HONG KONG and ENGINEERING A COUP D’ETAT

     Seven decades ago Hong Kong was a little fishing village. Today it is one of the great cities of the world with a population over seven million. It has more sky scrapers than New York City. Their GDP per capita is higher than ours – they’re richer. How did they do this? They’ve got nothing, no natural resources. What they do have is a government that for decades has done nothing except protect property rights. People from all over Asia came to Hong Kong, not looking for free health care, a welfare cheque or free housing – there wasn’t any. They came in search of freedom. They came because they knew their life and property would be protected; they knew that whatever they earned they would be able to keep. And now. Now the young who’ve known nothing but freedom and capitalism have taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands because their way of life, their freedom is under threat. What can we do to help?

     The West has done nothing to support the freedom fighters in Hong Kong – not morally or tactically. Obviously The West would have to have moral convictions in order to pursue a tactical response to China – they don’t, but let’s pretend that they do. What tactical maneuvers could The West take?

     Xi Jinping is the leader of China. He has worked tirelessly to expand his powers and is now a virtual dictator. All dictators are afraid of the people they control and those fellow despots around him that want his power. If it’s seen that Xi has gone too far, he’ll be toast. So, tactically, The West should do what it can to show that Xi has gone too far.

     I’m not a tactician, military or otherwise, but here’s a thought. Led by The United Kingdom (they’re more responsible for Hong Kong’s situation than anybody) all the nations of The West get together in Taiwan to hold a meeting and make it clear that the purpose of the meeting is to consider tactical maneuvers against China in support of Hong Kong. Meeting in Taiwan has the added benefit of showing support for Taiwan. Just doing this may be enough but if it’s not, The West could actually consider tactical maneuvers such as trade sanctions.

     In my opinion, The West should employ tactics to make it more costly or shut down China’s attempts to take total control of Hong Kong. Who knows, maybe with the proper tactics we could engineer a coup d’état of Xi Jinping.