One thing that it left out here is to articulate which of the 30 some odd offenses, with a minimum 7 year sentence, would such an extradition would actually be considered. They're generally violent crime, and even before the protest started, some of the white collar crimes were removed.
This CE has been dumb as a post in terms of trying to rush this, and failed spectacularly in articulating the proposed change. The key fact being that the judiciary has been carried over intact, because the elites needs it for their day to day business, and it has on many occasion overturned what the HKSAR government had proposed.
There are far deeper problems with HK, many of which were carry-overs from the colonial days, that has not been resolved. Eg. housing prices has been high in the colonial days by design. The tax base was narrow, so the colonial government operated by jacking up land lease prices. The HKSAR government had mostly carried over the same practices, spare an unfortunately timed proposal of building new public housing right before the Asian financial crisis shortly after the handover. CE Tung took the brunt of that and no subsequent CE had proposed anything too serious. To be fair, the elites then and now includes lots of real estate tycoons, and unlike the governors of the past who are appointed by the Queen; the CEs now are voted in by small groups of electors that often are "business leaders".
Grey market goods had been a persistent nuisance, which is no surprise that one of the protests had been in that area.
Job market prospects has been quite bad for the post-secondary educated. Manufacturing started leaving in the 80s under the Colonial watch, and nothing substantial had been proposed to replace that then; nothing substantial had been done to fix that now under HKSAR.
There are lots and lots of reasons for HKers to be unhappy - earning a living has been tough, long commutes, impossibility of owning a place, lack of public / subsidized housing, and there's little surprise that they'd turn to chucking out whomever is running the place.
Compare that to the 80s and 90s: The first popularly-elected legistlator started in 85, after the Joint Declaration was signed in 83. But people had decent living, getting housing was tough, but not as tough. Mainlanders would bend over backwards if you start waving HKDs. There weren't massive protests then against the Colonial government.
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Even if what you said happens, it would temporarily cool down the chaos. People don't turn to chaos easily. Look at the US - it's easy to say the people voted for Trump are uneducated, bigoted. It's so much harder for people look a little deeper. Their livelihoods had been stagnant at best, manufacturing departed and left a vacuum, etc... They turned to something that promised to blow down the current order.
These problems needs real fixes, or the chaos would simply return.
The extradition bill is a bad fuse to light up the power keg.
If one could at least temporarily park the emotions aside, https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/hong-kong/arti... shows what is actually being proposed. The bill would actually allow judicial oversight compared to the existing process.
One thing that it left out here is to articulate which of the 30 some odd offenses, with a minimum 7 year sentence, would such an extradition would actually be considered. They're generally violent crime, and even before the protest started, some of the white collar crimes were removed.
This CE has been dumb as a post in terms of trying to rush this, and failed spectacularly in articulating the proposed change. The key fact being that the judiciary has been carried over intact, because the elites needs it for their day to day business, and it has on many occasion overturned what the HKSAR government had proposed.
There are far deeper problems with HK, many of which were carry-overs from the colonial days, that has not been resolved. Eg. housing prices has been high in the colonial days by design. The tax base was narrow, so the colonial government operated by jacking up land lease prices. The HKSAR government had mostly carried over the same practices, spare an unfortunately timed proposal of building new public housing right before the Asian financial crisis shortly after the handover. CE Tung took the brunt of that and no subsequent CE had proposed anything too serious. To be fair, the elites then and now includes lots of real estate tycoons, and unlike the governors of the past who are appointed by the Queen; the CEs now are voted in by small groups of electors that often are "business leaders".
Grey market goods had been a persistent nuisance, which is no surprise that one of the protests had been in that area.
Job market prospects has been quite bad for the post-secondary educated. Manufacturing started leaving in the 80s under the Colonial watch, and nothing substantial had been proposed to replace that then; nothing substantial had been done to fix that now under HKSAR.
There are lots and lots of reasons for HKers to be unhappy - earning a living has been tough, long commutes, impossibility of owning a place, lack of public / subsidized housing, and there's little surprise that they'd turn to chucking out whomever is running the place.
Compare that to the 80s and 90s: The first popularly-elected legistlator started in 85, after the Joint Declaration was signed in 83. But people had decent living, getting housing was tough, but not as tough. Mainlanders would bend over backwards if you start waving HKDs. There weren't massive protests then against the Colonial government.
---
Even if what you said happens, it would temporarily cool down the chaos. People don't turn to chaos easily. Look at the US - it's easy to say the people voted for Trump are uneducated, bigoted. It's so much harder for people look a little deeper. Their livelihoods had been stagnant at best, manufacturing departed and left a vacuum, etc... They turned to something that promised to blow down the current order.
These problems needs real fixes, or the chaos would simply return.