Oh man… what a week it has been.  After Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong creating such a backlash, Blizzard, not wanting to be left behind, bans a Hearthstone player for his support of Hong Kong.  And then… Apple, also not wanting to be outdone, acquiesces to Chinese demands and pulls apps from the iTunes store.

What’s with all the news in Hong Kong?

Vox has a really good article.  But here’s my summary…

A little background if you don’t know where Hong Kong is… it’s located in the southern part of China.  It was an important entry point into the “China Market” as well as a financial center back when Hong Kong was under British rule.  Since the British handover in 1997 back to China, the “one country, two systems” was Communist China’s temporary stop-gap measure to appease the capitalistic and democratic opponents of a communistic government.  In essence, this system allowed separate economic and governmental sovereignty within Communist China.  In my opinion, this incompatible system is really at the crux of these protests.

A few years ago, the Yellow Umbrella movement was a political protest movement that protested Communist China’s “meddling” with HK government affairs.  In summary, it was opposition to the Chinese Communist Party selecting the candidates that the HK population would then vote and appoint to the HK legislation.  In short, it very subtly bypassed the HK Basic Law which was “guaranteed” for 50 years post handover.  I’m not sure this ever fully got “resolved” but looking back, this was the Communist party’s initial skirmish to “test the waters” on HK sentiment probably paving the way for future political schemes.

Fast forward to 2019, Hong Kong has new protests.  These protest were originally against an extradition bill in the HK legislature and has now morphed into more demands mainly to try to protect and define the language behind the idea of “protest vs riot.”  Admittedly, it’d devolved into a situation where protests, counter-protests, government plants to incite protester violence, and government collusion with HK Triads.  It’s not going to end well for Hong Kong.

But here’s a possible solution that a friend of mine mentioned.  Would HK people be opposed to this solution?  Chinese Communist Party grants universal suffrage to all HK people allowing them to vote for any legislative candidate. Any law passed by the legislature must be approved by the Communist Party before coming into law.