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China also occupies Hong Kong, but it is not Britain
Source: BackChina.com Special Topic: The latest news in Hong Kong!
Is it safe to legally express dissatisfaction with rule?
I often see people in online discussion forums questioning why people who are clearly pro-China talk about something that is basically a bit sensitive, such as treating Hong Kong (topic) as a different place from China. Why? Wouldn’t someone check his water meter and arrest him? Why do some people do things that are just marginal, such as playing certain protest songs, publishing a book, or wearing clothes with interesting patterns? You will be banned or arrested directly.
They say isn’t this unfair? Isn’t this a double standard?
For Hong Kong people, this is a double standard. Under the long-term British rule, Hong Kong people define the standard as “behavior itself”. For example, if you are caught walking on the street wearing black clothes, then all people wearing black clothes should be caught; if one person wearing black clothes is not caught, then other people wearing black clothes should not be caught. The general idea of Hong Kong society is basically the same as what primary school students often complain about: “He does this and that, teacher, why don’t you punish me but him?”
Although objectively the law is for the rich to bully the poor, subjectively, Hong Kong people hope that everyone is equal before the law, and that the emperor is guilty of the same crime as the common people. The right and wrong of human beings are defined by the text of the law. Human beings are only punished for doing illegal things, and on the contrary, legal behavior is definitely safe. And this standard is clear and explicit.
There was a popular folk story in Hong Kong called “The Ring and Head Punishment”. It was about a prisoner who was hanged but did not die. As a result, the prisoner’s lawyer proposed that he had already been executed and should be released. Because the Ring and Head Punishment was just a ring and head, it did not say that he must die. If you quibble about the wording, then since it is not written in the law, it does not apply. In the end, he succeeded, and the prisoner did not have to die. This story was later used as a plot in Stephen Chow’s movie “The Dead Grass”.
Hong Kong people love this story very much because it is very consistent with Hong Kong’s values: legal provisions have supreme status, and no human power is greater than legal provisions. Therefore, Hong Kong is a place where few lawyers are regarded as heroes. Hong Kong does not appreciate thieves like Sun Yat-sen or Robin Hood who directly destroy the law, but righteous lawyers who cleverly interpret the provisions to control the results of things. Of course, the reason why such lawyers exist is that there is a judicial system that respects their authority.
If the UK wants to maintain the status quo, that is, its rule over Hong Kong, then it only needs to maintain good public order and economic operation. The rule of law under British rule can be realized on the premise that Hong Kong people cannot shake British politics. Compared with any European country, the British government itself is very stable, and the cultural differences between Hong Kong and Britain are relatively large. Hong Kong people have very limited ties with Britain in terms of blood, family, and faith. The political attitudes of Hong Kong people basically cannot affect British politics and will not cause civil unrest in Britain. Therefore, it does not matter how Hong Kong people comment on British politics, because it cannot affect Britain, and Hong Kong people actually have no interest in managing British politics. Hong Kong people have basically accepted this ruling order. Next, as long as they fear and respect the written laws set in Hong Kong, everything will be fine.
And China is not Britain.
The British Parliament has existed for more than 200 years since the Act of Union, but the Beijing government has only existed for less than 80 years; the British government governs relatively few areas and has fewer cultural differences, while the Beijing government governs a huge area and some areas are relatively unstable; and there are fewer cultural differences between Hong Kong and Beijing. This means one thing: the behavior and speech of Hong Kong people can pose a threat to Beijing’s rule, not to mention that Hong Kong people’s persistence in democracy over the past 30 years includes “ending one-party dictatorship” and “democratizing China.” This means that many of Hong Kong people’s political ideologies are equivalent to ending the rule of the Beijing government.
This difference is huge. Hong Kong people have never threatened the British rule over the United Kingdom, nor have they had any opinions on other colonial behaviors of the colonial empire. In very rare cases, at most some people have resisted the British rule over Hong Kong (i.e. anti-British resistance). They have never thought about ending the British government.
More than half of the people in Hong Kong may not be happy to see the Beijing government rule Hong Kong; and among this group of people, there may be quite a few who are happy to see the Beijing government’s rule over China collapse, end the one-party dictatorship, and even the Communist Party disappear. The Beijing government certainly wants all Hong Kong people to love China, so that this problem no longer exists, but in reality it is not possible. Some Hong Kong politics directly claim to be “anti-communist”, which means that no matter what you do, whether you are a good person or not, if you are a Communist, I will destroy you, and there is no room for discussion.
Although the threat from Hong Kong to Beijing is not significant most of the time, it is not completely absent. Even the Beijing government is very sure that if they see an opportunity, the attitude of Hong Kong people towards Beijing should be to add insult to injury and push down the wall when it falls. For China, it is like bacteria and viruses in the human body. When the immune system is strong, these things seem to be no threat, but when the immune system becomes weak, all diseases will emerge at once.
There is no complete solution to the inherent emotional rejection of Beijing by Hong Kong people, so China has inherently more difficulties in maintaining its rule over Hong Kong than the UK. It needs to do as much as possible to: first, Hong Kong cannot threaten Beijing’s rule over China; second, Hong Kong cannot reject Beijing’s rule over Hong Kong; third, Hong Kong people who are dissatisfied with Beijing should not be given real benefits, and should not implement or fund any actions that can truly end the one-party dictatorship; fourth, if the first three cannot be achieved, then it should suppress the economic and cultural strength of these people as much as possible, so that they can do nothing even if they want to.
Therefore, the real criteria are a little more complicated than that of the UK. The British ruled Hong Kong, and Hong Kong people inherently accepted the ruling order, so the remaining issue was the legal text. However, in Hong Kong under Chinese rule, many Hong Kong people do not accept this ruling order. Therefore, the standard for measuring right and wrong does not lie in whether your behavior violates the definition of a certain legal text, but whether you have the intention to challenge this ruling order, as well as the behavior and ability to resist this ruling order.
In other words, the key points are whether you have the intention to rebel, whether you are dissatisfied, whether you have the ability to gather people to resist, and whether you can control it.
The most dangerous is naturally the latter. Those who gather crowds must be the first targets to be attacked. Those who can mobilize hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of people, no matter what they do, whether it is peaceful or not, it is not important. Because being able to launch a peaceful march also means being able to launch anything else. Today’s march seems ineffective only because the current situation is stable, but what if the situation is unstable one day? People who have the ability to gather crowds are divided into two types, one is controllable and the other is uncontrollable. Those who are uncontrollable are those who can suddenly mobilize the masses and succeed. Such people must be the first targets to be attacked. As for what you gather people to do, it doesn’t matter, even if it’s just folding paper airplanes.
Many Hong Kong people cannot accept this logic. In their eyes, is it illegal for me to fold a paper airplane? Is there violence? The government should not control me. Because Hong Kong people use words to judge right and wrong, but the government judges right and wrong based on the degree of threat, so everyone is talking nonsense.
The above is easy to understand, but it is not the case that the problem can be solved by simply attacking these leaders. If these leaders go to other places, they can’t do anything. The reason why they can succeed is that their dissatisfaction itself has a broad mass base. So in the end, the problem still lies with the masses who are waiting for an opportunity, that is, those who express their dissatisfaction and resistance to the rule in a high-profile manner. Another way to put it is called soft confrontation.
What is soft confrontation? In fact, it is the personal version of the logic of folding airplanes above. Such people have a hard temper. Although their confrontation ability is limited, they are still dissatisfied and want to express their dissatisfaction. The final result is to make a sideline. , doing something that should be legal according to legal provisions, but is clearly an expression of dissatisfaction with the rule. Playing songs, chatting on the keyboard on the Internet, wearing black clothes, or putting up banners, yellow flags, etc., all fall into this category. According to the standards of Hong Kong people, these people are like “you control me when I do legal things”, but from the perspective of the rulers, it is “they have made it clear that they are waiting for me to step on me when I am weak.”
The question is whether to accept such people? The conclusion is no. This kind of behavior is ineffective and is just an expression of inner dissatisfaction. Punish them, just like traditional parents teach their children, and beat them until they obey. Disobedience itself is a crime. It doesn’t matter whether the law prohibits you from expressing it this way. The goal is that you are unhappy, but you have to obey. I don’t want you to do things, and then you’d better stop being unhappy. Because your disobedience is a matter of my survival. Since it is a matter of survival, there is no room for tolerance.
Liking to express dissatisfaction through all legal means is exactly the behavior that will be most discouraged.
On the other hand, if you are submissive, or even loyal, then the standard will be much looser. For people who express no threat and are submissive, it will not matter even if they wear black clothes. As long as it is confirmed that they have no objection, they will not dare to rebel. , let alone think about democratic China. The standard may not be far different from that of British rule, because as long as you have no objections and dare not change the ruling order, you will inevitably not pose a threat. If you understand this, you can roughly estimate who will be dealt with and who will not.
As for the ideal world of Hong Kong people, “As long as it does not violate the written laws, anything can be done and anything can be said”, it will probably never come back, because it can only be achieved if Hong Kong is ruled by an empire that Hong Kong cannot threaten at all. was achieved, but the British Empire had fallen, and this ruling order no longer existed.
