​As if 2016 was not exciting enough in the news world, the news media appeared to be pumped with adrenaline to finish off 2016 with more sensational news. The following news sequence certainly cast a dark cloud over the Earth chilling any holiday spirit people might feel about the coming of the New Year. First, President Putin of Russia in his annual meeting on national affairs reaffirmed his policy of refreshing and strengthening Russia's nuclear forces along a note that Russia's economy is recovering steadily with self sufficient agriculture production in 2016. Then, President-elect Trump, after a meeting with the generals about US defense hours after the above Putin news, twitted to the world that the U.S. must greatly strengthen her nuclear capability. The news media immediately latched on this tweet offering many interpretations from concerns about Trump's ignoring the 'protocol' language regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear threats to possibly a new U.S. nuclear policy.
 
When Putin was queried on Trump's tweet, he said, this was nothing new; Trump had said "to strengthen nuclear forces" in his campaign. The news media's interpretation of course was varied but one consensus implication was that Russia and the U.S. might be heading to nuclear arms race despite Putin's claim that he did not want one. Tweet is a powerful tool and it has been specifically proven in the 2016 US election. Trump was able to send direct messages to tens of millions of people repeatedly through his tweets to energize the ‘Trump’ movement. Since Trump’s victory, his tweets were able to stimulate the US stock market. In fact, the Wall Street observers have coined a term, ‘tweeter risk’ referring the daily rise or fall of stock prices attributable to a tweet from Trump. Trump's victory owes to some degree to his tweet performance.
 
Twitter is a communication product or service offered on the Internet with 'push and pull' characteristics in one-way and cascading communication. A micro-blog like message can be sent to a large number of tweet followers (A communication being pushed out by the Twitter while tweets being pulled in by followers). The twitter's biggest appeal and attraction to a communicator is the fast speed by which one can send messages to a huge number of Twitter accounts directly with no filtering so long as the short messages are less than 140 characters a piece. The ease of use and friendly way for any Twitter to scan a great number of twitters and their messages allow a Twitter to follow (tune-in) a big number of Twitter accounts. Trump claims that he has 25 million followers, thus making his tweets powerful in delivering messages. President Obama has also used Twitter for delivering his messages. Tweeting does serve a useful purpose if a precise articulated short message can be sent to one's followers, but it also has the possibility to cause a Twitter to be driven by vanity, to become addicted or to be triggered by impulse by sending improprieties messages out. Of course, Twitter followers can freely select to de-follow any Twitter account; hence a Twitter can also easily lose his or her popularity by misbehaving on tweets.
 
Speaking about Twitter behavior, one cannot help notice a number of Twitter events created by President-elect Trump's tweets. On December 6, Trump tweeted, "Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4B. Cancel order." Within 10 seconds, the Boeing stock started dropping, eventually reaching 1.6% below its previous day closing. This drop might not be significant for Boeing. But a week later Trump tweeted on Lockheed Martin about costs of F-35 (not a new issue) causing its stock to drop 2.5%. Anyone who profited over these tweets is really behaving with questionable ethics since the trades are bordering on insider trading. Some were attributing the stock price drop of aerospace and healthcare industries since the election to Trump's tweets and/or his cabinet appointments. There were Wall Street brokers openly soliciting investors to profit on Trump's tweets.
 
In addition to Trump's tweet effect on financial market, one can also observe the impact Trump's tweets had on diplomatic and world affairs. Mr. Trump, by speaking with Ms. Tsai on the phone and referring  her as “the President of Taiwan” in a Twitter post, created a diplomatic incidence which essentially violated the traditional American position on the "Taiwan Issue", known as the “One China” policy - respect and recognizing that Taiwan is a part of China. Using 140 characters to casually communicate about diplomatic affairs is obviously a dangerous action, which may be easily causing confusion in diplomatic protocol to seriously creating misunderstanding on foreign policies. Remedies of any damage cannot be made by another short tweet.
 
On December 22, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that the United States must “strengthen and expand” its nuclear forces “until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” This tweet may be a response to Putin's speech to his military’s leadership in Moscow earlier vowed to strengthen Russia’s nuclear missiles. But it's effect is very significant not only generating serious concerns in the world about an accelerated nuclear arms race but also wide speculation in our nation and diplomatic relations, domestically exhibited by the rising value of Uranium ETF in the Wall Street stock market and internationally demonstrated by numerous analysts’ comments on possibility of nuclear warfare.  These types of effects trigger-able by 140 character tweets issued by one individual not accountable by the U.S. Congress and her government system should be discouraged. From the above examples, one can easily see tweets as a one-way short communication that can lead to misunderstanding between governments and people a lot easier than repairing any damages. Under a tense circumstance, for example, in the Middle East Conflict (Iraq and ISIS) or in the South China Sea Dispute or in the North Korea nuclear missile crisis, an improperly versed brief tweet may very likely be misinterpreted to escalate the tense situation into war, even possible to trigger a nuclear war.
 
To answer the title question, we believe that an ill-versed tweeter will more likely trigger than prevent a nuclear war!  
 


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Dr. Wordman
 

​Hong Kong is a famous free port and often mistaken as an ‘island’ city. Actually HK is a part of a peninsula surrounded with 260 islands located at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta extending into the South China Sea. HK was ceded to Great Britain in 1842 after Qing Dynasty was defeated in the Opium War. The southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula and the Stonecutters Island were ceded to Great Britain in 1860. In 1898, a northern part of Kowloon Peninsula called New Territory was leased to the Great Britain by China for 99 years (1898-1997). Thus, when Great Britain was compelled to return HK to China, 1997 became the target year for the return. Since 1997, HK, consisting of the island of HK (81 sq km), Stonecutters Island (attached to Kowloon Peninsula through land reclamation), Kowloon Peninsula (46.9 sq km), and the New Territories (952 sq km), became the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China enjoying total economic freedom without the burden of defense.
 
The modern history of Hong Kong can be briefly reviewed in four periods, (1) from 1842 to 1941 HK was ruled by the Great Britain as a colony, (2) from 1941 to 1945, HK was occupied by Japanese Imperial Army as Japan waged war to conquer China (3) from 1945 to 1997, HK was returned to the British rule, and (4) from 1997 to 2017, HK was returned to China becoming HKSAR of China under the one country two systems policy. In the first period, HK was basically a trade port for the British trading with China (including the infamous and inhumane opium trade). HK was ruled as a Crown colony by the Royal Instructions which prescribed a Governor, a position appointed by the British Crown, and an executive Council and Legislative Council both being an advisory body to the Governor. The Governor of HK was always a British citizen directly appointed by Great Britain. Thus the HK residents were second-class citizens having no political rights. During the Japanese occupation from 1941-1945, HK was under Japanese military rule, thus HK citizens were treated basically like prisoners of war.
 
After Japan was defeated and surrendered to the Allies, HK was returned to the British when China was in a state of civil war. The Great Britain continued ruling HK as a colony without giving HK citizens any political right. The introduction of elected representatives (by local elections) to the Legislative Council (LegCo) was only initiated after the British had agreed to return HK to China by the 1984 agreement with 1997 being the target year for China to recover her sovereignty over HK. Interestingly, the British, cared very little about HK citizens’ democratic rights under the British rule, suddenly became more ‘concerned’ about HK citizens’ future democratic rights under the PRC government. This hypocritical ‘concern’ has been shamelessly expressed in the negotiation on HK sovereignty and has also repeatedly appeared in the form of foreign interference in HK’s post-return democracy.
The return of HK is by no means voluntary on the British part. China, after she became a member of the UN (1971) and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, began her diplomatic process of seeking sovereignty over HK and Macau working through the UN Decolonization Committee (1972). In March 1979, the Governor of HK Murray MacLehose paid his first official visit to PRC testing water for resolving HK’s sovereignty issue. Three years later British PM Margret Thatcher dispatched former PM Edward Heath as a special envoy to China to establish an understanding of the PRC’s view on the HK issue. The Chinese leader Deng Xiao-Ping then outlined a plan to make HK a special economic zone, a capitalist system under Chinese Sovereignty. Thatcher visited PRC in September with an intent to extend the lease of Hong Kong territory based on the Treaty of Nanking (1842), Convention of Peking (1856) and the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong signed in 1890, but Deng was firm allowing no room for compromise on the sovereignty issue and citing all those treaties as unequal treaties. Deng bluntly told Thatcher, “I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon.” Thatcher’s reply was, “There is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like.” Subsequently, the 5th session of the 5th National People’s Congress (NPC) amended the constitution to include article 31 to permit China to establish SARs when necessary. The formal negotiation began after the Thatcher-Deng meeting. China was firm on sovereignty and ‘administration’ right which the Great Britain wished to keep post-handover.  After several rounds of negotiations, Britain formally conceded her intention of seeking administration right or co-administration with the PRC.   
 
The Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed on December 19, 1984 in Beijing. In the Joint Declaration, the People's Republic of China Government stated that it had decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories) with effect from 1 July 1997 and the United Kingdom Government declared that it would restore Hong Kong to the PRC with effect from 1 July 1997. In the document, the PRC also declared its basic policies regarding Hong Kong; under the One Country Two Systems policy, the socialist system of PRC would not be imposed and HK’s previous capitalist system would remain unchanged for 50 years, all stipulated in the HK Basic Law. The Basic Law was drafted in 1985 by a drafting committee composed of members from both Mainland and HK, first published in 1988 after canvassing HK people’s views and then formally adopted by the NPC on April 4, 1990 along with a flag and an emblem of the HKSAR.
 
Tung Chee-Hwa, a fomer shipping tycoon, became the first Chief Executive of the HKSAR officially established in July 1997. In May 1998, the first post-return elections were held, thus began the reform process of the HKSAR political system. The Great Britain as well as the U.S. continued their ‘concern’ of the HK constitutional reform. In March 2005, Tung Chee-Hwa resigned for health reason and was succeeded by Donald Tsang who continued to propose constitutional reforms. Surprisingly, the quiet HK citizens, who had remained obedient and subservient under 155 years of British rule, began to make demonstrations demanding more democracy after they were given political rights. In 2007, 10th anniversary of the HK return, Donald Tsang won election in March and was appointed by NPC for another 5-year term. In the same year Beijing announced that HK might directly elect her leader in 2017 and their legislators by 2020, but the ‘Pro-democracy’ camp was not satisfied. In December 2009, HKSAR authority announced proposals for enlarged Legislative Council, but critics said the moves were not enough. In July 2012, Leung Chun-Ying succeeded Tsang as the 4th CE of HKSAR and he faced continued ‘pro-democracy’ demands till today. There seems to have an external influence to push HK for independence in the name of democracy but HK cannot afford to be independent from China. The progress of democracy in HK over the past 20 years under PRC was a giant leap compared to its 155 years under British rule. On March 26, 2017, Carrie Lam defeated John Tsang and Woo Kwok-Hing with a landslide victory and became the first woman CE of HKSAR, another landmark of democracy. There seems to be little doubt that HK not only will remain as an international vibrant finance and trade center but also will be a successful example of China’s one-country-two-systems political model.