"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will"
It's really the end result of British colonization of the city, and the continued maintenance of its foundations via the SAR and the Basic Law which the PRC willingly signed into reality as part of Britain's prerequisite for giving HK back to China.
On the one hand, you could argue it was a masterful compromise orchestrated by Margaret Thatcher (who initially wanted the UK to continue controlling all of HK and eventually giving only the New Territories back to China...after an extension of the Qing-era 99-year lease lol) as way of giving away sovereignty but still being able to maintain British/ Western political and social power over HK through the liberal capitalist system. This was largely achieved through two vectors: one, by how all the HK tycoons who got super rich post-WW2 still control large swaths of property today and have many pro-business friends in the legislative council (formerly these were the British colonial administrators, now it's HK Chinese fulfilling the same role), and two, with all the 'grassroots' parties and movements that constantly agitate the capitalist government for more "civil rights and democracy" that just all happen to pop up out of nowhere in the 2000's and didn't exist before the handover, all be pro-UK/ pro-US, and all hate Communism.
The latter vector was eventually eliminated when the National Security Law was signed in 2020, but the economic structure which was set up by the British and continued through the tycoons and the legislative council, remains.
On the other hand, you can also argue that the PRC itself is to blame for why HK is the way it is today. The CPC made great compromises themselves just to get HK back, and despite Deng Xiaoping once boasting to Thatcher that he "could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon" they allowed HK to be handed over largely on Thatcher's terms. Not only that, the CPC also agreed to maintain the SAR for at least 50 years after handover (the reason why I highlighted "at least" is because Xi Jinping has made this an open interpretation by making comments in recent years hinting the SAR status can be extended, which is another compromise in itself) and greatly tolerated the ability for pretty much anyone to engage in its liberal "democracy". And by anyone, I mean anyone: for example, some of the most anti-communist groups out there like Falun Gong were allowed to organize in HK despite being banned in mainland China (I personally remember being in a taxi and driving past a Falun Gong protest in Kowloon back in 2017).
The final straw ofc was the 2019 mass protests which featured the most blatant US/ western subversion in post-handover HK yet: you literally had student leaders waving and screaming for America to liberate the city, and there were US politicians IN HK MEETING THE PROTEST LEADERS. This was why the central government finally had enough and clamped down on HK's "democracy" the following year with the National Security Law, much to the West's derision despite many western countries having very similar laws and clauses in their constitutions already. Ironically, there was a similar mass protest in 1967 (which were called the 1967 HK "riots") but instead of pro-West petit bourgeois groups leading it, it was pro-CPC groups lead by unionized workers. The 1967 riots led to the British government clamping down hard on left wing organizations and banning communist publications (so much for the Brits caring about HK "democracy" right?).
However, even with the National Security clamp down, 5 years later you still have a lot of HK reactionaries who hate Communist China. Why? Because the other problem still remains: HK's socioeconomics which provides the main undercurrent for reactionary elements in their society. You essentially have a massive hub of financial capital run by oligarchs, backed by pro-business politicians, and upheld by the petit bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy that treat said oligarchs as idols to aspire to. And this is all tolerated, hell even celebrated sometimes by the CPC because they are "Chinese patriots".
Gone are the days of the Mao-era where the party encouraged working class solidarity and class struggle in the last colonial holdouts of Asia. Now it's about "national rejuvenation" and "common prosperity", terms that hardly have anything to do with orthodox Marxist thought and allow plenty of room for HK capital to exploit the workers as long as they remain subservient to the party. On top of that, you also have mainland Chinese capital who constantly come down south to engage in property speculation and drive-up housing prices to NYC levels of scarcity. This swarth of contradictions is how we end up with Hong Kongers hating mainlanders while still thinking they're an Asian Tiger.
Can this still be changed? I believe it eventually can, but it requires a big step-up in the efforts of the central government to remove the last vestiges of the British colonial/ capitalist system. Starting with ending the SAR status, which was only ever meant to be a temporary phase to allow China to catch up economically.
A lot of (wealthy) Indians who migrate to western countries tend to be reactionary as they are usually Hindutvas who love Modi, but they also love Israel because they both hate Muslims. So, this is often used as an excuse by western liberals to use their usual racist insults reserved for other designated enemies like the Russians, the Chinese, and the Arabs (when they aren’t completely defenceless and being genocided).
Of course, it’s also partly due to Indian migrants (who are starting to improve their living standards more as education levels improve and so does their incomes) being a newer easy scapegoat for the right to distract the working class from the woes of Capitalism by blaming a minority for people losing their livelihoods while x minority is moving up the social ladder proportionately, but there seems to be some intersection with the veneer of moral superiority used to obscure their (often not so subtle) racism that liberals always like to level against Global South peoples whenever there’s some global issue in the spotlight (i.e. You are less righteous than I am, therefore I get to be a vile racist bigot towards you).
This is never a consistent thing btw, as some liberals act this way towards Indians for being pro-Zionist, other liberals will at the same time act this way towards Arabs for being anti-Zionist/ pro-Palestine. In conclusion, Liberalism is a hell of a drug.
I guess the fact that a lot of older generation folks who viewed the USSR favourably in post-Soviet states made such a law unfeasible in the past.
Now that that generation is starting to die off, combined with current geopolitical tensions between NATO/ EU and Russia, and Ukraine basically leading the charge with their 'de-communization' policies (which explicitly tied Communism with anything Russian) after the maidan coup, is why other post-Soviet states are doing it now.
The whole "saving HK culture" argument is inherently rooted in bigoted anti-mainlander and/ or anti-communist sentiments (you will never see HK leftists use the culture argument for stuff like this, it's always a reactionary thing like the 'culture war' in the West). Hell, Bamboo scaffolding is not even unique to HK, it was used all over China for thousands of years! However, the real reason people in the industry oppose getting rid of bamboo has nothing to do with culture at all.
As always, follow the money and you will find the (materialist) truth. Who controls the construction industry in HK? One of the major shareholders is the Bamboo scaffolding companies, which effectively holds a monopoly over the scaffolding business and ensures that nobody can ever change this through intense lobbying via industry associations, private donations (i.e. bribes), and even through the unions like the one you quoted, which yes, are deeply corrupted by the companies they negotiate with to the point that they are willing to ignore worker health and safety standards to protect the profits of the owner-class under the most BS pretences like "oh but our traditional sacred craftsmanship will be destroyed and we'll lose these precious skills, nevermind the fact that we'll still keep our current jobs and just learn new skills because people still need scaffolding to build stuff!!". In fact, you'll find that these are usually the same type of unions that supported the 2019 HK protests (which happened to be backed or at least implicitly favoured by many HK big capitalists), even though the protests had nothing to do with improving worker's rights or working conditions at all.
This may change soon though, as the Tai Po apartment fire (which will almost certainly be attributed to the bamboo scaffolding as the cause or at least a major contributor to the severity of it) has caught the attention of the central government and Xi Jinping has personally commented on the event, which may give the HK government a lot more confidence in their ongoing efforts to phase out bamboo.
China phased out bamboo scaffolding for modern developments a long time ago. In fact, Hong Kong is the ONLY city left in China that still uses Bamboo scaffolding for literally everything they build. And the only reason why is because of the SAR status they have (the 'one country, two systems' model) which protects the Bamboo scaffolding companies that basically have a monopoly on the construction industry there.
As another user said before me, the HK government is trying to finally phase out Bamboo with new regulations that will put HK in-line with what the rest of China already does, but the main problem is the Bamboo scaffolding lobbyists that have immense power in HK's Capitalist system.
Very likely the Trump tariffs hurt the manufacturing costs of this thing more than Valve can tolerate. FYI the Steam Deck was reportedly sold at a loss too, but you gotta remember that Valve is releasing three hardware devices this time round.
I mean, it’s really only significant because the British colonizers introduced it. Beyond that it doesn’t actually have much importance in HK society. HK films only had it to appeal to Western audiences. This is a bit anecdotal but I come from a family of Hong Kong Chinese and I do not know anyone who ever engaged in Horse Racing while they lived there. If anything it was something almost exclusively enjoyed by White people until the late 20th century.
Furthermore, there are plenty of other sports that are played and enjoyed by many Hong Kongers that don’t involve animal abuse: Golf, Tennis/ Badminton, Football, hell even Pool are quite popular there. The HK government earlier this year finished building a huge shiny stadium in Kai Tak that was designed for all sorts of sporting events besides Horse Racing. It was also recently used for this year’s China National Games, which HK co-hosted alongside Macao and Guangzhou. Why didn’t Hasan show any of that off instead?
So, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to defer to “cultural significance” when criticizing an American-brained streamer for not being at least a bit sensitive to animal rights in a foreign country. I also don’t think OP was saying Panda diplomacy is wrong but is simply apprehensive to the idea of animals being caged in unnatural enclosures for entertainment. Yes zoos can abuse animals too and yes China has zoos, but so does every other country in the world.
Anybody remember the batterygate scandal last decade? Apple got sued many, many times for secretly slowing down their iPhone processors in iOS patches to “preserve battery life” but the tech community at the time thought it was a clear case of planned obsolescence. Apple only admitted they were doing this years after it was first observed in the iPhone 6 models.
According to recent polls from Kyodo News, 69.9% of the Japanese public still support Sanae Takaichi. According to Yomiuri Shimbun, this is actually HIGHER than the approval rate that Shinzo Abe had one month after his first term as PM. Furthermore, 60.4% of the Japanese public support expansion of the military, and 48.8% support “collective self-defense” in the event of a cross-Taiwan strait conflict (44.2% oppose it).
If anything, the Japanese government broadly reflects exactly what the people there want.
Chinese travellers cancel hundreds of thousands of trips to Japan amid rising tensions
Chinese travellers are estimated to have cancelled hundreds of thousands of tickets to fly to Japan amid reports of suspended visa processing and cultural exchanges as a diplomatic dispute over Japan’s stance on Taiwan continues.
Under pressure from business groups, Japan has sent a senior diplomat to Beijing in an attempt to calm tensions after Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said her country could get involved militarily if China attempted to invade Taiwan. Her comments prompted fury from China’s government, which issued warnings against Chinese travellers and students going to Japan.
At least seven Chinese airlines, including the three state carriers, said they would offer free cancellations to travellers with flights booked to the country. One air travel analyst, Hanming Li, said departure data suggested about 500,000 flight tickets to Japan had been cancelled between 15 and 17 November.
China is the second largest source of tourists to Japan, and its students form the bulk of Japan’s international student cohort. Shares in Japanese retail and travel companies slumped on Monday in response to the measures. Li told the Guardian it was the largest mass cancellation of flights he had seen since early in the Covid pandemic but would probably have little impact on China’s domestic industry.
Go
wokefash, go broke, Japan.It’s very likely using similar dubious metrics as statistics that claim China has a 20-30% homelessness rate because it counts all the migrant workers that don’t officially own a home in the cities they migrate to (they count rental properties under this FYI) as “homeless” even though they all technically have homes in their home towns already.
Also yeah, it’s pretty hilarious that Thailand has a ‘pale white’ slum category while all their neighbours are much higher in percentage when Thailand one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to wealth and living standards. I mean just go to downtown Bangkok and you will literally find slum-like habitations next to high rise condominiums lol.
I'm going to Prague next year and am so tempted to act like some Americans do in China by telling the locals how poor and misfortunate they are to live in such an authoritarian system with no free speech.
*westerners finally figuring out they don't live in a democracy
Inb4 the German-Ukrainian partitioning of Poland happens.
Those mountains are arguably a big reason the US hasn't invaded them yet lol.
Taiwan is like if Palestine managed to liberate itself from Israel completely, but then a civil war occurred between Fatah and the PFLP which the PFLP managed to win and establish a new Palestinian socialist state, but Fatah wasn’t completely defeated and retreated to Cyprus to continue their government for the next 70 odd years while claiming to be the “real” Palestine.
Oh and they also became a military dictatorship for 40 years in order to violently suppress any leftists on the island with America’s full backing, and more recently started to simp for their former Israeli occupiers as a role model to follow.
(this isn’t a completely accurate analogy as Cyprus was never a part of Palestine like Taiwan is for China, but it’s a general jist of Cross-Taiwan Strait history)
The funny thing is I subconsciously learned this as a kid many years ago from playing real time strategy video games. A few dozen expensive units are more powerful and look intimidating but can eventually be beaten by hundreds of cheaper units, especially when your opponent runs out of resources to keep producing those expensive units. War economy is everything.
Also adaptability. Making sure you have a counter/ can quickly counter every unit the enemy can throw at you. In real world present day warfare, the US Air Force is the hardest thing to counter which is why nobody outside of Russia, China, and the brave as f Houthis would ever directly engage the US militarily.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences have been a disaster for the Human race.
The death toll of the fires in the Hong Kong Tai Po apartment blocks has now reached 83 as of writing this comment.
This now puts the Tai Po apartments fire as deadlier than the infamous 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in the UK, which claimed the lives of 72. For reference, the Grenfell Tower fire was considered the worst UK residential fire since the Blitz of World War II.
Three people have already been arrested for manslaughter over the Tai Po fire – two directors and a consultant of the contractor behind the apartment renovations. They allegedly used non-compliant materials in scaffolding nets and sealed windows with styrofoam, which sparked the tragedy as the highly flammable substances caused the fire to spread rapidly. Moreover, the apartment renovation site was inspected by the Labour Department 16 times since July last year, as recently as November 20 and reminded the contractor the previous week of the need to implement appropriate fire safety measures.
President Xi Jinping expressed his condolences on Wednesday evening and called for “all-out efforts” to minimise casualties and losses. After visiting the injured in hospital early on Thursday, HK chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu vowed to investigate the fire and the scaffolding. He also ordered inspections of all public housing estates undergoing major renovations and announced a HK$300 million fund to assist the victims, including a cash handout of HK$10,000 for each household. Development chief Bernadette Linn Hon-ho met with construction industry representatives to discuss switching from bamboo to metal scaffolding. Authorities are considering a road map to transition to using metal "as quickly as possible" she says, adding industry players are understanding and supportive.