A couple of links for the weekend…

Boston Review links economic inequality with Hong Kong and Taiwan’s declining faith in Beijing. This downplays the historic, identity and cultural aspects – which makes a change, perhaps…

In 2014, [older Hong Kong pan-democrats’] cautious approach was superseded by a generation willing to risk much more. Thus commenced the most dramatic five-year cycle of revolt witnessed in the city’s history. Hong Kongers were shocked by increasing police brutality including indiscriminate use of tear gas and pepper spray and beatings of nonviolent protestors and onlookers. By February 2020, this violence and the government’s intransigence in its face caused Hong Kongers’ support of Beijing to collapse, with less than 20 percent reporting that they trusted the central government. The government understood then that persuasion was no longer an option, and resorted to the liquidation of the opposition and civil society. Since 2020, opposition political parties, trade unions, and media outlets that held critical views of Beijing have disbanded en masse.

…The CCP of the early and mid-twentieth century made anticolonial and anticapitalist appeals to their compatriots in Hong Kong and Taiwan, societies that had suffered racially stratified exploitation under British and Japanese rule, promising them economic and political liberation. But under Deng Xiaoping and Xi alike, the latter was not only demoted but fully excised from the state’s agenda in service of building national wealth and power via the market. This shift shaped Beijing’s approach to Hong Kong and Taiwan accordingly, as it tried to divert economic opportunities to them in exchange for political submission. For a moment, that outcome seemed within grasp. But the market, as the CCP knows, is a fickle tool.

The Guardian on CCP members being disciplined for reading books with ‘political problems’…

In September a former municipal level official in Heilongjiang, Li Bin, accused of corruption, was also found to have “privately read an illegal publication containing contents that undermined the unity and solidarity of the Party”, according to state media. He was expelled from the Party and his case given to prosecutors.

That same month, Cheng Zhiyi, former party secretary of Chongqing’s Jiangjin district, was also expelled. Among the accusations were “losing ideals and beliefs” after he privately read books and magazines with “serious political problems’ while “outside the country”.

…a list of banned titles published by China Digital Times … includes writings on Chinese politics and history, including the Tiananmen Square massacre and the disastrous Mao-era policies that saw millions die from famine, violence, and political purges. There are books scrutinising the modern CCP’s politics and power, or sharing the views of political enemies and critics like Hong Kong tycoon and activist Jimmy Lai, the exiled Tibetan Dalai Lama, and Bo Xilai, the fallen political foe of Xi Jinping. Hillary Clinton’s memoir is on the list, as is Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Hannah Arendt’s The History of Totalitarianism.

Hillary Clinton???