BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 23-5, 2019) — In 1997, China finally won back Hong Kong from Britain, returning to the great Pacific Rim nation what England had stolen from it in the mid-19th century at the end of the first so-called Opium War. That century and a half saw the city rise from rural rice plantings to become the world’s most important financial center.

If you ever needed a testament of capitalism over communism, THE PLANET directs your gaze at Hong Kong. It would take Beijing all through its disastrous Mao era and then some to build anything so impressive. As the world knows now, however, mainland China is poised to become the 21st century’s dominant power, militarily and economically. It may be that already, depending on what analyses you include.

While premature to make the declaration, it is not too early to wonder if China’s brand of “21st century capitalism” — based upon an evolved ideological base that includes the more successful extracts of laisse faire, fascism, monarchy, communism, socialism, republicanism, and political pragmatism — might not actually be the closest the human race can get to a workable approach to the governance of large populations? We hesitate to use the word “utopia.” What do we call this new approach? How about “capcomism?”

If technological and economic “progress” in a conception of post-post-modern “civilization” can be called a worthy human goal, China’s incredible rise shows what wise, tactical, strong-armed leadership can do, and none is better at it than Xi Jinping. What do you think it would take to induce Xi to run for President in 2020? If one can skip the emotions as dryly as China dumped the reverence of and for Mao, China’s ascent in the 21st century stands as the best advertisement for authoritarian politics since Hegel’s concept of The State and his philosophy of moral right. The Kingdom of Heaven may belong to the meek, but the earth belongs to the strong.

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The 1997 release agreement, the first true admission by the West that the future would be Chinese, established Hong Kong as a special administrative district of the People’s Republic. China, showing a perspicacity that made it the world’s first superpower back in the Marco Polo days, agreed to an arrangement that would allow separate economic governance to the city. When you have the golden goose, you to protect the egg laying, especially when your brand of “communism” comes with quotation marks. It allows you to have your angel food and eat it, too.

Separate governance, though, does not exempt the prosperous city from Beijing’s rule, nor should it. This is a reality lost on clueless protestors who have after 12 weeks show no sign of having touchd foot on the ground. It’s also something the West should understand, especially the United States after it essentially suspended habeus corpus and installed its version of a police state using the events of 9-11-01 as the excuse.

Uncle Sam has no problem messing around in other parts of the world, but when rival nations start doing the same in their own backyard, we begin reciting the Hypocritic Oath, feigning to believe as a nation what we do not. How else could President Donald Trump have so badly misplayed his dealings with China, not the least of which is his trade policy? Trump might have risen to Xi’s level, but where the former has an ego driving him, the latter has a vision determining the direction.

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The trouble in Hong Kong began in June when Beijing instituted an extradition treaty with the region’s administrators, giving China a governing right possessed by every nation on earth. A country’s legal system collapses if it can’t bring equal justice to bear on all its citizens. In June, a small band of young Hong Kong residents and meddlers took to social media, inflated the meaning of Beijing’s reasonable request, conflated reason, and unleashed hysteria. Megaphones began blaring scary tales of midnight abductions and show trials in the mainland for imagined political offenses. Lies became truth, as it always does on social media, and gullible protestors claimed the swamp that they mistook for the moral high ground.

China showed remarkable restraint dealing with this immaturity, and after a couple weeks, actually withdrew the extradition provision.

Repeat: The extradition measure was never implemented and is not now. There is NOTHING to protest.

That didn’t stop the young, mostly millennial and Gen Z demonstrators, who have been treating the mounting unrest as a series of giant electronic raves, the next “cool thing to do.” The huge gatherings show that Hong Kong’s wealthy youth are bored in their search for meaning and have, like so many of their American counterparts, no understanding of law, politics, or economics. That’s how you turn a protest over a nonexistent law into a so-called “pro-autonomy movement.”

Mass rallies calling themselves “pro-autonomy” have a certain surface appeal, granted. It sounds good, right? Who doesn’t like freedom? The demonstrators, however, do not care about freedom for the good of all as much as disruption for its own sake and their own selfish chance to be “important.” For example, last week, the young busybodies, taking themselves as ever so seriously, stormed Hong Kong’s airport, one of the world’s busiest. The “fanatical mobs,” a phrase used by one wire report to suggest the irrational and unruly nature of the young’ins, barricaded themselves to prevent access and egress by travelers who simply wanted to get on peacefully with their business. The radicals threw bottles and other debris at innocent bystanders and police, shouting obscenities and feeling brave solely because the Hong Kong police have shown the patience of the biblical Job.

If they persist, Beijing will have to restore order to the chaos. The mainstream media will call it a “crackdown,” the protestors will come off as victims (the desired status of snowflakes the globe over), and they will claim a victory as hollow as an iced-tea straw.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been [and] will never be a hero” — Ursula K. La Guin.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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