the guy alone has that amount of crushing power.
Nobody of right mind takes this at face value. This isn’t a pro wrestling heavyweight championship belt, with Jinping suplexing the Hong Kong protestors.
It’s obviously as head of an autoritarian communist regime, using corona measures and a militarized police, suppressing people for political reasons.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
“Unfounded US propaganda”.
Are you saying China DIDN’T aggressively take over Hong Kong and all of the businesses that operated there?
Xi is the head of the government in a totalitarian, communist regime. Just because he might be “leaving BYD alone” or whatever today does not mean that couldn’t change in an instant.
The United States is its own form of screwed up and is an absolute mess. I’m not sitting over here going 'US good. China bad". I’m making the point they’re both bad in different ways.
Pirate@feddit.org 1 week ago
Uh, i kinda am, yeah.
Last time I checked, Hong Kong is still a tax haven in the middle of Asia. Western companies are still opening offshore subsidiaries and bank accounts there to engage in tax evasion, and the welfare system is still as pitiful as it was before China took over.
Retirees living in literal cages or under bridges is still common, and the same 3-4 families that ran the local economy/housing market still control the city-state as they’ve always done.
By any metrics, China took control of Hong Kong on paper only. In practice, everything stayed the same.