Sunday, November 17, 2019

I Am Worried For Hong Kong

I am worried about Hong Kong. This is too much violence. The solution is dialogue. The solution is Carrie Lam inviting the protest leaders to sit down and talk.

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Saturday, November 16, 2019

Hong Kong: What Would Dialogue Look Like?

I want the two sides in Hong Kong to talk: the protestors out in the streets, and the Carrie Lam side. That dialogue is not going to be a grand ideological debate about the two warring ideologies of the past century: capitalism and communism.

America does not have capitalism. Capitalism is a market economy where there is near perfect competition. In the American economy, you can find large pockets of monopoly power. Why do you think Americans pay so much more for their internet access and mobile data? Because there is not enough competition. That is only one example of many.

China has relentlessly injected the market into its economy since 1990. China has been the biggest beneficiary of the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union. It allowed them to gradually ditch the command economy. China is not communism the way Leonid Brezhnev understood communism to be.


I believe the two ideologies are moving towards a fusion. And it does not have to be bloody fusion. There need not be war, only civil debate, and discussion. I look at the 2020 election campaign in the US and I look at what China has already started in Shenzen in the form a political experiment, and I see we are moving towards a fusion. And the protestors in the streets of Hong Kong are hardly best equipped to lead that conversation. They can be part of the conversation, but they are not in any position to lead. For one, they have not been talking much.

Chinese Troops Invade Hong Kong (NOT)
Is Hong Kong Moving Towards A Showdown?
Hong Kong Police Losing Its Mind
I Read Don Junior's Book
The Hong Kong Shenzen Political Song And Dance Could Benefit The World
Hong Kong: The Situation Escalates
China Has Already Started Political Reforms: In Shenzen
Thoughts On The Middle East

I read somewhere, in response to the last protests, Beijing reportedly said, okay, you can elect your own Chief Executive as long we get to decide who those two will be. It is said in America about 50,000 people participate in the "money primary." And once somebody passes that hurdle then the race is opened to the ordinary American voters. What Beijing wants in Hong Kong, the 50,000 money people already seem to have in America.

In recent weeks I have taken great interest in the Middle East as a region, and in the UAE in particular, for business reasons. And being a political person that I am, I have also taken much interest in the politics. I knew the UAE was a monarchy, but there was a lot that I did not know.

But I have also had intimate knowledge at another level: people from my home village, for instance.

When I was attending high school in Kathmandu, at a school founded and run by the British, the best school in Nepal, we were taught there are rich countries and there are poor countries, but thank God for all the aid the rich countries give, the poor are catching up. Then I attended college in America. And the talk gradually shifted to, aid will not do it, we need trade, not aid. And we ended up with Donald Trump, who thinks the entire world is being unfair to America. But remittance from the Gulf countries is the only thing that has really mattered to the people in my home village. Aid and trade have been close to zero as factors.

And that makes me think. I open-mindedly ask questions.
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