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If you visit Tiananmen Square today, there is a gargantuan Chinese basket of flowers sitting in the center of the square. Chinese visitors and tourists are taking selfies, posting them onto their state-monitored WeChat apps. Refreshments are bought and snacks are consumed. You're however, quietly commemorating the college students who were murdered there in the hundreds (thousands?) for daring to ask for a voice in government. You can't bring the subject up to the tourist next to you, because the risk is simply too high. You blink back and tear, and move on.
Oct 03, 2017 12:53 AM
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China's government learned a great deal from the 1989 movement on how to control dissent effectively. The main lesson was that though open confrontation might bring swift results it risks spectacularly damaging the leadership's reputation; slow attrition, on the other hand, avoids this inconvenient consequence whilst being just as effective.
Hong Kong is presently undergoing a slow attrition, and step by step is being ground into submission. The job is now probably only a few years from completion.
Oct 03, 2017 10:59 PM
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