tv In Depth CSPAN March 6, 2022 12:32pm-1:29pm EST
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occupy central movement of 2014 when the central district was occupied for 79 days by protesters. the summer of 2019, the sum of democracy, the frustration among hong kong people asked beijing tightened the screws more and more. beijing had no intentions of allowing free elections unless china knew who was going to win. let me kick it over to you because i do not want it to be a monologue. >> let us talk about that out of the protests which you do a lot with in your book and most people are familiar with in how it started as protests in a protest city. hong kong likes to protest and they are good at it. it started against the extradition law that carrie lam was going to impose.
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people could be extradited back to china with its legal system and the two into something else and there was almost 2 million people protesting that. he became fewer people but more radical, but violent on both sides, the police increasingly using tear gas and her bullets and even shooting some live bullets -- rubber bullets and even shooting some live bullets. increasingly in the community where it spilled over, people were regarding chinese businesses -- declining chinese businesses. how much of this crackdown came during the pandemic, under the cover of the pandemic, how much do you think the protests happened because the protests became embarrassing to china? especially to xi jinping?
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>> i think it is a good question and i guess it will be interesting if someday in a different china we could have access to the archives and decision-making. it was clear by the end of 2019 that china was -- that beijing was going to move and move hard. even after the extraordinary protests, as many as 2 million people at some rallies in a city. these were not people come in from mainland china, these were pretty much all hong kong. it would be the equivalent of you took -- if you took 80 million people in washington. it was extraordinary how the city was caught up in this. china was counted on a solid majority, the blue wave -- counting on a silent majority,
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the blue wave to back them in district council elections. after these months of tumult and increasing violence, on both sides, the election day came and as in every other election in hong kong, about six out of 10 people voted for the pro-democracy candidates. if it was an unbelievable sweep for the pro-democracy camp -- it was an unbelievable sleep for the pro-democracy camp. it showed community support for democracy, even after the violence which i thought would turn a lot of people against the protesters. rather than using that as a pause or reset and it had the political situation had time to calm down. i thought the government would fall or negotiate and even in places like south korea, during
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authoritarian places faced with massive street protests, government negotiated with protesters. beijing could not do this. beijing's response was to send down tough people to basically take charge on the ground in hong kong. one of them was known for breaking up christian churches, physically smashing churches. use and people like that in and you get one kind of answer. -- use and send in people like that and you get one kind of answer. hong kong ran an elite and seemingly silent commando unit . cracking down who they thought was -- tracking down who they thought was separatists. if it was a peaceful and
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prosperous city but you sent people who are hard-line security people from the ccp and you get a particular outcome. >> in the book you talk about the notion of hong kong as this very free, open capitalist city, a place where people flocked to make money. anybody who has spent time in hong kong has seen that. there is the huge office towers and until recently it is easy to get a visa, work visa, to travel in out of mesh in and out of hong kong -- in and out of hong kong. eventually xi jinping and the ccp did not want to give up the goose that laid the golden egg at upper cracking down on freedoms they could be risking harming or even destroying a key
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patient financial center that -- asian financial center that needed those freedoms. the british contract law to survive. what has changed there? what allowed that risk in killing the goose that laid the golden to occur? i have wondered whether it was inevitable? >> i cannot answer if it is inevitable. there is a lot of contingency in history but a couple of factors. one is from an macroeconomic standpoint, hong kong matters a lot less than it did in 1997. china is an $18 trillion economy. much larger than japan. the flows of the condo hong kong are important, the technology and human know-how is important. in a relative since it is much
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less important than it was in 1997. the more important answer is it shows for the party, staying in power is what they regard as security is more important than anything else. we saw that in 1989 when they killed thousands of their own people, young students who were the cream of a new generation in china. they murdered them in the street. in hong kong, they have done it much more skillfully. there have been few deaths and not directly that can be linked to security forces killing anybody. the result has been the same and i think the party, when it comes to economics, hong kong as a business center, that is secondary to the party staying in power. they have been clear about this, when an represented meta-market
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thatcher -- met margaret thatcher, they told her that the chinese were taking hong kong back in 1997. thatcher's idea of continued demonstration was a no go. she says you do not understand hong kong and cannot read it. >> if we wreck it, so be it. we are taking it. politics will come economics trash -- will trump economics. >> i like the address this line that many of us are living all of the time, hong kong was becoming just another mainland city. you say that is the wrong frame for that question. why is that the case? why is the crackdown more concerning than just to the 7.5
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million people who live there? or is it not just another city -- why is it not just another city? >> you would rather be in beijing or shanghai because you know what the rules are and things are clear. in the hong kong as to what will get you thrown in jail with no prospect of bail are unclear from day to day. we had a protester thrown in jail a week or so ago because he was thinking or planning a one-man protests against the olympics. we had a speech therapist who has been sitting in jail for the better part of a year because she was involved in a children's book that had wolves and sheep. somehow that was sedition or something. she is in jail on security charges. nobody knows what the rules are in hong kong. it is worse than any mainland
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city with the exception of cities in tibet. you have to think of hong kong, beijing fuse hong kong through a frame of peripheral region followed troublemakers. think about it, what is on the periphery? they are far away and they cause a lot of trouble for china. instead of trying to work with people, the thing seems to be strike hard and keep lacking until there is nothing left -- whacking until there is nothing left. china's willingness to destroy hong kong, what a threat in hong kong opposed to china? >> what military threat? >> or what threat was hong kong seriously going to become independent? they were worried after 1989
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that the hong kong spirit of liberty and freedom would spill over to the mainland. anytime there is a demonstration of the guys in beijing seem to see caller revolution. -- color revolution. they have seen the things that have happened in central asia. they have to take down any kind of uprising. the bigger point is what china did in hong kong is the kind of thing it is hard to lithuania today. trying to do with australia, it it has done it with south korea. we can talk about taiwan, it will be hit hard and the chinese are seemingly picking quarrels with a variety of places. trying to limit the individuals
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in open societies to be able to have discussions like this. if china had their way, we would not be having this discussion. that could probably -- they say the law applies everywhere and they could come after you and me. >> we are getting some questions in and they are dealing with the second part. i will show the book if you have not seen it. the second part is today hong kong, tomorrow the world. what did the people's republic of china learned in hong kong that they intend to apply to the world? he is getting to the second part of the title of your book. >> unremitting pressure, i think we are seeing this playbook, let us sit, they try to co-opt certain parts of africa -- of
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the elite with business favors. they will try to control the media as much as possible. they will essentially try to raise the pain threshold for anybody who goes against them. >> there is a similar question, about the world part. a1 -- taiwan might well be next, or else will china strive -- where else will china strive? >> the ability to have the people's liberation army in hong kong and taiwan is different. i do not think we will see troops around the world. i do not think that even in places like the philippines or cambodia which is almost a colony of china is likely to have troops.
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i think they will work through leaks -- elites and media. work through the united front organizations we see here in the u.s. and london. >> one question before we return to mine, from hong kong today to an international commercial collapse, is there a precedent for that sort of decline in beirut? >> it is hard to destroy an international financial center. i have looked at some of the research and the work that has been done and i had discussions with people who a couple of years ago were more optimistic than i was. business can live with bridger conine laws. if you have, the combination of the security law,
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china is giving that thesis a run for its money. it is interesting to think about beirut because there is a civil conflict there and that is what are the case in hong kong -- is sort of the case in hong kong. you have a pandemic that makes it impossible to travel. cafe pacific has been destroyed, 60 billion plus visitors in 2018. i do not think there are 6000 this year. entire parts of the economy are wiped out. you have ricard is asking senior employees to move out of hong kong because they cannot service their region internationally from there. people in hong kong could be anywhere in the region and you could be in china. all of those borders are closed.
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nobody can really work, capital can flow. i do not know if it is locked down for another year or so. it seems to be the thinking. it could be a more severe lockdown that we may see a wuhan style lockdown were people cannot leave their flats. it is hard to imagine that kind of grinding shut down that hong kong is going to bounce back and become vibrant all of a sudden your again. >> i would like to shift gears and talk about a key point of your book. it gives it an insider feel is the chapters where you talk about jimmy lai. many of us know of him. as he is the founder of digital and apple daily. the book was among hong kong's
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first prisoners in the communist era. he is serving his sentence in jail after taking part in two peaceful demonstrations in 2019. you knew him well and for years. tell us about him and he has been a controversial figure in hong kong and a thorn in the side of the ccp. how did he, a devout catholic and a businessman become such a threat to china? >> i think that is a good question and i have thought about that a lot. here is a guy who -- he epitomizes the hong kong success story. he came to hong kong at the age of 12 as an illegal immigrant in the bottom of a fishing boat. lived and worked in an art -- textile factory. is not himself english by
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reading the dictionary -- he taught himself english by reading the dictionary. he founded a retail chain, fast fashion before its time. before tournament -- tienamen, he was a regular guy before he was radicalized by the killings. he took part when the students were there. he founded magazine and then apple daily. i guess the fact that the chinese cannot silence him and he has resources and contacts and he knows a lot of people around the world and he has been opened to media people. it seems to drive the chinese insane. it is hard for them because if they allow one person to be free, the next person wants to be free. they have to make an example and they are trying to break him.
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he has been in jail nonstop since the beginning of december a year ago. he was let out for a couple of days on house arrest over the christmas week in 2020. he has in a maximum security prison, he is an 74-year-old diabetic. a devout roman catholic who has always preached nonviolence yet anytime he is in court they put him in manacles and 35 pounds of heavy chains. to humiliate him and show the world what they can do to someone. they can treat him like a caged animal. for asking just for freedom and doing when he had been doing for 26 years. it is extraordinary, for many years, there will come after me, i will be target number one, you always think, really? is it really that bad? hong kong seems like it is ok, but i was wrong.
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>> let us talk to you about press freedom. given that, i would like to talk about, did apple daily go too far here? some say the protesters did bought a ticket to this. that china would never let this happen and that jimmy bought a ticket to it as well with his calls to democracy in his newspaper. something that they could come and shutdown. and we saw them shut it down. i was there in 2020 when they walked him through his own news room.
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200 police through that newsroom, the fcc and cried it and we were told to mind our own business. i would like to engage a little bit with apple daily which, they were not a polite newspaper. >> let me rhetorically and have to see ask you throughout -- and throw the question back to you. they slap you guys down and they keep coming after you. should you and i don't know if you debated this internally, when i was on the board, we had these debates. should the fcc be engaged in these sorts of issues? i will answer the question because it is rhetorical. i think the fcc was perfectly proper to do that.
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your question is one that a lot of people ask but i think it is easy to answer. i do not think you should blame the victim. hong kong people wanted what was promised to them by the chinese. the chinese in the treaty and in basic laws and hundreds of statements all promised hong kong democracy, hong kong people rolling hong kong. -- ruling hong kong. it is not the fault of the victim, these victims are in jail. seven people from apple daily next to each other in jail. have been there over a year, since last june, last july. they have not been tried or convicted, they are not granted bail, is it their fault they
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were running their newspaper as you and then the ar decided to be slammed into the slammer for that -- and that it is decided that they are to be slammed into the slammer for that? >> this was a person who had it coming, when we put our statement at the fcc, it was you do not understand you are meddling in -- this is not about press freedom, it is about other things. how do you get in the middle of this is what the foreign minister said to us. >> i was with one of the former executives and it is like you do not like him because he is a troublemaker. he will not sit down and shut up and bow to you. that is what they do not
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like. it was an aggressive newspaper and i would not defend everything that they did. even jimmy, it made some mistakes and they did some things that bloomberg would not do. that does not mean that they should just be sitting in jail and that we should have had a company that was a publicly listed company with a market value of about 100 million dollars destroyed overnight by the government. assets have been seized, laces being dismembered. -- places being dismembered and 1000 people lost their jobs. is it that their fault? i do not think so, china cannot take dissent. it cannot take discussion. it has to have -- it is like a guard, it has to have the only truth.
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jimmy militantly refused to accept that. >> bill asked a related question, how long can the western media presence in hong kong last? you addressed this somewhat in your book. >> you have western media in shanghai, limited. the only place you do not have it is pyongyang. i do not think it is going the way of the dprk but it is possible. you do not have western media in action john and tibet -- in tibet. as long as they keep giving visas, there will be some limited presence. i have known bella long time and when we first knew each other, it was -- i live in korea, in the 80's when it was under military rule.
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the idea that the new york times would have editorial people in seoul because they cannot be in hong kong is mind-boggling. in the space of 30 years, a place like south korea becomes an open society and a place like home which seems so open -- hong kong which seems so open is a place where they throw storybook illustrators into jail. >> a question saying that she isn't a tiny expert but wasn't hong kong independence in the treaty limited to a certain period? were citizens naive to think it would be longer than that? >> it was a high degree of autonomy and it has some of the toppings -- trappings of its own currencies. it was for 50 years, we are coming up to the halfway mark on
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july 1. we did not even make it halfway. if it went well, we could keep going past that. i think people were looking for a full 50 years. >> i would like to get back to next stories -- to the next stories. some of the personal pressures you felt as things became more heated in hong kong, it was interesting, you had some pressure even before the protests and crackdown not being invited on some other boards for which you are qualified and had been put off because you were on the next digital board. talk to us about that and what that was like and what that told you about where hong kong had been going? >> i knew when i joined the board that it was not going to go over well among everybody who
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i succeeded with. i was the executive director director of the asia business council which was a pan asian group of ceos and german. -- determine. chairmen. it had a strong hong kong contingent, i would not say that the business community was super sympathetic to jimmy but i did talk with my board about it and they were aware that i had taken this. i was an how could you deny this had something to do with the covering and the immense scale of the corruption? and i would also like to say, and i support the united states, i am american, but how can you deny our long history over there trying to promote democracy --
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which i think is a good thing -- but we promoted democracy trying to get them to join nato. and just pushing it so far we inadvertently caused this war. host: let's go to constance from florida on the democrat line. good morning. constance, are you there? caller: we have all this money. this russian propaganda was started by then. it is obvious and trump was in cahoots with russia to weaken nato and set us up for a fall. he wanted the governments to gang up on us. that is what he did. and these republicans trying to hurt women, it is a vile act did
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take their birthright, i mean, their right to say whether they want a baby. these people want to make future slaves, children program to the way they want, like little nazis. for they are trying to make slaves of people. if we had not gotten joe biden in their, if we had the little orange cheeto man, we would be doomed. people like me would've already been locked up because i have a big mouth and i'm sticking for freedom all the way. host: we would like to thank all of our guests, our viewers and social media followers for another great addition of washington journal. we will be back tomorrow for a new show. everyone have a great sunday and continue to wash your hands. have a great day, everyone. ♪
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delaware senator tom carper chaired the hearing. [indistinct chatter] >> it does seem clear that they like the control part and this is a dry run for ensuring that they can control everybody in hong kong all the time, covid or no covid. >> there is a strong surveillance aspect to it. we have got a couple of good questions.
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great to see you again, mark. >> hi, pete. >> aside from civil liberties and security what is happening to the rule of law regarding business? good question. follows up by saying, will there be legal advantage being based in hong kong versus shanghai portions and -- or shenzen? >> great question. i feel like that is not fully answered. there is clear there are hand-picked judges overseeing the national security law cases and they are engaged in using the kind of veneer of rule of law to reach predetermined political ends. is that going to affect commercial law? don't know. it is too early to say. there are people who are
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worried, right? but i don't think we can point -- i don't know of any hard evidence that says judges are ruling in favor of being u.s. multinational, for example. it raises the question about hong kong's role as an arbitration center. teresa chang, current secretary for justice, had done a lot of work on. it is the sad irony that she has presided over i think a real assault on rule of law. beyond the national security law cases we have 10,000 plus people arrested on political charges in 2019 and 2020. only a quarter have been charged . the arrests hang over people's heads. it is a clear feature coming out of the british legal system. in other words, the overwhelming majority of cases are not msl
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charges. my understanding from talking to people or working with prisoners is it still depends on the judges. it is not as black and white, just lock them up forever as you might think. you know, there is usually people getting longer sentences and it is harsher then it was on protest related charges. let's wait and see. it would be great if you were able to keep these tracks separate. the history of these things is pretty hard, you know, to have one for political offenses and be aboveboard and evenhanded on commercial disputes. >> somewhat related question. china extended the firewall of the internet to control and monitor hong kong's communications. i guess i will add do you think
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that will happen and if it does, will that affect the ability of international companies to operate from hong kong? >> yes, yes and yes. this week we saw hong kong watch been blocked by major internet providers in hong kong. hong kong watch a u.k. based ngo which chris patton and others, from a chinese standpoint, undesirables are involved in. i think it was two or three days ago this week service was blocked. i think we are going to see that increasingly. they will start with ngos and then they will go to more sensitive political sites and then they will go to news sites. yeah, it will be like being in beijing. i guess companies find out ways to work around it, but you are in a fundamentally different business, cultural, political, social environment than 10 years ago. you are like beijing or, i would argue, worse than beijing.
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right now, still better because the firewall is not fully enforced. but i think it is inevitable that it will be. >> do you think that will look like -- just a follow-up -- that will lead to more media companies having more challenges, so to speak, and perhaps doing -- they moved the asia headquarters. >> look, you will have correspondence there. it would be interesting to know, you know, somebody with a permanent residence card in hong kong that they did not want to let in if they would let in as a media worker. i am sure many of us on this call either fall into this category or know people who would. but, you know, the prognosis is not good. it could be people cover beijing and shanghai. hong kong will be a minor place.
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maybe it is like a monaco where a lot of rich chinese come and it is a nicer lifestyle and the mountains are nice, go out on your junk on the weekends, the apartments are nice, the tax rate is low and that is it. but what is happening in monaco? i don't know how big the bloomberg -- >> i do not think we have one. [laughter] >> i rest my case. >> i would like to come back to the other issues in the second part, tomorrow the world. how is hong kong a test case? we talk about the history and the unusual -- how all this came to be and the invents of 2018 -- and the events of 2019 and 2020. how do you take that and that particular example of hong kong and make it a template for what china could do elsewhere? >> first of all, taiwan. if they have their way and xi
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jinping realizes what he thinks is his historical mission to bring taiwan back into the full, then i think that is a very clear template. you go after education as is being done in hong kong very aggressively. you go after media. you go after civil society and destroy ngos. eventually go after free churches which we think will be one of the last areas. that is pretty clear. i think where, you know, the analogy is not quite as precise is, again, i don't think you are going to have chinese troops -- well, we do have some in djibouti and other places -- but let's take cambodia or let the when you, for example. cambodia is a better example because i think you are seeing -- they say, who do i call for help if not the chinese? we have seen the, no coincidence, strongmen work with
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the strongmen from beijing. it is no coincidence the free media in cambodia is finished, right? i don't think it is any coincidence the chinese are selling internet and other, you know, mobile telecoms technologies to africa, often working through corrupt elites. by the way, our friend has written about this for businessweek. working with local elites to sell high-priced equipment which can also be used for surveillance and enriches the elites who will then, i think, do beijing's bidding. i don't think they will have national security on curriculum on african textbook, but taiwan, the maps they have are going to reflect what china wants. just as delta, united, other american airlines had to redraw their maps to make it clear taiwan was not a sovereign country. i think it will be all these little issues.
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first on maps and issues about taiwan and hong kong. but eventually, i mean, look at how norway was punished when a chinese dissident was given the nobel peace prize. they basically locked norway out for eight years. it was not until after he died in chinese custody that the chinese eased up on the norwegians. i think it is unlikely you will see another nobel peace prize laureate from china for a long time. i don't know. is norway less free? yeah, they are. their peace prize committee -- there are good candidates. i am not saying a chinese person said when -- should win, but they cannot pick freely among the candidates for even something as, i would say, noncontroversial as a nobel peace prize.
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>> what about lithuania? what are they doing? >> i am sure given your time in russia you are watching that closely. i think lithuania is an interesting example. ok, they are a baltic country and they actually had about 200,000 people out in the baltic way in hong kong in the end of august 2019. it was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the baltic way that took place as those three countries, lithuania, loggia and dystonia, were getting independence -- and estonia were getting independence. the baltics and hong kong are the small countries and have a lot of ties. lithuania has been very supportive of hong kong and, by the way, when the protesters in support of hong kong getting back to the question about what
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we are going to see, you have the chinese ambassador to lithuania watching as a group of thugs beat up a pro hong kong protesters in lithuania. those of the kinds of tactics i think we are going to increasingly see abroad. we see this in chinatown in london where mainland thugs beat up hong kong protesters at an anti-asian hate rally of all things. but let the weightier is being punished because -- but let the way neah -- lithuania is being punished. china is threatening the you project. they are telling german automakers -- they are telling the lithuanians they took out the country code so lithuania cannot export anything to china because there is no country code. china says, sorry, you don't exist as a country. that is an interesting way of zeroing out a nation.
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they have gone further until german automakers they cannot use components made or assembled in lithuania for cars or export to china. it is actually throwing the eu into -- i don't want to say turmoil -- but it is testing ties within the eu. we think china has the capacity for mischiefmaking that is, you know, quite at odds with its earlier claim it was going to have a peaceful rise. >> the role of the u.s. in all of this. we saw the u.s. during the protests, you know, take steps in congress, nancy pelosi and mitch mcconnell got together on something to basically say if you are not going to support -- and they called in the legislation pro-democracy efforts -- we are going to resend parts of our trade agreements. essentially allowing very
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free-trade and hong kong. some would say that punished u.s. businesses doing business in hong kong more than it did the chinese government. but the u.s. is clear on this. the u.k. is clear on this. the u.k. is saying to hong kong residents, we will make you citizens. we will make it easy for you to come to the u.k. has that made it worse? has that made the crackdown worse on hong kong? >> yeah. i think we have to be realistic about the limits of u.s. power, of any nation's power. particularly with a country as large as china and an economy that, as i said earlier, is a significant. there is a limit to what impact it really has. i think going forward we need to think really hard about our reliance on china. let to get back to that point in a minute. i don't know that the actual
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impact economically has been very great. we sanctioned hong kong officials, they sanctioned u.s. officials. but look, pension fund monday is going -- money is going from your 401(k) into china today. we have not been shutting off the flow of money. wall street is continuing to cozy up with china. so, i cannot say it really had a material impact. i thing it had a moral impact in hong kong. by the way, the u.k. announcement you alluded to where people that had a bno, british overseas passport, now do and they are extending that so the children of those people would also have a path to citizenship. already i think in the first year or so of that plan
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something like 90,000 or 100,000 people have already applied. the numbers are pretty significant with the city the size of hong kong. it is interesting. after the u.s. election in 2020 i had just returned. i was talking to a friend in hong kong and he said, everybody is so sad. why? trump lost the election. hong kong is one place trump would have won in a landslide. we can talk about whether his policies were effective or if you knew how to deal with xi jinping are not, but the hong kong people loved his rhetoric on hong kong. mike pompeo was very popular in taiwan. whether or not the policies have really proven effective i think the jury is out. but they certainly have buoyed sentiment among the pro-democracy people in hong kong. i think there is, quite frankly,
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concern among the biden people or hong kongers as to whether the biden administration will be as tough on china given their record of the obama and clinton administrations. so far, those fears have proven unjustified, but again, time will tell. >> they have kept a lot of the tariffs in place. >> yes. that has been interesting. >> one last question before i toss it back to patty. before i say that, there is a link and here is the book. look for it and you can get it through the link. it must be on amazon, right? available on amazon. >> amazon, all good booksellers. i encourage you to patronize your local independent bookseller. the saint martin's press people have been great to work with. they have been very supportive. i love the cover and everything about the book. thanks for the pitch.
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>> great. one last lightning round question. so we don't leave this terribly depressed, is there any hope? is there any hopeful note that, you know, this could be lessened or changed or even something about the people of hong kong and the resilience? >> well, look, as i said, i don't think we have hit bottom yet. i was on a roundtable a year or so ago and, i mean, you were involved as well. i remember think in, wow, you think it is going to be another chinese city but we have not hit bottom. even i could not imagine how far we could keep falling. short-term the outlook is not good. i think hong kong people, well, number one, we have never seen an authoritarian regime last indefinitely. i don't think the accp will be different. jamie diamond was going on a
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little bit when he said j.p. morgan would outlast the communist party. i don't want to comment on that but say, nothing lasts forever. i think the hong kong people have proven remarkably resilient and there are, you know, many small acts of defiance. there is still more than 7 million people living in hong kong even with the outflow. most of those people in their hearts support an open society and i think some of them are working, some of them are waiting, but i hope they live long enough to see a different time and a better time. hong kong will never go back to what it was, but there is no reason it couldn't be a remarkable and open city again. i think more broadly china's actions are waking the rest of the world to its true nature. look, i spent more than three
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decades in asia, 28 years in hong kong, working for and believing in engagement. i don't think i was naive. i was perhaps more optimistic then events have proven, but we need to stay engaged. we also need to make sure we are not unduly reliant on china. i think if the pandemic -- the combination of the pandemic and china's ability, seemingly, to create enemies where it had none is waking the world up. i think we are hopefully going to see more of a multilateral effort for open societies to take care of themselves and defend themselves and their interests in economic, social, political. i guess that is the best i can hope for for a silver lining. it is slow to change. it is like turning an aircraft carrier. at least we are now starting to turn but i think there is a long way to go.
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so, thanks for your interest and great to have a lot of old friends on this call. look forward to seeing everyone in person. >> great. thanks, mark, and thanks for writing this book. i will toss it back to patty. >> thank you both for a really fascinating discussion. a little depressing, frankly, but please buy mark's book. we are very thankful to both of you for such a wonderful program. thank you. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> thanks, bye-bye. ♪ announcer: weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including comcast.
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