,
6 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Whither China? powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/… via @powerlineUS
• We know enough from recent decades to declare how dictatorships end: they end only when the rulers lose their nerve to kill their own people in large numbers.
• China can’t tolerate the mass popular resistance currently under way in Hong Kong. A military crackdown would be Tiananmen Square on steroids and much more difficult (because of the peculiar geography of Hong Kong), but don’t think they will shrink from it if this continues.
• There is an intermediate possibility, the “1981 Poland Option”—Hong Kong’s own forces impose martial law & crack down themselves without the need for China’s army invading and occupying the city. Though as with Poland in 1981/82, China will run the whole show behind the scenes
• The one thing that might cause China’s rulers to hesitate is that the short-term economic turmoil (stock markets will drop sharply into correction territory, for starters) would aid Trump in his main object, which is to win a trade war rather than a shooting war with China.
Notice the news this morning that Trump has delayed imposing new tariffs on a long list of Chinese imports.
