Defying China in Hong Kong

Yahoo:
A sea of democracy activists flooded the streets of Hong Kong Sunday under torrential rains in a peaceful demonstration to city leaders that their movement still draws wide public support, despite mounting violence and increasingly stark warnings from Beijing.

Hundreds of thousands of umbrella-carrying protesters poured across the heart of Hong Kong island, defying both the downpour and a police order not to march from a park where they had gathered earlier for a rally.

Weeks of demonstrations have plunged the financial hub into crisis, with images of masked, black-clad protesters engulfed by tear gas during street battles against riot police stunning a city once renowned for its stability.

Sunday's action, billed as a return to the peaceful origins of the leaderless protest movement, drew more than 1.7 million people, making it one of the largest rallies since the protests began about three months ago, according to organisers the Civil Human Rights Front.
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It will be much more difficult for China to put down this general uprising in Hong Kong.  As Marc Thiessen points out in the  Washington Post:

The situation China faces in Hong Kong is very different from the one in Tiananmen Square three decades ago. At Tiananmen, the protesters were gathered in a large public square like sitting ducks where they could be easily mowed down. In Hong Kong, protest tactics have been adopted specifically to avoid another Tiananmen. The protesters are “like water” flowing through a huge and crowded city. Demonstrations are organized on the fly, via social media, and take place in multiple locations simultaneously. If China cracks down in one place, the protesters can disperse and start again in a different location. Moreover, the Hong Kong protests are leaderless, which means there is no cadre of organizers who can be rounded up to break up the movement. If China arrests one group of leaders, others will simply rise up to take their places.
In Tiananmen, the clearing operation was conducted in the dark of night and out of sight of the media. A Hong Kong intervention would take place in the full glare of the international press corps and under the scrutiny of millions of cellphone cameras that would record every atrocity for the world to see. And the operation could last for months or even years.
In Hong Kong, the terrain favors the defenders. The city is a maze of winding, narrow streets, many on hills, which would be extremely difficult for large military vehicles to navigate. If the military moved in, it would face determined resistance. China wants to break popular support for the protests, but a crackdown would have the opposite effect...

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Finally, a military intervention would mean the end of Hong Kong, and that is something Beijing cannot afford. The mainland economy is slowing and might even be contracting. Trump is hammering China with tariffs. If President Xi Jinping cracks down, he will cause capital and talent to flee the city, which could kill the golden goose.
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Clarice Feldman makes another good point about Hong Kong:
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It’s curious that our universities are chocked to the brim with brainwashed students and fourth-rate professors and administrators who hate the U.S. and its Constitution while in Hong Kong people their age are risking their lives for freedom, waving American flags, and wishing they had a Second Amendment right to defend themselves against brutal tyranny.
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The people of Hong Kong are intelligent and have a better perspective on true freedom than most of the left in this country.

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