Thread by @RyanMcManimie

@scarylawyer: Hong Kong has myriad problems but a key issue as I see it vis a vis recent protests is that HK is a pretty shitty place to be millennial right now.

#GweiloThread
#HongKongProtests
#HongKongextraditionbill

You work/study your ass off here your whole life only to find out the mainland kids you grew up looking down upon are now taking your jobs and since rent is f'n bonkers (read: artificially inflated) you’ll be living with your parents until you’re 40.

China has nothing to do with any of that.

Its the predictable consequence of the British elite comprador class being permitted to retain control of the country post-handover. The Basic Law didn’t protect democracy, it institutionalized gross inequality.
money.cnn.com/2014/11/02/new…

Now HK is a tiny fraction of China's GDP & being subsumed by the natural economic inertia of a billion people in the throes of remarkable industrialization while the HK economy is poorly diversified &, technologically, living in the 90s. That scares HKese

criticalspectator.com/china/hong-kon…

Some rational fear, but a lot of it is paranoia stoked by a weak pan-Dem opposition party with few legislative tools at its disposal--or interests, it seems--outside of fear-mongering and obstructionism (again, thanks to the British).

quora.com/What-s-the-unt…

That’s why you get a million (not 2) in the streets protesting what was ostensibly a pretty reasonable piece of legislation with adequate safeguards...

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1139979689735278592

and a few thousand co-opting a peaceful protest with opportunistic anarchy.

https://twitter.com/RyanMcManimie/status/1139475380144730113https://twitter.com/XinqiSu/status/1152913245885255681

But that law's now dead (largely because the tycoons realized it would expose their disreputable assets) & most people are largely content, all except for the millennial crew for whom the extradition bill was just a convenient vehicle to channel their aimless, idealistic rage.

So now they protest everywhere and everything, losing support with every brick they throw, window they smash, and grave they desecrate.

thestandard.com.hk/section-news.p…

https://twitter.com/RyanMcManimie/status/1145615503504764928

scmp.com/news/hong-kong…

As long as they're pointing the finger at China, the self-serving Western press (and HK elites), allow them to serve as the voice of HK, a country they purport to love, ignoring the fact that when the cameras are pointed elsewhere, they’re destroying it.

https://twitter.com/liu_da_cheng/status/1153095898823479298

I've attended the protests and watched w/my own eyes as cops regularly endure endless abuse (that in the US would lead to bodies on the street) before even raising an arm in self-defense only to then be slandered in the English press the second gas flies.

https://twitter.com/RyanMcManimie/status/1138854755604631553

Watched as "peaceful" protestors ripped up sidewalks to collect bricks they'd soon hurl at police that were of no threat or destroy fences and loot construction sites in order to build pointless walls of trash on public highways in some act of war theater.

https://twitter.com/RyanMcManimie/status/1138834446088454144

It's all misdirected rage that doesn't address the root of HK ills, nor the material reality that HK stands to gain infinitely more by working with a prosperous, rising Chinese state than clinging to the detritus of a decaying colonial empire. scmp.com/comment/opinio…

Lastly, the more the West attempts to "help" (Pompeo, Pelosi, et al) w/public condemnation of things here they don't understand and have no power to affect anyway solely for the photo-op, the more they bolster the narrative in China that we're somehow involved in the protest.

This naturally forces a heavier Chinese hand in the same way it would in America should Putin actually start *publicly, effusively, and proudly* supporting Trump.

It does NO ONE ANY GOOD, least of which HK and HKese (both of which I'm extremely fond of even if many would disagree w/my worthless Gweilo analysis) & the reason a few tweets quickly spiraled into 20.

HK will ultimately be okay, but it'll undoubtably be a hot summer.

#EndRant