Except completely reclassifying it to remove the thing that made China want to seize control in the first place: special trade status.
Other than that, what could the current administration do that wasn't screwed up by its predecessors?
My allusion to incompetent government in the U.S. should not be construed as limited to the current administration. The U.S. government has been screwing up a lot of things for a very long time now.
Yes, with many thanks to the Republican party that doesn't believe in governing competently. The party of anti-government has been doing everything it can for decades to get the government to break down and screw up. Instead of improving government, they've been systematically destroying its ability to deal with real problems.
> you guys understand that Hong Kong has and always been part of China, correct? UK gave back a land that wasn't their to keep.
PRC signed an agreement with the UK that set out the legal parameters for this transfer of sovereignty, and PRC is contradicting that agreement with their actions. While it may not legally be the UK's to keep, it was not China's to take in this respect either.
> What can any Western country or US president can do? Do you declare a war with a country over a piece of land that is rightfully their?
Well, in the mean time, the U.S. has terminated the special status of Hong Kong which allowed it to serve as the conduit between the civilized world and a country with essentially no rules that regularly outweigh pure class/political privilege.
The English legal system and liberal order that the UK imposed on Hong Kong was in large part what made them so dazzlingly wealthy and dynamic; and if PRC wants to corrupt that, the result is that the benefits of the system they are corrupting disappear with that system.
Also, it is not always right to honour the law, when dealing with bandits. The CCP does not care for the law, so their assertion of a legal right to Hong Kong (which has not matured anyway) is hypocritical, and can essentially be ignored at no moral hazard.
Furthermore, even if we asserted that the CCP has some agreed legal right to Hong Kong that will mature in some years, I would not agree that it has a moral right to take its people as property.
A true leader would have gotten on the phone with all of his counterparts in all of our allied countries and given notice to China that the new laws to curtail freedoms are a red line. And come up together with a list of collective sanctions (including banking) to threaten China with.
Instead, Trump has spent so much of his time kissing up to Xi to get his help to win the re-election (per Bolton's book). And check out some tweets from 2020:
"Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country."
"In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
"“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus."
"Of his many tweets over the three-day Memorial Day weekend, when the Hong Kong issue was at the top of the news, none was about Hong Kong. During the Hong Kong protests of 2014, Mr. Trump tweeted one of his few clear statements on the plight of the territory: “President Obama should stay out of the Hong Kong protests, we have enough problems in our own country!”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/china-hong-kong-l...
> A true leader would have gotten on the phone with all of his counterparts in all of our allied countries and given notice to China that the new laws to curtail freedoms are a red line. And come up together with a list of collective sanctions (including banking) to threaten China with
This is literally, exactly what the White House did.
Can you please point me to an article where Trump called the leaders of all our allies to create a coalition? And also which collective sanctions were created?
The UK and Australia are willing to flap their mouths a bit [1] over it at least, and the UK is much closer to actual sanctions (Australia has, for the time being, not terminated their special trade arrangements with Hong Kong).
Ultimately only the U.S. has taken any leadership on this matter, even if I think it will be inadequate. There is more to be done; but with the U.S. Presidential election looming, one thing that would steel the resolve and buff the resources of PRC assets in American politics would be a major announcement.
Nothing is as simple as the free world bullying the nominally-free world to condemn the only major state in the world conducting a holocaust; because apparently those "allies" don't give a toss.
Except completely reclassifying it to remove the thing that made China want to seize control in the first place: special trade status. Other than that, what could the current administration do that wasn't screwed up by its predecessors?