Of course not. Hong Kong is the gateway to China for American corporations. It is where most of those companies that invest in China have their headquarters. As well, Hong Kong Stock Market is where American investment banks put their money when they want to invest in China's economy, preferring to buy stocks in so-called "Red Chips" -- Chinese state companies that list some of their shares on the reasonably transparent Hong Kong stock market -- rather than buying shares on the less-than-transparent and easily manipulated Shanghai or Shenzhen exchanges inside of China.
Don't expect the US to rock the boat with China.
For years, American business leaders and politicians have made the Milton Friedmanesque argument that American corporate investment in China would inevitably lead to democracy there. Never mind that Friedman's theory linking capitalism and freedom never had a shred of real evidence to back it, and that there is plenty of evidence, from Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy to Pinochet's Chile, to debunk it. Almost forty years of the reintroduction of capitalism in China have not got much in the way of freedom to show for them.
Hong Kong's citizens have, for some time, had freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion and travel. They have been slowly gaining democratic control over their government too, but now have run up against a Chinese Wall, and are taking to the streets to push down that wall.
The US, ever the democratic poseur, so quick to finance chaos in Ukraine or to launch missiles, bombers and armed drones in Syria or Iraq in the name of democracy-building, has nothing to say in their defense.
I'm not saying that the US should be threatening drone strikes against China if it presses the crackdown against Hong Kong democracy activists (it shouldn't be sending drones anywhere!). But certainly the US should be taking a strong public stand in condemning China for going back on its word about allowing democratic election of the city's chief executive in 2017, and against the violent police crackdown on peaceful protesters.
Oh yeah. What was I thinking! How can the US, or indeed President Obama himself, complain with a straight face about countries or leaders going back on their word? And how can the US, where documents show that the Homeland Security Department orchestrated a nationwide brutal police crackdown on the 2011 Occupy movement, and where the police in most cities act like occupying soldiers in their routine patrol duties, complain about brutal behavior by Hong Kong's Finest?
DAVE LINDORFF spent five years, from 1992-1997, as a correspondent for Businessweek based in Hong Kong, as well as a year in Shanghai in 1991-2 as a Fulbright Scholar. A member of the ThisCantBeHappening! collective, his work, as well as that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LORI SPENCER, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found atwww.thiscantbehappening.net
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