Topic: China - a Fascist State

[Red Beret]

Has to be. What reason would they have?  Do they not think the government is not being communist enough, or too communist? Something to do with Russia?

[spen71]

Where are these rumours?

[Mister Flip Flop]

Those rumours started last night on some Indian news site and it's complete bollox.

[Max_powers]

Those rumours started last night on some Indian news site and it's complete bollox.

That's a tautology.

[Nobby Reserve]

During a small, pro-democracy protest outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester, the fascists sent out goons to rip down banners, and they dragged one protestor into the Consulate grounds to give them a kicking.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-63282230

Fascist scum.

[Gerry Attrick]

What will be done? Zero. We should close down the Chinese diplomatic mission in Britain but of course we won’t.

[farawayred]

What will be done? Zero. We should close down the Chinese diplomatic mission in Britain but of course we won’t.

You should open a Taiwanese consulate, but I’m not British, so my opinion doesn’t count.

[BarryCrocker]

And then there's this.

Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says

Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed.

Up to 30 former UK military pilots are thought to have gone to train members of China's People's Liberation Army.

The UK is issuing an intelligence alert to warn former military pilots against working for the Chinese military.

Attempts to headhunt pilots are ongoing and had been ramping up recently, western officials say.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Defence said the training ​and the recruiting of pilots does not breach any current UK law but officials in the UK and other countries are trying to deter the activity.

"It is a lucrative package that is being offered to people," said one western official. "Money is a strong motivator." Some of the packages are thought to be as much as £237,911 ($270,000).

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582

[Nobby Reserve]

And then there's this.

Always thought these ex-military wallahs were more patriotic than this?

[BarryCrocker]

Always thought these ex-military wallahs were more patriotic than this?

Cost of living pressures.

[Nobby Reserve]

Is it not all a bit... treasony?

[Iska]

You might think so, but it’s difficult to single these guys out when you have former PMs, former top judges, former England football captains moving straight from their jobs into working for repressive regimes for money.  It’s another angle on what we were discussing in the Elections in Europe thread, about how we lost even the concept that the collective might restrict an individual from doing what is most advantageous for them at any particular moment.  Such that the country barely even believes in treason anymore - I don’t think even ISIS guys get charged with that on return, let alone discharged servicemen picking up retirement jobs.

[Nobby Reserve]

China could invade Taiwan by end of the year, US warns

https://archive.ph/2cFmP


Well, the world was getting too boring with nothing of note ever happening. Life's been too easy these past few years. Bout time we had something stir it all up.

[Iska]

Ex-leader Hu Jintao led out of Congress

Like something out of 1930s Moscow, this.  I mean conceivably it could be benign, but waiting until the press are present before hauling the guy out, you wouldn’t fancy your chances much.

[Yorkykopite]

Ex-leader Hu Jintao led out of Congress

Like something out of 1930s Moscow, this.  I mean conceivably it could be benign, but waiting until the press are present before hauling the guy out, you wouldn’t fancy your chances much.

The whole scene on a wide-angle. It's grimly fascinating. Look at everybody else. Totalitarianism in action.

https://twitter.com/melissakchan/status/1583825048069996545

[kavah]

^ right, he’s  ruler for life now, chilling how he’s done it.

[Red Beret]

Well I guess the US can't send Ukraine weapons if they need them to fight China.

[TSC]

^ right, he’s  ruler for life now, chilling how he’s done it.

Can’t even blame the electorate for putting a populist autocratic leader in power.  I’m not familiar with the shenanigans surrounding the appointment of a leader in China, but he’s grabbed power for as long as he wants it.

[Iska]

No women in new 24-person politburo

The press conference is over and the full list of the 24-member politburo - from which the standing committee is drawn - has also been released.
There are no women at all on the new politburo.
Sun Chunlan - a vice premier of the State Council with decades of experience - had
been the sole woman on the last committed but at age 72 has to retire.
As such there had been talk of a few female contenders who might have inherited her spot.
However none have been elevated. The result reflects the strongly patriarchal
nature of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society more broadly.
"This is a very sad and shocking arrangement," Prof Yang Zhang of American University in Washington told the BBC.

I had a bleak laugh reading this on the BBC live feed earlier - like this is the big problem here.

I don’t even disagree with prima facie reporting on the congress - I only dimly remember, but iirc they always treated the USSR that way, the giveaway was attributing the story to Tass or Pravda - but it would be nice if it was actually straight-down-the-line rather than this navel-gazing nonsense.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

Further proof that the authoritarian govt went full ultra-pro-max on its authoritarianism. But at 69 years of age, how much longer before he becomes paranoid and sick that there are people out there to get his position? BTW I'm also not surprised one bit regarding that show on Hu Jintao.

Also, in the history of humankind, has there ever been a kingdom that hasn't fallen down from its own bloody weight (literally and figuratively)? And when that happens, how will the world react considering how much nations/organisations simp up to China!?!

Xi Jinping's party is just getting started
Source: BBC

Comparing Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong is "inane", scoffs Rebecca Karl, a professor of Chinese History at New York University.

"If you're going to compare two people, it has to reveal something. It's like comparing Putin to Stalin or Liz Truss to Margaret Thatcher."

At first glance, the parallels are striking. Chairman Mao, as he was known, was the defining political figure of 20th Century China. He ran the Communist Party - and the country - from the republic's founding in 1949 until the day he died in 1976. No other Chinese leader has since come close. Until now.

Today Xi Jinping became the first leader since Mao to be chosen as party chief for a third term. In his decade at the top, he has centralised power in his own hands, ruthlessly eliminated rivals, promoted a cult of personality, shut down criticism, and had his ideology - Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era - enshrined in the constitution. He is known, only half-jokingly, as the Chairman of Everything.

But it's still a mistake to draw a straight line from Mao to Xi, Prof Karl argues, because it dismisses all that came in between - and the Chinese who dreamed or fought for a different country.

"It suggests autocracy is in their blood, it's in their water or it's in their culture," she says.

The truth is Xi's path to power was far from inevitable. And it's defined as much by his ambition as it is by the party's failure to prevent what they did not want - a repeat of Mao's disastrous one-man rule.

"My first introduction to China was in the 1980s, when the debates about China's future were huge, significant, and consequential," Prof Karl says. "The party itself was involved in those debates. But 1989 shut that down."

In 1989 - as the Soviet Union was breaking up - China's hopes for change were crushed by tanks and automatic gunfire.

'We came too late'

The country was still recovering in that decade or so following Mao's death. Tens of millions had died on his watch - first from hunger because of his devastating mission to industrialise China overnight; and then in the violent, paranoid purges of rivals, dissidents, intellectuals and "class enemies".

Mao's mantle eventually fell to Deng Xiaoping, who had survived two purges, and insisted on collective leadership that would change every 10 years.

By 1989, that included General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, a reformist.

In the spring of that year hundreds of thousands of students and workers occupied central Beijing to protest against corruption and rising prices, and demand reform. Behind the high walls of the Communist Party's leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, the party's top rung split. Moderates led by Zhao tried to use the protests to push further reform. Hardliners, led by Premier Li Peng, believed the students' goal was to overthrow the party, and wanted the protests quashed.

Zhao visited the protesters, urging them to call off their strike in what is now a historic speech: "We came too late. It's right for you to talk about us and criticise us any way you want... We're all old and it doesn't matter to us anymore. But you're still young, you should take care of yourself."

At the end of May the hardliners won. Early on the morning of June 4, the tanks rolled in. The massacre at Tiananmen Square ended debate about political reform. Instead, the Communist Party turned to economic reform.

In 1992, Deng - who had remained China's "paramount leader" - declared that the party should allow "some people to get rich first".  It does not sound too dramatic, but it was another decisive break from Maoism. Revolutionary austerity had been shown the door.

On a chilly winter morning in January 1990, I stepped off a night ferry onto a dockside in the city of Guangzhou. It was my first glimpse of China. The air smelled sulphurous from burning coal. Outside the streets were a river of bicycles, ridden by workers in blue caps and Mao jackets. Occasionally the bicycles parted for a wheezing bus or official car.

Over the next six months I pedalled across the mountains of Yunnan, wandered the imperial palace in Beijing, and rode a train hauled by two soot-blackened steam engines far west into the deserts of Xinjiang. The landscapes were sublime but the poverty grinding. Everywhere I went people told me how "backward" China was compared to the West. But there were hints of change.

By the time I returned in 1998 the whole country had taken to heart Deng's invocation "to get rich is glorious". That year the Communist Party decreed China's state-owned housing stock be sold off, lock, stock and barrel.  Swathes of Beijing's historic grey-brick courtyards were being demolished and replaced with glass and steel.

The word on everyone's lips was "xia hai" or "dive into the sea". It meant quitting your old job in a state company and plunging into private business. I remember the day one of our assistants came into the BBC office, handed in his ID and declared, "I'm off to Shenzhen", the boom city on China's southern coast.

Mao had closed China's economy off from the world. Now his successors were throwing it open. In 2001 China joined the World Trade Organisation. Along the southeast coast new cities mushroomed. Some specialised in buttons and zippers, others made cigarette lighters. In Zhejiang I found one that only made socks, tens of billions of them.

As I prepared to leave China in 2008, the Soviet-era airport had given way to a glittering megastructure designed by Norman Foster. And the first high-speed rail line opened between Beijing and Tianjin.

China was getting richer faster than any other country in history. But that unleashed other forces.

The fall of one prince, and the rise of another

"Heaven is high and the emperor is far away" is an old, oft-quoted saying in China. It means there is no-one watching what you are doing.

That certainly seemed to be the case under Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao - corruption was on the rise and his authority was being openly ignored and even challenged.

As land prices shot up because of the reforms, party officials across China were confiscating property from peasant farmers, selling it to developers, and pocketing a hefty cut.

In 2005 I was handed a DVD smuggled out of a village called Dingzhou in Hebei province. It showed a pitched battle between local farmers and dozens of armed thugs, hired by a state-owned power company, to force them off their land. The farmers had dug deep trenches in their fields. The thugs attacked at dawn opening fire with shotguns and beating the farmers with steel bars. Six were killed.

The graft ran deep. In Beijing, I remember going to a nightclub whose owner was reputed to have a ready supply of illicit drugs and attractive young women for those with enough money. His business partner was the public security bureau - the police.

That was just the tip of an immense iceberg, says Richard McGregor, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. "Everything and everybody got a cut, but it got out of control," he adds. "It was becoming more like Suharto's Indonesia, where it was corroding the foundations of the system."

It was at this time - during a trade war between China and the EU over textile quotas - that I got a rare invitation to interview the commerce minister. Such interviews with top Chinese officials were excruciatingly dull, but this was the opposite.

The minister's name was Bo Xilai. Tall, handsome and with a roguish charm, Bo seemed to enjoy the challenge, answering questions with wit and cogency. "This is a guy who could succeed as a politician anywhere," I thought to myself.

In 2007 Bo was sent to run Chongqing, a vast city that straddles the Yangtze River in the mountains of southwest China. It was infamous then for organised crime.

Bo launched a ruthless anti-corruption campaign, netting hundreds of criminals, businessmen, politicians and police. He built lavish infrastructure, including public housing. Strangely he also revived "red culture", requiring everyone to learn Mao-era songs praising the Communist Party. Many were terrorised by Bo's rule, but he was wildly popular with the working class.

Politicians came from Beijing to study the "Chongqing model". One of them was a rising star named Xi Jinping.  

Then, in 2012, Bo, who had been building his own power base for years, was brought down by an extraordinary tale of murder, corruption and international intrigue that rocked China. Today he is serving life in prison.

His Chongqing model, however, was arguably the prototype for what Xi would soon unleash on the whole of China.

Xi was a princeling - the son of one of Mao's lieutenants, Xi Zhongxun, who had been purged and later rehabilitated. Colleagues described the younger Xi as humble, self-disciplined and hardworking but otherwise unremarkable. Even on the eve of his elevation to general secretary of the Communist Party there was little hint of what was to come.

By the time Xi was appointed to lead the party in 2012, the corruption had reached its highest echelons. This terrified party elders who saw it as a grave threat, but also handed Xi an opportunity to pitch himself as a saviour.

"They thought it would last three to six months but it was never just an anti-corruption campaign, it was a party rectification campaign, and it was to be sustained forever," says Professor Steve Tsang who heads the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Following Bo's stunning fall, hundreds of thousands of party cadres were put under investigation. More than 100,000 were indicted for corruption, including 120 high-ranking officials. Corruption plummeted and Xi's popularity soared.

Now he had the ammunition to destroy his most potent political rivals. He ordered the arrest of Zhou Yongkang in 2014, who until two years before had been a member of the politburo standing committee, and one of the most powerful men in China. Convicted in 2015, Zhou too is in prison for life.

This was unprecedented in the post-Mao era.

"I think the party elders must have had a touch of buyer's remorse," Mr McGregor says.

Xi's ruthless and dramatic consolidation of power has caused many to liken him to Mao. But Mao's destructiveness was rooted in his desire to build a socialist utopia. What does Xi want to build?

Nothing that Mao would recognise, Prof Karl says.

"China today has no socialist characteristics" she says "The subordination of labour to capital is complete. If you're a real socialist, you must have a notion of class democracy, of justice, of hierarchy and anti-hierarchy. None of that is even part of Xi Jinping thought."

The only thing that remains from Mao-era China is the party. And that, she says, is what Xi truly cares about.

"He believes that in the world of hyper-competitive capitalism and a hyper-competitive arms race with the United States, the only plausible way that China can remain competitive is to remain under one party that happens to be called the Communist Party."

Channelling the Great Helmsman

Nothing lends legitimacy to the Communist Party quite like Mao - the iconic revolutionary whose portrait still reigns over Tiananmen Square, where he declared the founding of the People's Republic of China.

So his ruinous legacy was covered up with reverence. And now, Xi loses no opportunity to channel Mao, even usurping his defunct titles - Great Helmsman, People's Leader, Chairman. But what he seeks is much bigger.

"The great emperors - that is who Xi actually looks up to, this guy is enormous in his ambition," Prof Tsang says.

Xi's goal, according to him, is a glorious mythical Chinese culture - tian xia or "all under heaven". A unified China that is home to a unified people. "The Chinese patriot is somebody who loves China, the Communist Party and its leader," Prof Tsang says. "And by Chinese he means Han culture."

In Xi's China there is almost no room for diversity. Xinjiang's 12 million Uyghur Muslims are being forcibly assimilated. Similar programs are under way in Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

"The policies that Xi has applied - the re-education camps - it's about making them more Chinese than Uyghur," Mr McGregor says. "It's cultural genocide."

This is starkly different from Mao's idea of a multi-ethnic state where, in theory, different groups had more autonomy. Xi's father too had a reputation for conciliation and respect for China's ethnic minorities.

But his son is driving a strident ethno-nationalism that seeks to unite the Chinese at home and drive away foreign powers who are, in Beijing's view, trying to encircle and weaken China.

In November 2015, I took off from the Philippine Island of Palawan in a tiny single engine Cessna. Our destination was the Philippine-controlled atoll of Pagasa, 400 miles away in the middle of the South China Sea. Our plan was to pass close to a new Chinese military base, built on an artificial island atop "mischief reef".

The outline of a runway and the extraordinary 9km long artificial island emerged as we approached.

Then, loudly over the radio, came a warning in Chinese and English: "Foreign military aircraft in northwest of Mischief Reef, this is the Chinese Navy! You are approaching Chinese airspace. To avoid further action, turn away and leave immediately!"

We were a civilian aircraft flying in international airspace. But that didn't matter.

These South China Sea islands are only the most daring and visible of Xi's moves to take control of the near abroad. Taiwan could be next.  

"China is now doing all sorts of things that it's always wanted to do but wasn't powerful enough to do," Mr McGregor says. "Taiwan was always there. The South China Sea was always there. Taking on America, driving it out of Asia was always an ambition, but they didn't say it out loud."

Now China is saying it out loud, and its "wolf warrior" diplomats, named after a patriotic action film franchise, are going on the verbal offensive. In China this is hugely popular.

But Xi's policies are only creating the hostile world he claims he is defending against, believes Susan Shirk, a China expert in former US president Bill Clinton's administration.

"Picking fights with your neighbours. Dusting off plans to build large artificial islands and fortify them with military installations. Ramping up the pressure on Japan and Taiwan. It's a kind of self-encirclement that Chinese foreign policy has produced," she says.

China's brashness has been driven by its extraordinary power as both the world's biggest factory and marketplace. It has so far seemed unstoppable, poised to unseat the US as the largest economy.

Then Covid threw a spanner in the works.

The challenge at home

Earlier this year, a Chinese friend spent 83 days alone, locked in a Shanghai hotel room.

"It drives you crazy," he says. "It's a mixture of depression and anger. After a while you feel like you cannot breathe. Your body starts to shut down. Every day is the same. It's like time has stopped."

He got caught in China's biggest and longest Covid lockdown. It was supposed to last four days, then another four, then another. Soon, the hotel staff stopped telling him.

"It's amazing how China continues these lockdowns for so long - they are incredibly wrenching," says Professor Dali Yang at Chicago University who has been studying the zero-Covid policy Xi has personally endorsed.

In the first year of Covid, Prof Yang says, the lockdowns made sense. They were brief and allowed life in China to carry on. There was even pride at how the country was handling the pandemic so much better than the West. "That's no longer the case," he says.

Economic growth has shrunk to 2%, the lowest in more than three decades. China's property market is in free fall. Youth unemployment is running at around 20%. A trade war with the US is not helping. And anger has been brewing.

"Each night after midnight people would start sharing video clips on social media," my Shanghai friend recalls. "They expressed their anger at the Communist Party, even at the very top leaders. They talked about how heartless and cruel this system has become."

The video clips were quickly removed. The internet is instantly scrubbed of any signs of dissent or criticism, but the ire over zero-Covid has been palpable - even rare signs of protest have emerged, if only for moments, before they are silenced. It's hard to deny that millions of Chinese hold Xi personally responsible for the cruelty of China's grim lockdowns.

Fear and loyalty has led to "over-compliance and over-implementation of what Xi himself originally wanted", Ms Shirk says.

And it appears to have paid off. Li Qiang, the Shanghai party chief who oversaw the city's controversial shut down, has been elevated to premier, Xi's second in command.

Behind the scripted scenes, China's Communist Party hosts a cut-throat world. Surrounded by loyalists and with no heir in sight, Xi is now indisputably in command of a much wealthier country, with a vastly more powerful military. And for the first time, the world is uncertain of what to expect from China. Xi has swept aside the old guard, both the critical and the cautious.

"In the past, we could always count on China's leaders to be pragmatic about economic policy, and prudent in their foreign policy. We don't see that now," Ms Shirk says.

Deng Xiaoping had famously said China should "hide its capacity and bide its time".

That time has arrived.

In 2017, at the beginning of his second term, Xi declared: "China has stood up, grown rich, become strong and is moving towards the centre stage."

He deliberately echoed Mao's words in 1949 atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese People have stood up."

But Xi's China is not Mao's China - and Xi's ambition for himself and for his country far exceeds anything Mao ever dreamed of.

Mao, by all accounts, was a destroyer who ripped up the rule book not once but several times. But Xi is no anarchist - he is not even a rebel. And he certainly doesn't want the chaos of Mao's years, which tore apart his own family, to return.

What he does want is to be the most powerful leader China has ever had - and the Communist Party just handed him that victory.

[KillieRed]

I had a bleak laugh reading this on the BBC live feed earlier - like this is the big problem here.

Yes indeed. It`s a bit like Tory supporters crowing about the diversity of the last cabinet, overlooking the fact that they raised the number of privately educated people on it. Kinda missing the whole problem.

[Nobby Reserve]

Further proof that the authoritarian govt went full ultra-pro-max on its authoritarianism. But at 69 years of age, how much longer before he becomes paranoid and sick that there are people out there to get his position? BTW I'm also not surprised one bit regarding that show on Hu Jintao.

Also, in the history of humankind, has there ever been a kingdom that hasn't fallen down from its own bloody weight (literally and figuratively)? And when that happens, how will the world react considering how much nations/organisations simp up to China!?!

Xi Jinping's party is just getting started
Source: BBC

It's a very interesting article.

This bit sums up what China has become:

"China today has no socialist characteristics" she says "The subordination of labour to capital is complete. If you're a real socialist, you must have a notion of class democracy, of justice, of hierarchy and anti-hierarchy. None of that is even part of Xi Jinping thought."

The only thing that remains from Mao-era China is the party. And that, she says, is what Xi truly cares about.

"He believes that in the world of hyper-competitive capitalism and a hyper-competitive arms race with the United States, the only plausible way that China can remain competitive is to remain under one party that happens to be called the Communist Party."

Mao would be horrified.

[kavah]

Ex-leader Hu Jintao led out of Congress

Like something out of 1930s Moscow, this.  I mean conceivably it could be benign, but waiting until the press are present before hauling the guy out, you wouldn’t fancy your chances much.

His name (and his family) has now been scrubbed from the internet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/25/hu-jintao-argued-about-official-papers-before-being-escorted-out-of-congress

[BarryCrocker]

His name (and his family) has now been scrubbed from the internet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/25/hu-jintao-argued-about-official-papers-before-being-escorted-out-of-congress

Would be great if some lip readers could decipher what was actually said.

[So… Howard Philips]

Would be great if some lip readers could decipher what was actually said.

And where are the body language experts when you need them?

[Gerry Attrick]

And where are the body language experts when you need them?

I can do it for you. The body language suggested everybody was shit scared in case they’re up next.

[killer-heels]

Would be great if some lip readers could decipher what was actually said.

I have had a look and I believe what was said was "Where it said do not write under this line, you wrote 'OK'. Because of that, you will now die".

[Elmo!]

Nicola Sturgeon in police talks over 'secret Chinese base'

The first minister has held talks with Police Scotland over reports that a Glasgow restaurant is being used as a base for Chinese secret police.

Human rights body Safeguard Defenders has released a report claiming dozens of outposts have been set up globally to coerce Chinese dissidents back home.

The report claims one base is on Sauchiehall Street at the same address as a restaurant.

A member of restaurant staff told the BBC they were unaware of the issue.

Assistant Chief Constable Andy Freeburn said: "We are currently reviewing these reports to assess any criminality in conjunction with local and national partners."

It comes as the Irish government ordered a Chinese "police station" in Dublin's city centre to close. The Chinese authorities said the station offered a service to Chinese citizens in Ireland including the renewal of driving licences.

The Chinese government has been accused of establishing similar facilities across Europe, including two in London and in the Netherlands.

Dutch media found evidence that the "overseas service stations", which promise to provide diplomatic services, are being used to try to silence Chinese dissidents in Europe.

A spokeswoman for the Dutch foreign ministry said the existence of the unofficial police outposts was illegal, but the Chinese foreign ministry rejected the allegations.

Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer questioned Nicola Sturgeon on the Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild report during FMQs in the Scottish Parliament.

According to the report, the public security bureaus from two Chinese provinces had established 54 "overseas police service centres" across five continents and 21 countries.

Most of them are in Europe, including nine in Spain and four in Italy. In the UK, it said it had found two in London and one in Glasgow.

The first minister said she was taking the claims "extremely seriously" and had spoken to Chief Constable Iain Livingstone.
'Important principle'

She added: "Any foreign country operating in Scotland must abide by Scottish law. The Scottish government fully supports individuals' rights to freedom of expression and that is also an extremely important principle.

"Obviously, these matters require to be fully and properly investigated and it would not be appropriate for me to go into too much detail, but I do know and I know this as a result of a conversation I had just yesterday with the chief constable, that police are aware of these reports.

"Of course, the police are operationally independent and it's up to them to determine what investigations would be appropriate but they are aware of this and I would repeat, these reports do require to be treated extremely seriously."

Mr Greer, the party's external affairs spokesperson, welcomed Ms Sturgeon's response - adding this was not the first time the behaviour of the Chinese regime in the UK had been called into question.

He said: "In 2019 there were serious allegations of students from Hong Kong being targeted in Edinburgh and only last week the UK government had to summon a Chinese diplomat over the assault of a pro-democracy campaigner protesting outside their Manchester consulate.

"The Chinese regime has an appalling human rights record. It cannot be allowed to export that violence and abuse to Scotland."

A spokesperson for the Home Office also said reports of undeclared police stations operating in the UK will be taken "extremely seriously".

They added "Any foreign country operating on UK soil must abide by UK law.

"The protection of individuals in the UK is of the utmost importance and any attempt to illegally repatriate individuals will not be tolerated."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-63417175

I wonder how many more of these there are around the UK and the rest of the world.

[killer-heels]

Peking hell.

[Iska]

Our economies are so enmeshed with China that separating from them is going to be extremely painful, but there’s really no option.  It’s hard to get your head around, but the next few decades are going to be nothing like the last few.

[Nobby Reserve]

Our economies are so enmeshed with China that separating from them is going to be extremely painful, but there’s really no option.  It’s hard to get your head around, but the next few decades are going to be nothing like the last few.

I think it's likely that it will be China that forces this, too, by its aggression in the South China Sea, and probable invasion of Taiwan (which, to be even more cheery, has a good chance of kicking off WW3)

The one possible bright spot is the fabled Chinese 'play the long game' culture. The current regime definitely has searing imperial ambitions for the entire region (and indeed beyond), but they also know their entire economy (and therefore society) depends on global trade.

The big question is whether the regime is prepared to play the long game by steady acquisition of the fiscal foundations of more and more countries. Or go all-in on military acquisition of Taiwan and the whole SCS arena.

[Iska]

I don’t know.  China also takes periodic turns towards isolationism even when that wouldn’t make much sense looking at it through our culture, and that also seems like a likely outcome here, securing relations with Russia as an energy source and then aiming for repressive autarky.  You can’t really know what its priorities will be, but internal order was always a big fear even though that seems unimaginable right now when you look at its current State.  Demographically as well, I don’t really see it as likely to be expansionist, though Taiwan is the obvious candidate I suppose.

[bigbonedrawky]

I think it's likely that it will be China that forces this, too, by its aggression in the South China Sea, and probable invasion of Taiwan (which, to be even more cheery, has a good chance of kicking off WW3)

The one possible bright spot is the fabled Chinese 'play the long game' culture. The current regime definitely has searing imperial ambitions for the entire region (and indeed beyond), but they also know their entire economy (and therefore society) depends on global trade.

The big question is whether the regime is prepared to play the long game by steady acquisition of the fiscal foundations of more and more countries. Or go all-in on military acquisition of Taiwan and the whole SCS arena.

Don't disagree with what you're saying especially when it comes to Taiwan...That particular jewel is looking more and more valuable to the Chinese with every passing day... At least the Chinese vets are helping the Taiwanese with their poorly Panda... Every cloud an that.

Re Fabled Chinese culture 'play the long game by steady acquisition of the fiscal foundations of more countries '
There is something about the history of 'western' culture that the Chinese might of learned and taken heed of,
in regards to debt...
From King Richard 'lionheart' in 1190 and Edward 'longshanks' in 1290 to King Philip IV of France in 1307, all the way through to the modern day mobster in the US...Just ask the Jews, the Templars or anyone unfortunate enough to lend a mobster money, just how it works out.

[Kashinoda]

https://reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/z5l9lx/citizens_chant_ccp_step_down_and_xi_jinping_step/

Things spciing up.

[Gerry Attrick]

https://reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/z5l9lx/citizens_chant_ccp_step_down_and_xi_jinping_step/

Things spciing up.

Long odds on that they’re never seen alive again.

[liverbloke]

Long odds on that they’re never seen alive again.

but a country that's well-known for revolutions - all revolutions don't have to be led by violence

[Gerry Attrick]

but a country that's well-known for revolutions - all revolutions don't have to be led by violence

This Chinese government are renowned for their tolerance and human led approach to issues such as their Uighur population and Hong Kong. And they would certainly never drag somebody into one of their consulates in the United Kingdom and give them a going over. Nor would they set up clandestine threatening buildings across Europe to intimidate their own to returning to China. The Chinese government is the most dangerous entity on this planet right now and I've nothing but admiration for anybody who even dares protest. Horrible bastards running that country and it's operations worldwide.

[liverbloke]

This Chinese government are renowned for their tolerance and human led approach to issues such as their Uighur population and Hong Kong. And they would certainly never drag somebody into one of their consulates in the United Kingdom and give them a going over. Nor would they set up clandestine threatening buildings across Europe to intimidate their own to returning to China. The Chinese government is the most dangerous entity on this planet right now and I've nothing but admiration for anybody who even dares protest. Horrible bastards running that country and it's operations worldwide.

my reply was one regarding the actions of its people and not the government itself

a people's revolution does not have to be led by violence is what i am saying

if you simply cannot over throw by violence alone then you can instil a change in the people's thinking

[Nobby Reserve]

Fascists at play...

[Yorkykopite]

Fascists at play...

The Chinese Communists/Fascists are saying now he was arrested "for his own protection" (to stop him getting Covid)!

As yet they haven't explained why it was necessary to beat him up and confiscate his camera.