https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3038302/hong-kong-court-sent-wrong-signals-radical-protesters-over-face … I don't know what practical consequences this has but it's like the central chinese government is blissfully unaware that the entire reason people are protesting is that they keep doing shit like this
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Replying to @sgodofsk @eigenrobot
it's mind-blowing because nobody would be calling for independence, nobody would be protesting, nobody would *care* if the chinese just gave them a bit more voting power and left them the fuck alone. Win for everyone.
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Replying to @sgodofsk @eigenrobot
it's the obvious solution, but it goes against his ideological priors
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Replying to @Sharon_Kuruvila @sgodofsk
I can see not doing this causing other problems for Xi internally Loss of face, preference cascades, etc
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Replying to @eigenrobot @Sharon_Kuruvila
on the other hand causing a gigantic international catastrophe surely is worse for him tbh I think the right track for us to take with china is to do two things: 1. put troops in taiwan 2. sink a chinese warship yes I know the 2nd one is crazy bear with me
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Xi's base of power is the nationalistic wing in China, and if we "plausibly deniably" sank a chinese warship with a submarine (like NK did to SK) there's not a whole lot they can do to retaliate without eventually escalating to war (which they would likely lose)
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after investing tons of money and resources into the navy, having one of their ships get sunk would be hugely embarrassing and make it look like a total sham (even though it is actually just very hard to defend isolated warships against submarines)
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the basic idea is, we should be dealing with China in a way that is personally embarrassing to Xi, and demonstrates that his foreign policy is not working it's very important that the DPP wins in Taiwan in January it's very important that Taiwan appear to be slipping away
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oh yeah I guess I should add that the most direct consequence of the crackdown in Hong Kong for Xi is the fact that Taiwan is about to re-elect a pro-independence government, when previously it was almost certainly going to get thrown out the DPP has led in EVERY POLL since July
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yeah this seems like the obvious external consequence Taiwan gets nervous Plausibly ROK, JP get nervous (??) PH?
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Replying to @eigenrobot @Sharon_Kuruvila
japan has aircraft carriers again for the first time since ww2, take from that what you will
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