The Coming End to the Crisis in Hong Kong

The Wall Street Journal, in its piece on the latest and bloodiest overreaction by the People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jiping to the protests in Hong Kong, asked how “the Hong Kong crisis can be deescalated.”

It will be in the same way that the Tiananmen Square crisis was deescalated; this is made clear by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian. The WSJ cited him as saying that [emphasis added]

[President Xi Jinping] gave “the highest direction of the central government” to end violence and restore order in Hong Kong. He called it the army’s most pressing task in Hong Kong.

Look for the tanks to roll in the not-to-distant future.

Naming Conventions

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan body set up by Congress to look into our…economic and security relations…has become willing to begin calling a spade a spade, instead of hiding behind euphemisms. At least in one narrow area.

The group believes Mr Xi should be known by his party title, general secretary, as a more accurate description of his role.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of China is certainly apt.  I suggest, though, a title more consistent with Xi’s actions, which are throwback to, and repetitive of, an earlier period: Emperor.

National Sovereignty

The Paris Peace Forum met earlier this week; fortunately, we didn’t send any government representative to it.  National sovereignty, this claque held, is a danger to the world.

French President Macron advocated for multilateralism and a “balanced cooperation” between the nations.

Balanced cooperation is good, but that requires not the open borders and come one, come all—no matter who the one or the all are—but coalitions built for specific times and purposes.  And those coalitions, even treaties between or among States requires…nation-states with actual borders, nation-states with internal, coherent cultures, nation-states that put their own interests first.

Easy immigration, certainly, but immigrant prospects who are carefully vetted before they’re allowed in, immigrant prospects committed to assimilating into the culture of the nation they wish to enter and become a part of.

National sovereignty, nationalism.

Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want this.

… unilateralism is “very risky. …  Nationalism is war.”

Never mind that balanced cooperation requires nations actually to be willing to cooperate with each other to do something that’s necessary.  The necessary thing needs doing, though, whether or not nations are willing to cooperate, and that requires, occasionally, unilateralism.  Occasions like Iran, openly and bluntly committed to the destroying Israel and supporting terrorism throughout the world, rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons—while Europe not only stands by, but actively funds Iran’s effort with trade and efforts to circumvent unilaterally applied economic sanctions.

Occasions like the People’s Republic of China seizing and occupying the South China Sea, with only the US willing even a little bit to object, the PRC’s economic, intellectual property, and technology thefts while Europe not only stands by, but actively seeks out new trade deals with the PRC.

Occasions like Russia occupying and partitioning parts of Georgia and Ukraine, engaging in cyber war against each of the Baltic States, deploys tactical and intermediate range nuclear weapons on its western border while Europe stands by and watches—and actively facilitates Russia’s ability to export natural gas to…Europe.

But nationalism, putting one’s own nation ahead of an amorphous multiculturally international entity is anathema.

This is who one of our putative friends is.

“Enemy of the People”

The good citizens of Hong Kong continue to protest the despotism of PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap government in Hong Kong, and Xi’s Governess, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is coming unraveled as she’s squeezed from one side by the ongoing protests against her rule and from the other side by Xi’s increasing demand that she get this right.

Her police, for some time, have taken to shooting protestors at point blank range, firing water cannon with dyed water so protestors can be identified and arrested for their effrontery—260 arrests from Monday’s protests alone—siccing Hong Kong’s mafia-esque thugs on the protestors.

Lam now is calling the protestors “the enemy of the people.”

No.  The protestors are the people.  Neither the despot in Beijing nor his satrap in Hong Kong seem capable of understanding that.

Ambassadorships

Unable to make a case against President Donald Trump for anything else that’s remotely impeachable, House Progressive-Democrats now are going to obsess over our erstwhile Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s removal from her post.

There are some questions that won’t be asked on this matter, though, whether by Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) Star Chamber inquisitors or by anyone in the NLMSM.

  1. Is an ambassadorship a lifetime sinecure?
  2. Who appoints (subject to Senate confirmation) our ambassadors?
  3. For whom does any ambassador work—what’s his chain of command?

And, given accurate answers to those questions,

  1. Why shouldn’t a President remove an ambassador who’s lost the President’s or the State Department Secretary’s confidence?