The sad, if inevitable, result of China’s absorption of this once great bastion of capitalism in Asia.
China wagged its finger at the student protesters, and warned against any foreign interference as they massed again in business and tourist districts of the city in the late afternoon.
“Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying defiantly told a news briefing in Beijing.
The unrest, the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule over the former British colony in 1997, sent white clouds of gas wafting among some of the world’s most valuable office towers and shopping malls before riot police suddenly withdrew around lunchtime on Monday, after three nights of confrontation.
No one with any small smattering of geopolitical sense ever thought that China would honor the terms under which Hong Kong reverted to them. Way too much free capital there for the expropriation. After all that blue-water navy isn’t going to build itself on the yuan; you need real money to buy those systems.
Democrats call this the all powerful centralized government ideal.