While I am pretty sure that the PRC is making a strategic error where costs will far outweigh gains, that makes me no happier that it looks very much like the Hong Kong we've known (me only from afar) is coming to an end. Freedom retreats; the world gets a little darker.
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @BretDevereaux
I'm curious, why do you think it's a strategic error?
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @julianrdcosta
The gains in domestic stability for the PRC regime from suppressing Hong Kong are likely to be very minor. But the PRC's larger soft-power campaign is likely to be badly set back. In a lot of democracies, the souring of public opinion towards the PRC is pushing politics...
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @julianrdcosta
...but the bigger thing to watch is the response of less democratic countries. Part of the PRC's sell was that they were trustworthy deal-keepers who didn't do things like regime change and wouldn't demand policy changes one way or the other.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @julianrdcosta
Here they are, breaking a deal they made with Britain by changing out the regime of a quasi-autonomous enclave in the process of enforcing a policy change. It's everything they said they wouldn't do, and it provides ammunition to the people in almost every government...
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @julianrdcosta
...who have been warning that PRC investment, the Belt-and-Road or PRC-linked firms were the thin end of an influence wedge that would lead to vassalage. The problem is less "PRC did a bad thing," but instead "PRC contradicted the fundamental thesis of its foreign policy."
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @julianrdcosta
What Andre Beaufre described as a 'false note.' It both triggers human risk/change aversion (we grow comfortable with the evils we know, but are shocked by the ones we don't) but also makes the false note-maker seem unpredictable, which causes other states to react...
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @julianrdcosta
...which tends to limit the false-note-maker's freedom of action. Another way to put it is that it 'spends down' a lot of soft-power to make a 'false note' like this. PRC has spent years building up - at great expense - soft power.
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And the PRC's global strategy relies on soft power, at least in the near term, because they cannot project hard power. This degrades that soft power (as you see with shifting political attitudes towards the PRC over last two years), jeopardizing boarder PRC strategic aims. fin.
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @BretDevereaux
Very interesting, thank you! I wonder why they're pushing so hard now, then. Also with the India border conflicts. Perhaps the tactical opportunity of the world's distraction with COVID was too tempting.
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