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an inevitable Tom Friedman column about HK. "Had Hong Kongers accepted the Aug. 31, 2014, offer of limited universal suffrage they’d be in a much stronger position today to demand the full deal."
it's unclear what evidence that's based on. nytimes.com/2019/09/17/opi…
it's unclear what evidence that's based on. nytimes.com/2019/09/17/opi…
piece quotes Chinese investor Shan Weijian who expressed a similar opinion in the FT yesterday. that piece like this one strangely navel-gazes at 2014 discussions about universal suffrage, with no discussion of other issues such as police brutality.
Tom Friedman also *extensively* quotes SCMP columnist Alex Lo to support the assertion that social mvmts fuelled by social media from Turkey to Egypt have been failures cc @zeynep
@zeynep also, Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, not 2013 as the piece says. and he hadn't "made himself president for life" in 2018. he changed the rules to allow for that possibility.
Friedman boldly states that "anyone" would think that China today is "so much more open today" than 30 years ago, emphasising it in italics. I suggest he read this piece by @IlariaMariaSala about what China was like in 1989 before the crackdown qz.com/1592502/tianan…
and i don't even understand what this means. in what polity do 'the masses' count as a 3rd, independent system of government? 
and over at the Washington Post, David Ignatius sounds similar alarms abt how leaderless movements remind them of the doomed Arab Spring, but it sounds as if he spent more time on the street than Friedman did washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…
and while the FT is free today, here's the above-mentioned column by investor Shan Weijian who himself suffered under the Cultural Revolution, arguing that HK protesters shd compromise on democracy, invoking the suffragette mvmt as an example ft.com/content/a9f5ed…
also, the most interesting protest banner Friedman could find in HK was one that said "Sorry for the inconvenience. We are fighting for the future of our home.” ????
i just can't stop reading over this column. what is so "ironic" about ppl taking to the streets to protest against a voting system presented to them that many feel is fundamentally unfair and suspicious?
many HK ppl said that the 2014 proposal offered by Beijing was an "Iran-style" democracy where only vetted candidates could be voted on by the ppl. curious whether Friedman would ever tell ppl in Iran that that's a great deal and they should accept it.
as this reader comment points out, Friedman seems to have missed the fact that many HK ppl simply didn't believe in 2014 that Beijing was acting in good faith. what's the point of an election if the 3 candidates presented to you are all rotten oranges, or versions of Carrie Lam?
and another recent piece by Richard Bush of Brookings pushes the similar argument that HK's "radicals" need to compromise esp following "concessions" from Carrie Lam
