China Seeks To Mollify Hong Kong With Bread, Circuses

By CLAUDIA ROSETT, October 14, 2019

Draconian rule having failed so far to shut down Hong Kong’s protests, the government here now hopes to distract the public with economic handouts and yet more exercises in official “dialogue.” That’s what to expect Wednesday, when Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, delivers her annual policy address.

That would be an insult to Hong Kongers, who have not been protesting by the millions in pursuit of bread and circuses. With great courage, they have been demanding things far more profound — freedom and the right to elect their own leaders.

Ms. Lam, and her superiors in Beijing, clearly wish to consign that ambition to the memory hole. While Hong Kong’s protesters have been chanting “Fight for Freedom,” China’s propaganda machine has been pushing out visions of the joys China has in store for them via Hong Kong’s integration into the nearby boom towns of the Pearl River delta, a region China dubs “the Greater Bay Area.”..........To Read More....

My Take - Make no mistake, the communist government in Beijing is going to use force to bring this to a halt.  They like the capital Hong Kong brings in, but they want to control everyone the way they do on the mainland also.  It's a philosophical imperative for all socialists.

They don't dare give in to the protesters because if they do this will spread though out China.  First thing you know the young in the other large cities will start to rebel and make demands.  If they allow that it won't be long before the communists are thrown out, and be assured, the communists understand that. 

They will perpetrate whatever violence is necessary to bring Hong Kong under control because communists care more about being in control than they do the good of the people.  That's history, and that history is incontestable.

Having said that.  China's economy is in danger.  Their banking system is a mess and the numbers they present are fraudulent, all sanctioned by the governmen, corruption is rampant, and their military spending is outrageous.  The ethnic Han that make up most of the population of China are not loved by the other ethnic groups, and those groups believe the government is illegitimate.  China isn't a homogeneous nation.  Of that massive two plus billion population most of them live in an area no larger than the land mass East of the Mississippi River in America.  The rest of China is either too arid or too mountainous to be all that productive, and the populations there hate the central government and are poor.

As some point China's economy is going to collapse.  They can feed themselves, and they can defend themselves, but they can't fuel themselves and they can't create their own internal market because China isn't a natural capital generating nation since it's economy is being controlled by the central government.  Therefore their economy is an export economy, and any downturn will crush them. 

They're now spending huge amounts of money they don't have on their military in an attempt to impose an economic hegemony over the rest of Southeast Asia.  The belt and road initiative is part of that, but countries that signed on are now having misgivings, and rightly so. 

Communists are bullies and it's becoming obvious that intuitive is to benefit China at the expense of everyone else.