Hm that would explain the cannons being removed for a military parade.
Meanwhile, in Australia…
" The ongoing protests in Hong Kong have created a surge of alarm in Australia, where pro-Beijing students are aggressively supporting authorities at home. Last month, a group of Chinese students at the University of Queensland in Brisbane made headlines when they targeted a group who rallied in support of the protesters in Hong Kong. Videos show them playing the Chinese national anthem at high volume to drown out views unacceptable to Beijing and ripping posters from the hands of those supportive of Hong Kong.
This week, the university was in the news again when four masked menwere caught on camera tearing down a board featuring pro-Hong Kong messages, while in Tasmania a Chinese student group lobbied the university administration to ban similar pro-Hong Kong sentiments."
They got a lot of people, and they’re living all around the world. If those people are loyal to the mainland, then they do this sort of thing on their own. It’s not some kind of plot where they have instructions to go out and do this.
I’d say Scott is right, but presumably China’s propaganda outlets for consumption abroad aren’t exactly discouraging this kind of behaviour, either.
Of course. There are Chinese loyalist newspapers printed in just about anywhere enough Chinese people are around to read one. Plenty of web sites that can be read around the world as well. Funny how China blocks our real news from their Internet, but we don’t do anything to block their propaganda at all. It’s good that we don’t, because then how could we tell the difference?
I’m just saying they likely aren’t CIA-type operatives with marching orders. Whatever the Chinese equivalent of the CIA is.
I don’t know much about the relationship between China and Australia, but from selected paragraphs in the article, there does appear to be some Australian fears about Chinese influence in their country:
"The clashes, though small in scale, made headlines in Australia — likely because they played into growing fears about the extent of Chinese influence in the country. Were the visiting students merely exercising their rights to express their views? Or was this an example of Beijing influencing its young citizens overseas, at the expense of other students’ freedom of expression and assembly?..
Even more worrying: Students with pro-Hong Kong views have complained of being under surveillance while in Australia. One Brisbane student, interviewed this week by the Sydney Morning Herald, recounted how his parents at home in China were recently visited by authorities and warned about his participation in the pro-Hong Kong protest…
Today, the relationship between the two countries is complex. China is simultaneously Australia’s biggest trading partner and its most obvious military threat. Around 1.2 million Australians are of Chinese heritage, in a population of about 25 million. More than 1.3 million Chinese tourists visit each year. And then there are the students, whose education is considered one of Australia’s prime “export” industries — in third place after iron ore and coal.
Add to the list Chinese investment in Australia, which has produced its own headlines — in particular over the control of large rural propertiesand of what some say are strategic assets, such as the port of Darwin.
China’s influence on higher education in Australia has also received scrutiny. Of particular concern are contracts between leading Australian universities and Beijing’s Confucius Institute that, according to critics, effectively allow China to dictate what is being taught. Concerned academics have already sounded a warning bell. They believe the Chinese government is actively intimidating visiting students, threatening “consequences” if they do not show loyalty to their homeland. Some — including writer Clive Hamilton in his book “Silent Invasion” — claim that China is actively threatening Australian sovereignty, and not just in its universities.
This week, a prominent member of the government appeared to agree. Andrew Hastie, the head of Parliament’s intelligence committee, warned that Australia was facing an unprecedented national security test, calling the world’s approach to China a "catastrophic failure.”
The MSS, Ministry of State Security - think of the CIA and the FBI mixed into one, since they handle matters both foreign and Domestic.
We have a new front runner in the world’s best/least evil CEO contest.
3 Likes
They’re just trying to set an unbeatable world record for greatest irony/hypocrisy.
Speaking of, Hong Kong right now seems like the appropriate place for the mass proliferation of facial recognition camouflage.
We may have to introduce the people of Hong Kong to Insane Clown Posse?
This is the deal with the devil of doing any business in the Chinese domestic market. You have to 100% tow China’s revisionist history re: Taiwan and 100% ignore the crisis in Hong Kong. Unless you self-censor globally, you lose all of their business.
Largely sports and games are playing ball, because they want access to this market. Look at how Taiwan is represented in any maps that appear, even incidentally, in major videogames or sports broadcasts…
If there ever was a company to throw weight around for this, it would be fucking Blizzard. Sure, China is an absurd market, but putting the onus on the govt for denying it’s citizens access to Hearthstone, Overwatch, StarCraft, and WoW is absolutely the kind of power play Blizzard could make right now, hell, they’re probably one of the only companies that could feasibly pull it off.
Thing is tho, blizzard is still a for profit company. They got expenses. Hell it feels like just yesterday they laid off an absurd number of employees because their actual earnings (somewhere in the hundreds of millions) fell short of their projected earnings (also somewhere in the hundreds of millions).
All this to say, who needs who more? Does China need Starcraft more than Blizzard needs money?
Blizzard has their own con. They make enough money. I would be reasonably certain they could generate zero profit for a year and survive. For-profit enterprises are still run and operated by people who (presumably) have morals.
To flip your question back at you, do companies need money more than ICE needs cages?