In 2014, Mainland China voted to pass an electoral reform. This reform changed the way Hong Kong conducted its election and effectively allowed the Communist Party to pre-screen candidates for the leader of Hong Kong. This resulted in a series of protests in Hong Kong, often called the Umbrella Movement. These protests began outside government buildings and expanded into a civil disobedience campaign and started blocking several major intersections. The protests and police response galvanized the youth of Hong Kong into greater political activism but protesters did not achieve their initial goals.
In 2016, five booksellers from Causeway Books in Hong Kong disappeared and later showed up in mainland custody. These individuals were arrested on charges of selling banned books. These banned newspapers are traditionally about power struggles and infighting among communist party leadership, political intrigue, and the latest sex scandals. These types of articles are banned on the mainland but are still legal in Hong Kong. These papers are often bought by visiting businessmen and officials from the mainland that want to be informed of political events that could affect their careers.
After these developments, many citizens of Hong Kong fear that mainland China will not respect their autonomy. Increasing numbers of citizens of Hong Kong are becoming more open to the idea of independence, while many still want to remain an autonomous region of China, maintaining their extra freedom from the mainland. After the election, all candidates were required to publicly recite an oath of office that requires them to swear to serve Hong Kong. The oath also requires the candidates to state several times that Hong Kong is a region of China. Two of the elected separatist politicians and several others took this as an opportunity to make political statements on mainland China. One wore a flag that said "Hong Kong is not China" and both slipped profanity into their statement about the People’s Republic of China. China intervened in Hong Kong courts and banned them from taking office, as they had not taken the oath completely and solemnly This resulted a series of protests over what citizens in Hong Kong feel is the mainland violating Hong Kong autonomy.
The region also has some good news. Last year, the US and Japan took steps to heal their past. President Obama visited Hiroshima, one of the sites where the US dropped atomic bombs. Shortly after, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Pearl Harbor, the site of a Japanese sneak attack on an America Naval base.
Some in the international community have been critical of China’s economic policies which can have massive effects on global markets. China’s government has long subsidized production to grow GDP and keep citizens employed. This has resulted in Chinese factories producing excess steel, solar panels, and other products that have spilled over into global markets, depressing prices. The value of Chinese currency, the yuan, is pegged to the US dollar, rather than having a free-floating exchange rate, like most other countries. To account for these market forces, China has to take monetary policies to keep yuan at its pegged exchange value. In 2010, it was previously used to push the value of yuan down, but as the dollar continues its strong rise, Beijing is increasingly having to use it to prop the value of the yuan up, resulting in people wanting to exchange its currency for more dollars than the yuan is worth.
Most of China’s current policies are to reduce the number of exchanges to prevent this capital flight. China has promised to try and reign these activities in, but with slowing growth and threats of labor strikes, it will be difficult for China to do any of this quickly. It has also funded an oil pipeline through Myanmar to reduce its dependency on the Malaccan straight for oil. This project has resulted in a political quagmire as it passes through the two semi-autonomous regions within Myanmar that are home to several militias. This has led to the escalation of the state’s crackdown on this region and escalation of the genocide of the country’s Muslim Rhynga population. 65,000 people have fled the country, 22,000 of which fled in a single week in early January.
This region has a storied history with the U.S. It also is filled with complex internal conflicts. The U.S. needs to work in close cooperation with its allies and through diplomatic means with China to promote peace, stability, and growth in Chinese regions. It also needs to leverage its friendship with China to help pressure North Korea to discontinue its nuclear tests, of which North Korea has conducted several in the last year.
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