong Kong Needs A Directly Elected Chief Executive

Carrie Lam has zero incentive to respond to the street protests. 13 weeks of protests and she is still saying the extradition bill can not be withdrawn. She answers to Beijing, not to Hong Kong citizens. 
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Sunday, August 25, 2019

The Hong Kong Protest Lacks Political Sophistication

The Hong Kong protests are the most heartwarming political action on the planet right now, with Andrew Yang surging in the US a close second. It is good to see people care about an issue enough to shut a city down.

But what is happening in Hong Kong is a protest movement. It is not yet a political movement. If success is getting people out into the streets, this has been success 13 weeks in a row. But getting people out into the streets is not the end goal, can not be.

Everybody who is out in the streets should come together in one political organization and should elect itself leaders at various levels, with a central committee, and ultimately one elected leader. It should put out its five key demands and set a deadline. Unless Beijing meets its five key demands within a set time period, the goal of full political independence should be announced. That is the only political threat Beijing will respond to. As for protests, Beijing simply plans to wait it out. I would not be surprised if the logjam continues even after 23 weeks of protests.

One country, two systems is not a bad idea. But Beijing has been eroding the rights of Hong Kong citizens. The key demands right now keep Hong Kong within one country, two systems. But it is telling that Beijing has not accepted even the most important demand. 13 weeks of unprecedented protests and Beijing still has not scrapped the extradition bill. As good as dead is not dead. There is a proper procedure to withdraw a bill.

The Chinese army's saber-rattling in Shenzen is not a threat to snuff out the protests. It is a threat to invade should Hong Kong declare independence. And to that end Hong Kong needs to seek out global allies. It needs to ask for solidarity in all major cities of the world.





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