It has long been my opinion that the more overtly and physically an entity executes force, the less power that entity has. Force, in many contexts, includes propaganda, disinformation, surveillance, and institutional/legal constraints. That China is not without power at all is revealed by the fact the HK election was not just faked. That China's power over HK is insufficient to rule it is revealed by the election results, however, and this is both good and bad.

It is good because people deserve to be free. HK reveals it has some degree of freedom by it's election. It is bad because history has proved that murderous violence and genocide creates tyrannical power, which is clearly China's goal. That is the nature of Chinese government on the mainland IMHO, and your Princess Leia quote telling regarding the nature of government and social optimization. The more powerful government is, the less it needs to impose it's will on free people.

Sadly, we see not only in China increasing surveillance, repression, propaganda, and lawfare imposing force on free people, but across the West as well, perhaps most egregiously in the US. An almost incomprehensible dichotomy between the nature of government today and during my youth a couple generations ago has eventuated, and youth today generally cannot even conceive of the degree of autonomy and self-rule that was SOP previously. The same effect applies to myself, and the autonomy and self-rule of people prior to the World Wars isn't apparent to me, raised in the '60s and '70s.

This is not to glorify the good old days unreservedly, as that ignores advancing technology and societal benefits derived therefrom, but technological advance is not dependent on tyranny at all, and it is necessary to decouple one from the other to reasonably grasp the relative costs and benefits that have been effected by government in the recent history of the US, the West, and the world. In other words pointing out that we were far more free before we were ubiquitously surveilled, disinformed through covert governmental propaganda mills, and subjected to armed force to compel our submission to increasingly detailed behavioural standards is not claiming that we would be better off dying from parasites and disease, communicating by written documents transported by the pony express, or any other technological regression.

Government and tyranny is not the source of technological advance, and despite that we see both have increased in the last century, they are not dependent on each other. Indeed, I believe they in fact are diametrically opposed. I observe that technological advance increases individual freedom/power, while increasing tyranny reduces technological advance. There is a tension between the two, and I believe this is the reason the West has become increasingly tyrannical as technology has advanced, in order to preserve the privilege of the ruling class as technological advance has eroded it.

I find this relevant to HK and Taiwan's resistance to Chinese mainland governmental control, and particularly because both HK and Taiwan have long been hot spots of technological and industrial advance relative to China, and the prosperity and felicity of their peoples has reflected that civilized state. Their conditions contrast markedly with those of ordinary Chinese peoples, despite recent improvements I suspect have come to the Chinese subsequent to the reduction in oppression that was undertaken in the '90s.

I hope and think that HK and Taiwan will influence China to reduce it's tyrannical oppression and improve the standard of living of it's people, rather than that China will impose it's despotism on them. This can only result from increasing technological advance that surpasses governmental oppression maintaining the privilege of the ruling class, and since that is my hope and intention for the whole world, I reckon HK a weathervane regarding that storm.

I am grateful you have endured the terrible governmental impositions and hardships to report your experiences in China, as your blog has been a unique window on that ongoing process. I am sad that such deprivation and suffering has been necessary for that to happen, but appreciate that you have told your story as you could.

Thanks!