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The John Batchelor Show

TRAGEDY UNDER XI: 3/4: Beijing remain quiet on the Prigozhin episode: 4/4: Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere by Mark L. Clifford

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

TRAGEDY UNDER XI: 3/4: Beijing remain quiet on the Prigozhin episode: 4/4: Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere by Mark L. Clifford

https://www.amazon.com/Today-Hong-Kong-Tomorrow-World/dp/1250279178

Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city’s society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.

1938 CIVIL WAR KUOMINTANG

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is

0:05.0

the CBS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor with the author Mark Clifford, the journalist Mark Clifford.

0:11.0

Today, Hong Kong, tomorrow the world, what China's crackdown reveals about

0:15.2

its plans to end freedom everywhere. Mark arrives in Hong Kong in 1992. At that point, everybody

0:21.8

in China, I read, was still reacting to, thinking about, or unaware of,

0:28.0

something that horrible had happened in Beijing in 1989

0:32.0

that we now refer to as Tiananmen.

0:35.0

What was Tiananmen to the people of Hong Kong when you arrived, Mark?

0:39.0

Can you cast your youth and imagine what they were saying about it, what they thought about it

0:44.8

every June when the anniversary came? Well they didn't wait until every June.

0:49.0

Pretty much every day they were conscious that in five years they were going to be taken over by the Chinese Communist Party and the slogan

0:56.9

was today's China is tomorrow's Hong Kong that's what started that was appeared during the pro-democracy protests of 1989, not just in Beijing, but in dozens and scores of cities around China. And you know, hundreds of people were killed outside of of Beijing and so

1:14.4

Hong Kong was very aware that the brutality that they saw in China displayed

1:21.1

by the leadership to kill the best some of the best and the brightest

1:24.8

of the students in Beijing and others around the country that brutality that

1:29.3

leadership was going to be taking over Hong Kong in five years.

1:32.5

So there was a lot of fear.

1:34.4

And I moved in June, mid-92, June, and it was a couple months after the Supreme Leader Deng

1:40.5

Deng Xiaoping had made a famous southern tour which was trying to rev- he went to the

1:46.2

south of China from Beijing. He was in his 90s then, and it wasn't, he was late, late 80s then.

1:52.1

And he was trying to revitalize economic reforms because Dung had

1:55.8

started economic reforms after the disastrous Mao years and they had gotten some

...

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