TRAGEDY UNDER XI: 4/4: 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
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
1906 HONG KONG
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batcher with Mark Clifford, the author of Today Hong Kong, tomorrow the world, |
| 0:10.0 | a very detailed telling of why Hong Kong struggled all these decades to be unique, to be a success. |
| 0:17.0 | A postmodern city, it called itself. |
| 0:20.0 | With culture, with depth, with education, |
| 0:22.8 | lots of education. |
| 0:24.1 | Mark makes the point, it's really nerdy, |
| 0:26.0 | and it's really geeky. |
| 0:26.9 | They study everything, including how to fire, |
| 0:29.1 | throw a Molotov cocktail. |
| 0:31.4 | We come to 2019, five demands. What are they, Mark? I have |
| 0:35.1 | extradition. They want the extradition bill stopped. You can't kidnap us. They |
| 0:39.4 | want police brutality punished. They want amnesty for those who have been arrested, but chiefly they |
| 0:45.1 | want full universal suffrage. |
| 0:47.3 | Did they know that was provocative? |
| 0:49.1 | Did they know that the fire would come? |
| 0:51.8 | They knew it was provocative. |
| 0:52.9 | I don't think anyone imagine how quickly and how severely |
| 0:57.3 | the Chinese would crack down on the demands. |
| 1:00.6 | But by 2019, things had reached a boiling point and it had been 22 years since |
| 1:06.2 | Hong Kong had been given back to the mainland. That's 22 years out of 50 years |
| 1:10.9 | that Hong Kong was promised this high degree of autonomy, promised more freedom |
| 1:14.8 | than ever, promised Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong, promised that they'd be able to |
... |
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