While Trump fiddles and all of us watch, preoccupied with the pandemic, China is swooping into Hong Kong and imposing a "security law" that will imprison people for speaking against their government or opposing China in any way.
Students, some just middle school age, are risking their lives and being thrown into prison, reports Gerry Mullany for the New York Times.
Hong Kong’s education secretary on Wednesday banned students from singing the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong,” posting slogans with political messages or forming human chains, saying “the schools are obliged to stop” such activities.
The Covid pandemic is giving China "an opportunity it thinks won't come again," says Ross Douthat in an op-ed in the Sunday NYT.
Focused on the pandemic and the antics of our deranged president, Americans and their leaders have "No time to spare for a rival power's crimes."
But Douthat says all is not lost: "if we find a way to contain China for a decade, the Chinese century could be permanently postponed."
Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times is likewise perplexed by US silence as China eliminates dissent in Hong Kong.
To be in Washington is to sense a nation sliding into open-ended conflict against China with eerily little debate.
Why aren't we discussing how to cope with China's aggression and how to defend human rights in Hong Kong?
It is no longer clear, for instance, if US grievances stop at China’s trade practices or reach into its domestic treatment of its own people.
"Dissent is becoming a political no-no," Douthat writes.
We aren't out the the streets. Our quiet assent to Trump's hawkishness against China is "troublingly civilised," he concludes.
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