The protests in Hong Kong (HK) against the extradition bill started on March 31st, 2019 and evolved into a massive movement in June involving as many as half million people walking on the streets demonstrating. Up to now, the unrest in HK has been over 200 days changing from a growing peaceful mass movement to a shrinking but violent protest more like riots than demonstration. In the past near seven months of unrest, the HK mass and organic media have revealed a lot of hidden issues in HK beyond the mere concern of the extradition bill. They are: 1. Hong Kong’s severe wealth gap and deficient housing supply problem in the extremely crammed and expensive city created a large unhappy population struggling under diminishing economic opportunities. 2. Hong Kong’s colonial education system, left unchanged since its return to China, produced generations of youth with a false HK pride unable to face the reality of HK losing its competiveness to her neighboring Shenzhen. 3. HK’s Judicial System filled with judges with dual citizenship (UK’s and HK’s) acting leniently towards arrested protest0rs and thus emboldened them. 4. HK’s Media owned and controlled by the conglomerates and owned produced inflammatory reporting causing mistrust between the HK people and their government. 5. The external influence (foreign powers, Western media and high concentration of international spies in HK) supported the demonstrations and the violent riots turning the HK unrest into a challenge to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) one country two systems practice.

The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HK HR&D Act) of 2019 is a bipartisan American legislation directing various US departments to assess whether political developments in HK justify changing HK's unique treatment under the U.S. law. The original HK HR&D Act consists of five main points: (1) reaffirm the principles set forth in the US-HK Policy Act of 1992 (established prior to HK’s return to China); (2) support the democratic aspirations of the people of HK; (3) urge China's government to uphold its commitments to HK; (4) support the establishment by 2017 of a democratic option to nominate and elect the Chief Executive of HK, and the establishment by 2020 of democratic elections for all members of the HK Legislative Council; and (5) support freedom of the press. Since HK’s return to China in 1997, China has practiced its one country two system policy letting HK people governing HK with HK’s legislative Council elected and the executive head elected by the council. HK has a three branch (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) government system governed by its Basic Law, HK’s Constitution, which was approved by the National People’s Congress in 1990 prior to HK’s return to China in 1997. In fact, the CCP has not only kept its promise of letting HKers managing HK but also helped HK developing a healthy economy under law and order. 

In the U.S., the people or their two political parties often have a strong opposing view on a political or social issue, for example, on the acceptance of illegal immigrants or granting them voting rights. HK people also often have opposing views on legislations, modification of election methods and/or the policy and performance of their Chief Executive. Currently, HK enjoys complete economic freedom and is politically self-governed by the HK people under her Basic Laws with her legislators half (35) directly elected by the geographic district residents and the other 35 elected indirectly. Her Chief Executive is elected by 1200 election commissioners – an electoral college. Like many countries and political systems, there are opposing political factions in HK, some favor a gradually evolving political system but satisfied with the one country and two systems, some favor a fast changing pace to a general suffrage system electing all officials directly and yet some favor to make HK independent of China (like re-secession) which is obviously unrealistic as California seeking independence from the U.S. With a history of colonial occupation, HK has been dominated by a few families (for instance, 90+% land of HK are owned by four families) and the elites employed by the wealthy families (many of them are British citizens). HK’s demonstrations on various issues are not always for the benefit of the people, for example, on immigration laws (the wealthy who need labor and the politicians who need votes have different views from the common citizens’ views) and the current controversial extradition bill (a threat to international spies living in HK but actually beneficial to law and order).

The original HK HR&D Act was established with the principle of promoting freedom and democracy on behalf of the HK people. Today, the HK People has more freedom and democracy than most people in Asia perhaps even more than the U.S. citizens, judging from how HK’s frequent demonstrations are treated. Violent protestors would never be tolerated in the U.S. or U.K., examples are Wall Street or Dunning Street demonstrations. However, the U.S. and U.K. media persistently reported onesidedly favoring the protestors and slanting the HK police. Most people caring about HK, especially Chinese Americans and Chinese Britons, who saw the real video footage of riots or experienced them in person, are furious about the hypocritical behavior of American legislators such as the Cuban American Senator Marco Rubio (one of the main sponsors of the HK HR&D Act) who has become famous for inviting all sorts of dissenters to the Senate to testify slanting China. He sometimes anxiously puts words in the witness’s mouth or hastily makes tweets (recalling his rush to tweet “collapsing German dam in Venezuela causing blackout” - German Dam is actually a reporter’s name who wrote about the blackout in Venezuela). We suspect Rubio’s real motivation is his political ambition. He sees an opportunity of gaining name recognition by being the number one China hater in the Senate. He has only turned to be a China-hater following his loss to Trump in Florida in his 2016 Presidential campaign.

The 2019 HK HR&D Act does not do anything to improve HK’s democracy. Rather, it may destroy HK as a free Financial Center, causing irreparable damage to the world financial system due to a domino effect in the financial world possibly resulting in a world recession. No citizens in the U.S. or U.K. would dare to destroy properties, use self-made bombs, beat-up innocent people and police and immobilize public transportation like HK rioters had done. No one would get away with it like the HK rioters. By passing the new HKHR&D Act, it is essentially endorsing violence, a hypocritical behavior, and it may just backfire to encourage more violence not only in HK and but also in our own homeland. The US-China Forum has just initiated a petition to the White House urging President Trump to reject this 2019 HK HR&D Act. We ask our government to focus on obtaining a trade agreement with China quickly so that the two countries can seek cooperation rather than confrontation. Two great nations striving for excellence bound to have competition. However, only fair and open competition will benefit each country’s economy and promote world prosperity. Agitating and destroying HK may give China a setback but it will also hurt the other countries and the world, in the end hurting the U.S.. 

Hong Kong’s protests are touted as a freedom movement by the activists there and by the West media fanning the fire with biased reporting and news coverage. The violence and criminal activities (generally occurring during and after a peaceful demonstration) were suppressed and the freedom demands were highlighted. Of course, in today’s advanced network world, fake news or distorted news reporting can not fool all the people all the time. Now with ample real-time real street videos, we see the real situation of Hong Kong protests turning into riots almost like movies, well planned and directed, with weapons, gas bombs, masks readily made available to the few violent activists at each peaceful demonstration or directly to an unauthorized demonstration orchestrated for violence. The Hong Kong Government seemed to be powerless letting the police to be clobbered by the masked rioters. Finally, Hong Kong is considering a law to forbid wearing mask (and combat mask) in public place.

The ignition point of the three months long Hong Kong unrest was originated from protest against an extension of criminal extradition law (Hong Kong already has with many countries) to include Taiwan and Mainland China. The need of extension was triggered by a murder case that a Hong Kong citizen murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan and fled back to Hong Kong to avoid prosecution. Why this extension was opposed is actually very simple because Hong Kong is a center of international spies who obviously are afraid of extradition law extended to China. It is ridiculous that Hong Kong as a part of China has criminal, mind you capital offense criminal, extradition with many countries but not with mainland China. Of course, this is the result of British colonial rule of Hong Kong. What is wrong with this extradition law modification? How did it affect young students as young as fourteen? Could we imagine that happening in the U.S.?

Sure, Hong Kong has been a free port enjoying plenty of freedom in trade and finance during the British rule but not political freedom. There was no democracy, no election, not voting for the governor of Hong Kong. By 1997, when Hong Kong was forced (by expiration of a war treaty) to return Hong Kong to China, British strengthened the Hong Kong Basic Law, thus Justice System was tenured with British citizens, city government was established with an elected council. British cleverly made the Chinese government to accept and maintain the then “current” status of Hong Kong for fifty years in the name of “peaceful transition and protection of Hong Kong People’s rights. China agreed. Thus today Hong Kong is ruled by Hong Kong People, its executive leader is elected by the Hong Kong Council System. You would ask why Hong Kong people are protesting? Actually, the reasons can be summarized in three points.

First, the most crucial point is that the wealth gap in Hong Kong is the greatest in the world. 93% of Hong Kong’s land is owned by four family enterprises, enterprises that would make Trump look like a inconsequential property developer. Hong Kong housing expense is highest in the world; millions of people cramped in small apartments, some sharing in day and night shifts. With China rising in economic development and Hong Kong’s neighbor Shenzhen and Canton prospering, it makes the proud Hong Kong people depressed with unemployment problem and oblique future. This is the hidden element in Hong Kong unrest and the unrest is manipulated by internal (wealthy) and external (political) forces to release the anger on “freedom fight”.

Second, a strange point is that Hong Kong people have too much freedom but not getting any practical benefit. Hong Kong protesters enjoyed more protest freedom than any other place and protected by an extremely lenient justice. (British judges) Hong Kong people have the greatest financial freedom in terms of investment and doing businesses but the majority of Hong Kong citizens are struggling seeing their living standard used to be miles better than their relatives on the mainland China across the Hong Kong Bay deteriorating daily. The tourists from mainland China are notorious in their spending making Hong Kong people jealous unless they were traders making tons of money off the tourists. Hong Kong has freedom to use and teach the Hong Kong dialect in schools and use their colonial textbooks (English not Mandarin). (It would never be permitted in the U.S.) Hence the children are taught with a confused world knowledge making the young people totally confused with an obsolete pride as a colonial citizen facing the giant wave of Mandarin power. Hong Kong used to be the Hollywood in Chinese movies (Cantonese) but now it is taken over by Mandarin movies produced by Mainland China. Some smart Hong Kong people learned Mandarin but those being taught by the legacy school and teachers are lost and worried for their future. China should have legislated laws to reform the Hong Kong school systems. Perhaps it is not too late to do that. Just imaging, in the U.S. if we would allow schools to teach everything in Spanish or Arabic-Islamic language, what would it do to our society?

Third point, mostly used by the anti-China foreign countries is that China is an authoritarian system not suited for Hong Kong. Funny thing is that China was too rigid in keeping her words of letting Hong Kong people to rule Hong Kong and let them to evolve (a guarantee of Hong Kong self-rule under China’s constitution of “one country multiple systems”. The problem is that Hong Kong is a small island prospering under a condition not because of its resources or people but because China was cut off from the world and only had Hong Kong as her lifeline to the world economy. The West decided to open to China for her huge market and labor dividend. Then things were changed; China embraced capitalism with some control. China rose rapidly, making Hong Kong gradually losing its influence and value. China actually tried to protect Hong Kong from Shanghai and Shenzhen overtaking Hong Kong as a world financial and trade center. However, competition is part of freedom, all human societies desire to have competition in various degree. Freedom to compete does not just belong to the society already enjoying it. So China’s Rise should not be perceived as a threat to Hong Kong, but it is just like it is to the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan.

If Hong Kong people, especially youth, understood the above three points, the solution should not be violence nor independence (as unrealistic as San Francisco or Manhattan wanted to declare independence) but embracing the rise of China to be a real Chinese to get on the freedom train which is accelerating. It does not take a historian to notice that Chinese people were always freedom seekers (especially the Cantonese, most Hong Kong People’s ancestry; Chinese immigrants to California and other parts of the world are examples). Now China had shed her two century of disgrace, invasion by foreign powers. China established a republic growing and reviving gingerly with her thousands years of culture and lessons learned from modern history. History will tell that Chinese people will seek freedom in her own way not by any color revolution instigated by a foreign country. The Chinese are too smart now to fall in a trap to split China into pieces, rather they will propose projects like the Belt and Road Initiative to benefit the world and themselves, leading the world to peace, prosperity and harmony.
​
Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.

Many countries do release an annual or biannual or non-periodic defense white paper (DWP). The term, White Paper, was first used by the British government referencing to the Churchill White Paper (released on June 3, 1922), the British Policy in Palestine, representing the five documents named, “Palestine Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organization”. The White Paper emphasized that “While maintaining Britain's commitment to the Balfour Declaration and her promise of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the establishment of a national home would not impose a Jewish nationality on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. To reduce tensions between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine the paper called for a limitation of Jewish immigration to the economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals. The Churchill White Paper may have had some influence on the Palestine situation but that is not the subject of this article. Our focus is on China’s DWP and the U.S. DWP and their intended messages. 

The U.S. issued her 2018 DWP and stated her 11-Point objectives from defending her homeland from attack to establishing an unmatched twenty-first century National Security Innovation Base that would effectively support (defense) department operations and sustain security and solvency. It is the strategic approach stated in the 2018 U.S. DWP that had raised some eyebrows: 

1. Build a More Lethal Force (p.5-7) 
2. Strengthen Alliances and Attract New Partners (p.8-9)
3. Reform the Department for Greater Performance and Affordability (p.10)

The above strategic approach cannot help but give the impression that the U.S. is preparing the plan to build new military alliances (in addition to her worldwide ranging existing alliances) and the ability to attack with more lethal weapon (targeting China and Russia, explicitly in the DWP, as competitors, and North Korea and Iran, as destabilizing regions). The recently resigned Defense Secretary, James Mattis (current Secretary is Mark Esper), signed the DWP with the conclusion: “I am confident this defense strategy is appropriate and worthy of the support of the American people.” Here, we raise the question: Should the American people support this strategy?

China issued her DWP on July 22nd, 2019, understandably (in response to the U.S. DWP) it mentions the U.S. specifically in the report which reiterates her peaceful rise pledge and pure defensive nature of defense strategy based on her traditional non-offensive and non-alliance (military) positions. It also states, however, that the new era needs new defense strategy, citing the complex world environment having fast development, unstable international security, global restructuring with rise and decay, but emphasizing seeking peace, balance, but recognizing existing power play forcing international competition. The Chinese DWP has claimed that the U.S. unilateralism and increasing military build-up are causing big nations to compete (militarily), to have frequent military exercises and more regional conflicts, a situation intertwined impacting everyone in the world. 

China’s DWP contains five additional points: 

1. New policy stresses on peace and diplomacy following (Chinese) traditional cultural expectation with a goal of never wanting to be a superpower or an expansionist nor to seek sphere of influence (via military) and a directive of defense being always defensive (not offensive) in nature and repeating her pledging, never be the first to attack.

2. Mission of the defense is to uphold the communist party leadership in China, maintain a socialistic China (with Chinese characteristics) and defend her sovereignty in land and seas with readiness to protect China’s interest in homeland and overseas as well as to defend against any force that will divide China’s sovereignty (specifically mentioning Taiwan pro-independence force).

3. A comprehensive reform plan is to reorganize the four forces, Navy, Airforce, Army and Missile with proper balance (reducing military personnel and modernizing equipment and communication) and to restructure the command system with strengthened laws, management and modern training and facility.

4. A transparent description of defense budget emphasizes its appropriate spending being 1043.2 billion RMB (2017), about 1.25% of GDP (versus 3.5% U.S. and 4.4% Russia), and 5.26% of national budget (versus 9.8% U.S. and 12.4% Russia). China’s defense spending per capita is 750 RMB which is only 5% of the U.S. and 25% of Russia’s per capita spending.
​
5. Calls for a common destiny for the global community to build peace partnership with equality and trust (rather than military alliances) honoring the United Nations charter, principles and peace missions. China will work with her neighbors, EU, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and South China Sea regions to develop regional security cooperation.

Comparing the above two DWP, it is obvious that the U.S. and China do not believe nor trust each other on national defense issue. China assesses that overall Asia Pacific (AP) is stable; the concept of shared common fate and destiny is rising as exhibited in more international conferences such as the Shanghai Cooperation Conference, ASEAN Summit, and Shangri-La Dialogue, etc. barring the interference from the U.S.; whereas, the U.S. is painting a dare situation that the rising China is posing a threat to the AP, the U.S. and the world, thus, there is a need to build an alliance to check China’s Rise. Put the rhetoric aside, China has been consistently pledging her peaceful rise, non-alliance position and no first attack principle, but the U.S. had never believed China’s statements. As clearly expressed in her 2019 DWP again, China is trying to be more transparent and candid in describing her defense policy, mission and spending. In the global community, China seems to be gaining more believers on China’s intent as evidenced by the increasing support China has received for her Belt and Road initiative (BRI) to promote global economic development and international cultural exchange; whereas, the U.S. is still insisting on pursuing a ‘Cold War’ like strategy to target China and Russia. 

We Americans are peace loving people but tend to be led by ‘the think tank elites’ blindly on foreign policy and international matters or ill informed by the mass media. In U.S.-China Relations, clearly the legacy ‘Cold War’ Strategy advocated by our government funded ‘elites’ is now begging for questioning, as we can see our strongest allies, UK, Germany, Japan,  Australia, Singapore, Philippines, etc., all are hesitating to go along with our ‘enhanced’ targeting China policy. As the 2020 election is around the corner and political debates are taking place, we voters must raise the questions: Putting the rhetoric aside and taking only concrete evidence, why don’t we believe in China’s peaceful rise? Why do we have to meddle in the neighborly disputes that the principals do not call for our interference?  Why do we blame our economic problems, especially our competitiveness, on China and every other country? Why do we employ devious means to suppress Huawei’s 5G technology when we know it is our military’s monopoly of frequency bands that prevented our civilian corporations’ advancement in wireless communication?  Why does the rest of the world believe in ‘collaboration producing win-win results’ but not the U.S.? Why do we blame the use of other currencies when we keep increasing our debt ceiling discrediting the US dollar? Do we really want to be an isolationist or one who must club everyone else to get our way? By the way, our way does not do so well lately, does it!?




​