What's Happening In Hong Kong?

Since the late 1990s the former British colony of Hong Kong has existed in a tense, liminal state with mainland China. The region is governed by the "one country, two systems" policy, yet a recently-proposed extradition bill has triggered massive, ongoing protests as the citizens of the region fear their rights will increasingly erode under the thumb of the PRC. Both pro-autonomy and pro-Beijing forces are convinced a conspiracy is afoot -- so which, if any, of their conspiracy theories are true?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back

(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission controlled dec and most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. We're recording on
a Friday today, right before we're headed into a long weekend.

(00:45):
How are you guys doing any big plans. I'm going
to dragon Con with my kid for the first time
this year. Dragon Con is the big pop culture, comic
e nerd festival they have every year here in Atlanta,
and she's cosplaying for the first time as an anime
character called my Hero Academia. Oh. I've heard of this
through another producer here who has a cup a coffee

(01:06):
cup about that show. He's a big fan. I know
you're talking about interesting. Well, I think she's going to
really love that. I can imagine her thriving in that environment.
I took her once a long time ago, when she
was a little too young to appreciate it. But we
actually have full passes this time. So we're gonna go
to the parade Saturday morning and then spend the day there.
Whoa awesome excited What about you, Matt? Uh? You know,

(01:27):
just doing repairs on vehicles, cutting the lawn. Uh, doing
dad's stuff. Exciting exciting times, Ben, Yeah, yeah, exciting time.
Oh you're asking me. I maybe I may be briefly
out of town. Uh, not sure yet, but I'll update
if there's a whole bunch of stuff and play. You know.

(01:50):
What I mean to tell you about this weekend would
be reporting on events that are still unfolding, which we
don't usually like to do. But there you go. But
that's what we're doing today. That is what we're doing today.
We are looking at an event that has been slowly unfolding.

(02:11):
Depending upon who you ask, it's been unfolding since February
of this year, or since the eighteen hundreds. It depends
on what sort of view you want to take of history.
You've probably heard about the protest in Hong Kong. Maybe
you haven't read much about it, or you haven't really
heard it examined on your local news programs of choice,

(02:33):
But you have probably seen the captivating, disturbing images of
thousands of protesters, millions of protesters in a region home
to a little over seven million people. They're often wearing
surgical masks, maybe carrying symbolic umbrellas as a shield from
tear gas, or maybe wearing hard hats, and they are

(02:55):
rebelling against what they see as threatening overreach from the
main and Chinese government. This is far from the first
time Hong Kong and China have been the focus of
protests and conflicts, even in the recent past, for sure.
And I've found that this story um, as far reaching

(03:16):
as it is, has been getting precious little media coverage.
I'm seeing it pop up in I have an iPhone
and with that news app then we'll just give you
notifications of news. I've seen it several times, but generally
it's just a quick video or something that's just saying, hey,
here's kind of what's happening all right by right, And
we have to remember that being from the US, we're

(03:39):
from a place where a protests are a time honored tradition,
right of the name. One big issue, just any big
issue you can think of in the past fifty years,
and there's probably been a protest for or against it.
Often protests both for and against the thing at the
same time in the same place, because we're just wort

(04:00):
of trying to maximize our weekends, right. So, yeah, Well,
being being able I think as as a group of citizens,
being able to speak our minds, I think is important
to us and a lot of people around the world.
The right to assembly, and we call it here. So
the interesting thing about the protests occurring today as we

(04:23):
record this is that there appears to be more to
the story, something just past the edge of what's being
reported in at least the western news, something that could
be considered dare we say it conspiratorial? So what is
going on? To answer that? We have to figure out
how we got here, What what makes Hong Kong different.

(04:48):
Here are the facts Hong Kong in one sentence, it
is a semi autonomous region on the coast of southern China,
just east of Macau. But it has a lot of history. Yes,
and we're gonna get into what we mean by semi autonomous,
because that does sound like a bit of a phrase

(05:10):
that doesn't make much sense when you're talking about state
powers and you know, local powers and all these things.
But uh, as we get further down in their history,
we're going to find that exact point where it becomes this.
So let's jump back all the way to eighteen forty
one to really the beginnings of Hong Kong. Yeah, um
from eighteen forty one to nineteen ninety seven, which I

(05:33):
was very surprised by. Hong Kong was a colony of
the UK the ninety Kingdom, originally occupying the area during
the First Opium War, which broke out when the Chang
dynasty um of China tried to crack down the U
K's opium trade. It's a legal opium trade, which led
to huge levels of addiction across China. Right, this is

(05:56):
something that we discussed in a previous episode of Very
Nasty Conflict and be You know, it's rare in war
to have clear good and bad forces. Unfortunately, it's it's
not as common as history books would have us believe.
But in this case, the Chinese government they were pretty

(06:16):
much the good guys. They were saying, please stop illegally
selling opium. We've made laws, we've made these treaties, et cetera.
But despite being the good guys, they lost the First
Opium War, and as one of the conditions of their defeat,
they signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which in which they

(06:37):
seated the island of Hong Kong to the British. This
was not the entirety of what we know as Hong
Kong today. This was the physical island, Hong Kong Island.
It's just if you're looking at a map of Hong
Kong right now, if you're looking at the whole thing,
the island of Hong Kong is just to the south
of where the main city of Hong Kong is right. So,

(06:58):
over the next seven world decades, over the next fifty years,
the UK expands its control of adjacent areas. They take
over the Kowloon Peninsula and the Column Bay. They take
over what's called the New Territories. This last area, the
New Territories, comprises a lot of modern Hong Kong. But wait,

(07:19):
you might be saying, didn't know. Just mentioned that this
lasted from eighteen forty one to nineteen ninety seven. What
gives Some of us may remember the events of nine
seven in eight, way back in eight, when the UK
took control of these new territories. They didn't actually control

(07:43):
them indefinitely. They leased them from the government of China
for ninety nine years. Just unusual. Ben I this struck
me as being a little bit strange, like putting a
clock on it like that. It's such a long clock,
it's weird. Uh. You know, property in general is a
little bit weird in this part of the world. Uh.

(08:03):
Frequently people don't buy land, they lease it from the government.
I was surprised. I was alive at this time. I
was surprised when Hong Kong was given back quote unquote
too to China on July one, nine. I had not
heard of something like this happening. But of course I

(08:25):
was not an expert in the peaceful transition of power,
so I I don't know. We'll get into it, but
there's certainly where caveats with that quote unquote giving back
of Hong Kong to China. Correct. Yes, yeah, because as
the date approached. As July one approached, both the government
of mainland China and the United Kingdom realized it would
be cartoonishly difficult, nigh impossible to separate the new territories

(08:51):
from the rest of Hong Kong. This had become one
cohesive thing. And that's when they said, okay, we have
to make something work. The way that Hong Kong, the
UK colony has been existing is very different in comparison
to the way that the government of mainland China has

(09:13):
been existing. That's right. So Hong Kong did get a
sort of semblance or partial political and social autonomy under
this policy called One Country, Two Systems, where they became
a special administrative region of China that had its autonomy
and to a degree and and and that it had
its own constitution, legal system and rights like free speech

(09:36):
um as well as the freedom of assembly. And if
you know anything about China, you know that China at large,
those things do not necessarily apply, right right. This happened
when the two countries signed what was called the See
No British Joint Declaration. And the weird thing is about this.
It gave the residents of Hong Kong considerations and rights
that other regions and other residents did not possess. There

(09:59):
were other people in groups and communities in mainland China
that would love to have these rights. They didn't get
them because they didn't have this unique historical situation. And
this is not to say that Hong Kong was already
some bright, shiny bastion of democracy. The residents of Hong Kong,

(10:19):
the vast majority of them, could not vote and cannot vote,
They cannot elect their own leaders. Instead, twelve hundred people
are chosen to be what's called an election committee, and
those twelve hundred people elect the chief executive, who's the
main governmental power there. And people are generally influential people

(10:44):
within the society there in Hong Kong. We're talking everyone
from administrators to teachers to uh I mean just anything.
Anyone who's prominent in their field essentially may end up
on that list. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, But
doesn't the body government of China and general largely consist
of representatives of different kind of commercial sectors. So there's

(11:07):
a lot of sway by commercial interests and industry over
government decisions and the way things are run. Yeah, I
think that's probably one of the major reasonings to create
a system like that. Yeah, it's interesting one of camera
which my professors said this, But a long time ago,
one of my professors was telling me that if you

(11:29):
wanted to make a sweeping generalization of the difference between
world governments. You just had to look at the primary occupation,
the primary job of most of the people in government.
In the US, this professor said, most politicians are lawyers.

(11:50):
But in other countries, in China included, many of the
ruling individuals are engineers. Uh. This professor and I had
been drinking. I do not entirely recall, uh, the rest
of his argument, but I thought that was a that
was an interesting little um observation to make there. And

(12:12):
regardless of how you look at it, whatever the interests
of those twelve hundred members, maybe they are not elected
by the millions of people in Hong Kong. It's sort
of like if we were to find out, like if
we were to learn who our new representatives and government

(12:33):
would be just when the headline was published, you know
what I mean? Like now the representative for Atlanta in
the Southeast Region is Paul Mission Control decond. There you go.
It does that thing does remind me of almost like
in aligocratic alligocratic. I don't know what I was gonna

(12:56):
call it. Um, it's not a dictatorship or anything like that,
but you do haven't because you do have any executive essentially,
But that executive is just appointed. I'm trying to figure
out how to work oligarchy in there because it's not
necessarily that because the rule is not by those people.
It's just they, isn't Is it a democratic oligarchy? Yes, so,
I mean it's called the People's Republic of China, but

(13:18):
I mean the idea of a republic being that it's
democratic inherently. But it's not really pure democracy the way
we know it in the United States. It's some sort
of I don't know, hybrid kind of remix of it
when you say, but at the same time, we're talking
about Hong Kong, which is functioning differently in this weird
little offshoot system, right. But still even though they even

(13:38):
though Hong Kong residents don't have the right to directly vote,
we have to remember here in the US, we don't
directly vote on bills ourselves. We vote for people in
theory who will represent our interest if we, I guess,
donate enough to their campaigns. Well. Also, how is our
electoral college system that much different from this like member

(14:00):
election committee. You know, it's a very good point from
the perspective of the mainland government. This is like if
Alaska had a completely different set of laws, and you
could do more stuff than the residents of the other
forty nine states just legally cannot do and would probably

(14:20):
get arrested for doing so. I think that's a pretty
good comparison, at least to put it in perspective. And
surely both sides of this arrangement, the folks of Hong
Kong and the citizens of mainland China, UM, the government's etcetera, uh,
must have realized that this wasn't sustainable, that you can't
just go on like this, right exactly exactly, that's what um,

(14:40):
that's what we're going with that Alaska episode, because one
state could not be that different, right, This was almost
an alien form of government. Over time, the mainlands began
to flex its muscles on Hong Kong, and most of
the Hong Kong natives did not like this. As a
matter of fact, since all of those chief executive elections

(15:03):
have been predicated on a list of candidates vetted by
the government in Beijing, what that means is that instead
of those people being able to choose an elect a
chief executive that they were really digging, they were given
a list from the mainland government. It was kind of like,
choose one, or you can vote for any of these

(15:26):
following people. And presumably those folks they put forth would
have represented mainland Chinese interests. Right, there's very much a
pro Beijing contingent here, and so now many Hong Kong
residents believe that China is illegally interfering in local governance,
attacking the human rights they grew up with, and suppressing

(15:46):
legal public dissent. So that gets us to where we
are now. But where is that exactly? We'll tell you
after a word from our sponsors. So here we are.
What's happening now? The most recent wave of protests date

(16:09):
back to February of twenty nineteen, when Hong Kong's government
proposed what's known as the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Amendment Bill twenty nineteen. Don't
let that amazingly sexy name fool you. This is seen
as a very controversial thing and it comes from well.

(16:33):
In large part, it is seen as a reaction to
a couple of cases involving extradition. It it procedes some
of the more human interest stories, but they're very much
part and parcel of the protests. And when I say
human interests, I don't mean like, hey, look at this
cute dog that knows math. I mean human interest in

(16:55):
the fact that people more easily digest stories when there
are faces and names of individuals assigned to those stories.
You can bore people to death with the most amazing
policy or legislation in the world. But if you're like, oh,
we're not really talking about extradition, we're talking about Irma

(17:16):
mckinnaw who lives in Indianapolis or whatever, then people can
care because then it's it's easier to put someone on there.
And this is a case that we were talking about
briefly off air. One of the faces for the extradition
controversy is a guy named Chon Tong Kai. That's right.

(17:38):
Um Seon Tong Kai, who's nineteen years old, and his
girlfriend Pun Hu Wing, who's twenty went on vacation for
a Valentine's Day getaway to Taiwan and stayed in a hotel,
but only one of them returned. Pun Hu Wing did
not come back from that trip, and Chan Tong Kai
later admitted to the Hong Kong police that he had

(18:01):
strangled his girlfriend and put her body inside a suitcase
and then dumped it in some bushes by a subway
station in Taipei. And at first it wasn't a huge deal.
It was just more of like a kind of a
local regional story. And also it's really messed up, like
due to this person, whatever you have to do to
this person to get justice as a crime of passion
to because it turned out that the child she was

(18:24):
carrying was not his, that's right, wasn't premeditated for sure.
But about a year after this this all took place,
and there were these kind of little smatterings of stories
in the in the press there the murder was used
as an impetus for the Hong Kong government to propose
a new law that it would that would allow Hong
Kong to transfer any suspects of any crimes to Taiwan

(18:48):
or other places uh that they currently do not have
an extradition treaty with, and that of course includes mainland China. Yeah,
and that was the thing that Ben was discussing earlier,
the Fugitive Offenders and mute ill Legal Assistance in Criminal
Matters Legislation Amendment bill. Yeah. Yeah. The problem here is
not the concept of extradition itself. Extradition is just the

(19:11):
process through which one country sends an individual to another
country when they are wanted for a crime. Right, So
extradition is, in theory, the process that allows the long
arm of the law to follow criminals into international waters. Right.
Otherwise people would just be killing each other, embezzling millions

(19:34):
of dollars and disappearing, you know, like across the border
to Canada, which does have an extradition agreement with the US.
So please watch out, understood. Yeah, so, but watch yourself,
especially when dealing with prescription medications and over things like that.
And Carrie Lamb, who is the Chief executive of Hong Kong,
figured that this murder, it being sort of a sensational

(19:57):
kind of purient crime that captured the nature in his attention,
figured that that would be enough to get the public
behind her and you know, this this new extradition law.
And and it turns out she was dead wrong. Yes,
So I want to talk a little bit more about
this extradition law because again, Hong Kong already has a
number of extradition agreements, or they did with like nineteen

(20:19):
or twenty different countries. The US is among them, so
anybody who might hypothetically be planning an escape route for
a crime pick somewhere else. Hong Kong's problem instead was
that this new bill expands the list of extradition countries
in a way that is very um it's very loosey goosey.

(20:41):
It would give the Chief Executive of Hong Kong the
ability to extradite suspects to other countries on a case
by case basis, regardless what agreement did or did not exist.
So the Hong Kong protesters here are frightened and rightly
disturbed by the idea that Hong Kong residents could be
extradited to mainland China for not not for the kind

(21:04):
of things that we would ordinarily regard as criminal acts,
not just murder or theft, but things like political dissent protests,
even something as small as posting Winnie the Pooh pictures
on Twitter, which you need a VPN to do in
mainland China, but can also get you in trouble because
it's anti Jiji Ping propaganda. And some of the protesters

(21:25):
have actually coined or referred to this whole affair as
legalized kidnapping. Well, yeah, the that's certainly the fear right.
So just to break this down a little bit, we
mentioned before those people in Hong Kong who are going
to elect the executive, right, in this case it's Carrie Lamb.
Now that list of people that they can choose from
are generally highly pro Beijing, right, So the the executive

(21:48):
if the power is given to this executive, and then
there are political dissidents, and this executive can just say, hey,
this person is posting the Pooh pictures. Um that really
is you can imagine it being a fear. It isn't
necessarily a fully realized threat at this moment um, at
least from what I've been reading, but it does seem

(22:11):
like one of those things that the potential for abuse
is right in your face. And to be fair, the
mainland government of China argues that this is just closing
a loophole. They believe that Hong Kong is harboring hundreds
of fugitives when the former security ministers said over three
hundred fugitives who are exploiting a weakness in the one country,

(22:34):
two systems policy to escape justice. In response to these
massive protests, the current Chief Executive, Carrie Lamb, suspended this
Legislation for the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in
Criminal Matters Legislation Amendment built deep breath. But she did

(22:55):
not withdraw this bill entirely. And so critics, some of
whom are members of that Legislative Council, believe this suspension
is little more than a temporary pr move. And we
see this all that. We see this in the US
all the time, right, especially with like oil pipelines and
things like that. That the legislation is introduced, it gets

(23:15):
too much press, goes away for a little bit, and
then it just slides under the radar like the FCC
and net neutrality, right, perfect example. So people who on
the Legislative Council who disagree with Carrie Lamb believe Mainland
China is turning these screws tighter and tighter. We've got
a we've got an interesting take from a council member,

(23:36):
Alvin Jung, who who said, you know, I'm also disturbed.
I'm disturbed by this extradition thing that they didn't actually
withdraw the bill. And also why won't the government open
an independent inquiry into police misconduct and brutality associated with
these protests? And here again we kind of see that

(23:57):
human interest stuff, being able to put a face and
a name to a cause. Police in Hong Kong have
been accused of using tear gas and rubber bullets, along
with excessive force against overwhelmingly unarmed protesters. And oddly enough,
we can see very similar, very similar pictures and stories

(24:19):
spun in two completely different ways in mainland Chinese media
and in Hong Kong's independent media. There's a guy who
has a picture of himself pointing a shotgun at protesters,
and in the mainland news he is hailed as a
national hero of the people. But then you'll see footage
of some authority figures beating up a sixty year old man,

(24:42):
a protester who is still in his hospital gurney, and
they're depicted as you know, shocked stormtroopers more or less,
and it looks brutal from what I've so we know
that the mainland government is at the very least not
particularly sympathetic to the aims and demands of the protesters.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry Hua chun Ying,

(25:04):
and we have to we have to know none of
us speak fluent Mandarin nor Cantonese. So apologies for the
mispronunciations if you are listening and your name comes up
here anyway, The spokesperson says, the recent protests and demonstrations
in Hong Kong have turned into radical, violent behaviors that
seriously violate the law, undermine security and social order in

(25:25):
Hong Kong, and endanger local people, safety, property, and normal life.
So what what that means? Their perspective here is that we,
as the government of mainland China, are just enforcing rule
of law. We're not We're not the bad guys. You
all are the ones who are ultimately hurting yourselves and

(25:46):
why are you doing that? You know? But now we
have to ask ourselves is there more to the story.
The protests are part of an ongoing event, and at
the time of this recording, there is no peaceful resolution.
There's there are new developments that will we'll have to
get to we'll we'll literally have to check on this
before we wrap up the episode. People are still out

(26:07):
in the streets, the pro democratic Hong Kong forces are
still at odds with authoritarian China, but there are different
things happening. At the edges of the conversation, things start
to blur how much of this narrative is true, how
much of it is manufactured, and if so, by whom
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors. Here's

(26:35):
where it gets crazy. Yes, and in this case, I
mean the conspiracy theories are which which abound, aren't just
coming from fringe groups and researchers. The government of Mainland
China itself has some official conspiratorial narratives of its own
that it's alleging. Well, and it's interesting because it kind
of mirrors some things that happen here in the US

(26:57):
with protests, at least some of the oratorial possibilities, with
outside groups coming in to start well well, coming into
yeah fund or start or fullment a protest um. So
there's there's this thought, at least according to the government
of Mainland China, that these protests aren't real. It's not

(27:18):
actually local people who are out there with their umbrellas
on the streets, holding up traffic and stopping basically everyday
life from happening. We haven't mentioned. This is hundreds of
thousands of people taking to the streets. If you should
the aerial photographs or breath take it's more than a million.
So it's roughly if you wanted to ballpark it. Uh,

(27:40):
one seventh of the population has actively protested at some point. Wow,
and okay, so let's just get back to these rumors
really fast of this conspiracy. It's not like it's just
a few government officials saying something on their Twitter or
something like that. There have been official statements. Government officials
have argued that the protests are actually being run by
some secretive group. Maybe it's a state actor, maybe it's not.

(28:03):
Maybe it's um, you know, a small group within the
protesters that's making the whole like puppet mastering the whole thing,
a shadowy cabal of Westerners. I mean again, here's the
here's the issue with this before we even get into it. Yeah,
that wouldn't be so far fetched. Say the name, the

(28:24):
name is the coolest part. Oh that the name is
the black hand, the black hands. Right. Government officials in
the PRC are arguing that these protests are run by
a secretive black hand. Uh, they've blamed. They've found a
specific person upon whom the place blamed for this. It
is a political counselor who was working as a diplomat

(28:45):
at the U. S. Consulate in Hong Kong named Julie
Edda E A D e h. In this narrative, most
of the Hong Kong protesters are just people who have
been woefully misled. Then a few of them are active
traders collaborating with foreign powers. CCTV, which is a great

(29:08):
watch in my opinion, it's China state run media company.
They argue that Julie Ada is the behind the scenes
black hands creating chaos in Hong Kong, and other state
run media pro Beijing or Beijing run stuff in Hong
Kong have called her a mysterious and low profile expert
on subversion. At this point, as cool as the name

(29:30):
black hand sounds, there's no solid proof to this. But
as you said, Matt, the West in general and the
US in particular has a a certain history. Yeah, she's
working as a diplomat. Come on, guys, we've heard this
story before. Yeah, someone hanging out over there the embassy

(29:51):
that just happens to also have a C and A
and an I somewhere within their company for which they work,
the new I T. Guy, Can I just point out
really quick how ironic it is? Maybe I don't rono
the right word that the state run media Company of China,
a country that is accused of being sort of a
surveillance state, is called CCTV. That's just I just had

(30:15):
to get that out there. I think that's fascinating. Yeah,
you have to wonder if it's on purpose. I don't know.
It'd be cool if it was. It would be cool
if they were that transparent about But but yeah, this,
this idea of the West participating in illegal subversion is
common in a lot of countries because the US did

(30:37):
that stuff multiple times, multiple provable times. It's not a
conspiracy theory. There are CIA assets who come in, like
goes joking earlier about the I T guy, but they
are totally people who come in just you know, let's
say there happen to be some increasingly tense negotiations around
nuclear proliferation, and all of a sudden is like this

(31:00):
new junior consular officer who has a crazy scary amount
of clearance clearance that the ambassador doesn't have. His trajectory
is just insane. Right. And then we could add to
that the little more murky practice of embedding intelligence agents
in in geo's which is not as easily proven. But

(31:25):
that's another that's just another common thing that a lot
of other countries believe. So at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong there's an associate professor. His name is Wilson Wong.
It's a very cool name. At this stage, says Wilson,
it's undeniably impossible to eliminate the possibility of some form
of assistance from any power or organization overseas. But he

(31:49):
also says, look, if one point seven million people out
of mott more than seven million people the total population,
are joining a protest, then how could this still be secret?
Howe this secret black hand thing happened, you know, in
in a species where it's pretty impossible for more than

(32:11):
three people to keep a secret. How could more than
a million? I mean, that's the argument a lot of
times with these kinds of conspiracy theories, right, like, how
could they keep this under wraps when so many moving
parts are involved? I'll tell you how. It's not a
bunch of moving parts. The black hand if you imagine it,
imagine a swimming pool. Okay, okay, now the black hand.

(32:32):
Let's imagine it's literally someone's hand, one hand going in
the water, pressing down hard enough and then lifting their
hand out. What happens. It displaced waters waves go throughout
that entire pool. Baby, So the majority of people are
just riding the wave. That's what I'm saying, because if
you get enough people upset in a small group, those

(32:56):
people with the connections. I'm just I'm just putting out
there that I think it would be possible to start
a movement like this with a very small group of people.
But but a million people isn't a small group of people.
Because if you get press, if you get I mean,
if you honestly you could work the thing. Think of
it as a pr movement. If you look at it

(33:16):
through the lens of asymmetrical warfare, information control, it isn't
as crazy as it sounds. I mean, it didn't. It
did not take millions of Russian operatives to swing the
needle on the last US election. I mean, you get
a lot of bang for your buck depending on how
you apply it, especially if there's a bit of a

(33:37):
common feeling about a certain topic, right and then you just,
like I said, just move the waters enough to where
everybody can feel it. I don't just well, I mean,
I think that's really I think that's a really spot
on observation. We have to. We have to ask ourselves,
which we can maybe spit ball on a little bit later.
We have to ask ourselves what would the motivation of
this black hand be where they just like, I don't oh, guys,

(34:00):
let's let's just fux with some things like live a
little paying an agent of chaos. I don't know, Yolo.
You know. But to your point, Matt, about a small
amount of people being able to secretly affect a massive
amount of change, we have to look at the other
side of the equation, which is that there is a
state sponsored internet war occurring about over this topic. Now,

(34:24):
China's Communist Party is not the only group alleging conspiracy
UH pro Western forces in Hong Kong. I wouldn't say
pro Western pro UH independent Hong Kong forces UH and
Western based companies, especially tech companies, believe that the Chinese
government is trying to game the system with its own
informational warfare operations. They've been accused of attempting to manipulate

(34:49):
public opinion through the use of astroturfing and the use
of Twitter bots, And we have proven statements like the
people who believe this conspiracy are Twitter and Facebook. Well yeah,
recently didn't Twitter just remove a whole bunch of accounts
um because of this reason in particular, Yeah, almost a thousand.

(35:09):
They put out a press release about it too, Yes
they did, and here's here's their statement quote. These accounts
were deliberately in specifically attempting to sow political discord in
Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of
the protest movement on the ground. Based on our intensive investigations,
we have reliable evidence to support that this is a

(35:31):
coordinated state backed operation. Specifically, we identified large clusters of
accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related
to the Hong Kong protests really quick to just want
in case anyone as an excidy know. Astro turfing is
sort of like an Internet equivalent of a false flag,
where you associate messaging with some kind of grassroots movement

(35:52):
when it's actually it's it's basically just to mask the
identity of the purveyor of said message and make it
seem like, oh, this is the local vibe, as the
local opinion, but it's actually being put forth by the
big guys. And we have a whole episode on astroturfing
bots and all that stuff that you can go listen
to right now with Joe McCormick correct to blow your mind. Also,

(36:13):
check out the episode you did with us on the
Bicameral Mind, which is totally different but worth your time
if you haven't checked it out. Yeah. Yeah, so this
happens in the US too. We we want to be
very clear that we're not just picking on the government
of China. Uh, the US and different US politicians, especially

(36:36):
special interest groups they're called here do this all the time.
When you see those vague p s a s where
it's uh, some like generic housewife who seems really concerned
about how people have unfair opinions about butter or dairy.
Uh that that's a real example. Uh there, those are
Those are kind of AstroTurf. They're paid for by these

(36:58):
other interests. And if you look at Twitter's statement, which
is publicly available now at least as we record this,
you can see at the bottom of their statement they
have displayed images from these uh different these different PRC
based bots for these astroturfing operations. But Twitter didn't stop there.

(37:24):
They also tipped off their pals over at Facebook and
Facebook even even shouts out Twitter, I believe at some
point in the in their in their press release, they
say something like following a tip from Twitter, Yeah, and
they removed posts that they described as quote coordinated inauthentic behavior,
which is kind of what Facebook is in general. It's

(37:47):
a lot of inauthentic behavior. Um, but this is much
more pointed and specific and politically motivated. From their statement quote, today,
we removed seven pages, three groups, and five Facebook accounts
in evolved in coordinated and authentic behavior as part of
a small network that originated in China and focused on
Hong Kong. The individuals behind this campaign engaged in a

(38:09):
number of deceptive tactics, including the use of fake accounts,
some of which had been already disabled by our automated systems,
to manage pages posing as news organizations. Posting groups, disseminate
their content and also drive people to off platform news sites.
And they're also examples outside of the quote of the
propaganda displayed along with this statement. There you go. Yeah.

(38:33):
So it turns out one thing that Facebook is against
is coordinated in authentic behavior. It sounds like a flash
mob to me. Coordinated in authentic behavior. Woman, I was joking,
but to me, like when people, you know, they curate
what they put out there on Facebook about their lives.
To me, a lot of posts on Instagram and Facebook

(38:55):
are coordinated in authentic behavior because you're trying to create
a look susion of this perfect life. But you you,
you lead that may or may not be actually what
it is. Me For me, it goes even further into
the realm of hypocrisy because Facebook already has a clearly
proven history of gaming the system. If they want something

(39:18):
to be more in the zeitgeist, then they will just
mess with the feed, Like when's the last time you
had a chronological feed on your Facebook without some kind
of add on, right or extension? They are they they
coordinate this stuff already. I think they're just mad because
someone else came in their sandbox and started playing with
the toys that they use. But can we can we

(39:39):
talk about what some of the posts actually look like though? Sure? Yeah,
so I'm just gonna describe one of these to you,
because like the Twitter post, you can see in Facebook's
press release you can see examples. Yeah, well, and and
it is. It's just not something you would, I guess
expect to see when there's a big protest like this
with with that large of a person scentage of the

(40:00):
population involved in the protest. Um. So it's a picture
with there are there's a slide on the left to
slide on the right, and it happens four times going down,
and it says things like they treated policeman headshots, they
refused to show their faces, Uh, they almost killed a
man at airport, they took a nurse's right eye. And

(40:24):
then it says they are the Hong Kong cockroaches, they
being the protesters. Yeah, so it's all about things like
they block the train doors but then referring to them
as cockroaches. And then the post when it's put on there,
it says see the truth, right, and that's that's one
of the English language posts. We should emphasize that too
because they're they're posting multiple languages. So there is definitely

(40:48):
information warfare there and now we have we have it.
This is a high level look at this. The situation
against ongoing, but both sides are claiming the others participated
in some sort of conspiracy. The protesters, whether you want
to call them pro Western or you want to call
them just pro independence. For Hong Kong. They say that

(41:12):
China is pulling some heavy big brother stuff, which to
a degree is accurate. It's it's true. But then on
the mainland China side or the pro Beijing side, they're
saying that these people are just fingers on a hand
or they're dancing along to strings. And really we get

(41:33):
to a question of precedent. There is precedent for the
West to participate in this kind of um protest mongering
and this sort of illegal subversion acts culminating in coup's historically.
But there's also precedent from mainland government of China to
practice severe information control, to secretly arrest, detain or kidnap people,

(41:56):
to disappear them and so on. I mean Tianamen square well,
with all of the talk about China and then these
trade embargoes and stuff like, what would be if we
had to sus it out, what would be our benefit?
But would we have to gain from poementing any kind
of fake protests to make Beijing more in control and
remove that autonomy from Hong Kong. If there, if there

(42:18):
is more to the story, then we do have to
ask ourselves what sort of motivation the West would have
if we're if we're saying, what sort of motivation would
the US have? I guess you could. You could pull
any amounts of things out of out of a spitball hat, right,
But none of them really have a lot of sands.
There's not one. There's not one that gives us like

(42:40):
a ding ding ding ding moment. You know. Well, I
honestly I can't imagine why anyone, at least in the
Western set of powers, would want to get rid of
this special Hong Kong thing that they've had for so long,
like a way away into China that they really don't

(43:01):
have anywhere else. Well, the idea wouldn't be that they are.
The idea, if it's a Western black hand, would not
be that they're trying to get rid of Hong Kong.
It would be that they're trying to make Hong Kong
a further separate from mainland China. Oh by fumenting the
protests too. But again, so that would be attempting to

(43:24):
have this protest turn into and all out turning, turning
the tides and forming their own government. Essentially, that's what
we're just not going to happen. Yeah, I don't because
I don't see that happening, and I don't see anyone
who would have the means to make this protest occur.
I don't see them believing that that could actually happen

(43:45):
without without intervention from mainland China. So this is pretty
out there. And I know I've I've ridden this hobby
horse to the grounds, but I'm gonna pick it up
one more time. Be interesting to read the to reread
the section on China in UH Foundations of Geopolitics, which

(44:07):
has had an eerie similarity to a lot of Russian
policy in the past few years, because that the book
does or the work does examine what would happen there.
So if if, for instance, Russian forces are applying the
same strategy of sowing discord in China that they applied

(44:28):
so successfully here in the U S. Which is not
a conspiracy theory, it really did happen. It does not
matter where you fall them, whichever political divide. UH. The
government of Russia played this country like an oboe or
something that's easier to play than an like a ukulele
or a kazoo. That's how much they played and how
easily so could it be something like that? But in China,

(44:50):
we don't know. There's no proof yet, And what we
do know is that these protesters have put forth a
list of demands, a pretty short kind of general list
of demands UM. One of them is to withdraw the
bill UH and for Carrie Lamb to step down, and
for the government to launch an inquiry into police brutality,
and for folks who have been arrested to be released,

(45:12):
and also for greater democratic freedoms. But we actually do
have an update that UM carry Lamb we talked about,
had submitted a report to Beijing that UM took a
look at these demands and decided that withdrawing this bill
could help diffuse some of this political tension that's mounting

(45:32):
and sort of diffused some of these protests. But now
there's an article in Reuters that just came out today
that says the Chinese central government has rejected Lamb's proposal
to withdraw this bill and has quote ordered her not
to yield to any of the protesters other demands at
this time and just in the just in the interest
of getting all those demands out there. They also asked

(45:54):
for the protests to be characterized as protests in Chinese media,
not as riots. Because for months leading up to now, uh,
the PRC was calling these riots rather than protests. And
we know how important words can be. Just think about
Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans and based almost

(46:16):
entirely on their race or how their race was seen
to present in media, people were called looters or scavengers,
and it made a It made a hell of a difference.
These things may seem small, but they have huge effects.
Just like you were talking about Matt with ripples in
the pool, and you could argue that this update sort
of really shows evidence to what degree China is controlling

(46:40):
Hong Kong and their response to this protest, or at
least attempted to. They're definitely controlling the Chief Executive right
along with the Members council. So so what do you
think I'd be really interested to hear from our fellow
listeners who have lived in Hong Kong or mainland China
have some mixed sperience. There is this? Is this? Is

(47:03):
sea change? Is this overblown? Is there like the big
looming threat that seems pretty unlikely now at this point
is direct military intervention? Is that in the cards because
it's in the past, you know, um, I certainly hope
that doesn't repeat. Well, what I mean, what should happen

(47:23):
to because think about it from the perspective of mainland China,
this is another This is another piece of the country
right that has been subject to foreign influence historically and
maybe seen as trying to break away, like the think

(47:43):
about Tibet, right, they're all those these largely Western backed
protest for free Tibet write, a number of concerts and
stuff like that, a ton of soft power exercise from
the West, from other countries that you know, the only
thing to have in common is they're not China. So
how would you see it from this perspective? And then

(48:05):
also how would you feel if you are a Hong
Kong resident You've grown up with these rights and now
they're leaving or are you being motivated by some other
some black hand something something is afoot right, And the
question just becomes what do you think more is more plausible?

(48:26):
And no to your point, yeah, I think it's it's
pretty obvious that the government of China is not exactly
exercising new tactics. This is s op for them, right,
breaking news mission control. Let's lean on you real quick
for some sort of breaking new sound queue here. We

(48:50):
recorded the episode that you just heard a little bit
earlier and in a few days ago, and because we
were recording a something on an ongoing event, we wanted
to make sure that we brought the latest update to
you as this episode publishes. So everything you heard us
say just now about the Hong Kong protest is still

(49:12):
more or less correct. The big update that happened as
we were going to publish today's episode was the news
about the ostensible withdrawal of the extradition bill. Yeah, we
very rarely do this. It is Wednesday. We publish our
episodes on Wednesday, and this one is about to be
live to you, and the news just came through that

(49:34):
Carrie Lamb, the leader there in Hong Kong that we've
been discussing this episode the whole time, has officially stated
that the government will withdraw the extradition bill that was
in place there. That was one of the main reasons
for the protests. And um, that is on it on
face value, a very good thing at least for the
people who are protesting, right, But but it wasn't the

(49:56):
only demand that the people had. That's correct. The s
correct met There were five demands. UH. The first demand
was withdrawal of the extradition bill from the legislature. UH.
The second was to no longer characterize the protest as
riots right, and the third was to release any protesters

(50:18):
who have been arrested later exonerate them. Then the fourth one,
which turns out to be the real sticky one, now,
the establishment of an independent inquiry into police misbehavior and
excessive use of force. And then of course the resignation
of Carrie Lamb along with the implementation of the vote
for the Legislative Council in Chief executive elections. Again, the

(50:40):
majority of people living in Hong Kong cannot vote directly,
and some might look at this as a good sign
in terms of UH, the autonomy of Hong Kong and
its ability to kind of wriggle out um from the
control of mainland China and President Shei jin ping um.
But President she had a pretty ominous quote. UH, if

(51:03):
you ask me, that might indicate otherwise. He said, on
matters of principle, not an inch will be yielded, but
on matters of tactics there can be flexibility. And there's
a New York Times piece about this that came out
just yesterday. Where's Jean Pierre Kabistan, who is a professor
at Hong Kong Baptist University and also the author of

(51:23):
a book called China Tomorrow, Democracy or Dictator's Ship. He
suggested that this quote indicated that Um Lamb was actually
asked to make this decision, forced even to make this
call um as a calculated move ahead of the October
first anniversary of the People's Republic of China being established. Yeah,

(51:46):
because it's the seventieth anniversary that's can be celebrated there. Yeah,
just to continue studing some sources here. The Guardian had
a great piece and they actually talked about four actions
that Lamb had proposed when she was making this announcement
here to kind of quell the people's distrust of the
government and their anger. Right she uh, she was pledging

(52:07):
to I'm just gonna quote from the article a little
bit here to follow up recommendations from that Independent Police
Complaints Council to set up a platform for dialogue so
people who do have complaints to speak with that board,
as well as inviting community leaders and experts to advise
the government on social issues. Essentially moving forward, which all
like kind of speaks to what you're saying. Their nol

(52:28):
feels like calculated moves to make the people feel a
little less angry more than anything else. So one thing
that's interesting is how quickly the Western media, both The
Guardian in the UK, New York Times in the United
States that you guys quote, It's interesting how quickly they
have covered this story and how adroitly. I was also

(52:50):
looking at the South China Morning Post and some other
um more in country. Very good things, but but it's
little difficult there because a lot of those have already
been bought and paid for either by the pro autonomy
group in Hong Kong or the let's say, at the

(53:11):
pro Orwellian big brother uh mainland Chinese government. And what
we're what we're seeing here now is a very small
interchange or exchange, right, a very small power conflict in
a very long large game. Everything that happens now in

(53:34):
in terms of the the governing powers of Mainland China,
everything that happens now sets a precedent. Right. There is
nothing that is not precedent in this arena. And this
means that Carrie Lamb, who is definitely not uh not
on everybody's top three favorite people list. Uh. This the

(53:58):
chief executive is is taking a lot of heat such
that people will say, well, Lamb asked to resign and
was not allowed to write by the Mainland government. However,
when it is politically expedient for her to do so,
she will step down from power. There's a little bit

(54:19):
of a prediction here. She will step down from power,
giving the Mainland government the ability to say what happened
here was a fault of local leadership. Right, So you
can cut off the finger to save the hand, which
is completely possible, right. I don't have an inside line
on this, It's completely possible. And that's what we see
when one of the five demands is sort of met,

(54:43):
that's the finger on that hand. Yeah. Caveston also was
quoted in saying that the whole point of this move
potentially would be to calm down moderates and weekend and
isolate radicals. So it's giving an inch in order to
ultimately maybe take a mile. Well, and again just to
continue with these uh less Western sources. If you jumped

(55:05):
to out Al Jazeer and they're reporting there, they're mostly
focusing at least in this one article here about how
uh several groups like the Civil Human Rights Front the
c h r F, which are it's a group that's
been highly active there in Hong Kong with the protests.
They are vowing to continue, or at least a lot
of the people are vowing to continue protesting even though

(55:25):
this one finger has or this one demand has been met,
and then the one finger perhaps will be cut off
of of the hand. Um the people are basically saying
it doesn't matter. We know, we see what you're doing.
I'd also like to follow up on the black hand
statement from what we previously recorded here uh seeing wat
or the spelled x I n h u A that is,

(55:49):
one of the mainland state owned media platforms just warned
that the quote end is coming for Hong Kong protesters
about forty hours before the bill was ostensibly withdrawn. And
then also the state media blamed the West quote unquote
for attempting to kidnap the city. So the narrative here

(56:13):
is still that the Western powers are interfering with domestic affairs,
which is very similar to the line taken in Western
China or the line taken in Tibet. Well, we're gonna
leave you here today at the end of this episode,
just with knowing that it's not over, but we will

(56:34):
continue looking into it, as should you, especially if you
are interested in uh these kinds of things, and if
you are listening and you are based in Hong Kong,
please do contact us. We want to hear your take
on what's going on on the streets in the field.
Let us know, So write to us, let us know

(56:56):
what you think. You can find us on social We
are at Conspiracy Stuff in most places and on Instagram
at conspiracy Stuff Show you guys have your own Instagram's right.
You can find me at how Now Noel Brown, and
you can find me at Ben Bulling on Instagram at
then Bulling h s W. On Twitter, you can also
join the conversation in real time, usually on our Facebook group.

(57:18):
Here's where it gets crazy. It's a lot of fun,
a lot of good memes, a lot of good discussion. There. Um,
all you gotta do is name one or all of us,
or Paul, Mission Control decad or just say give us
a conspiratorial related pun. There you go. We'll let you
right on in absolutely and if you don't want to
do that, you can give us a call. You might
end up on the air, tell us what you want
us to cover in the future. If you have a

(57:39):
comment about a previous episode or this episode, just call
one eight three three s t d W y t
K really quick. Just saw a tweet from Donald Trump
from August thirteen that says, our intelligence has informed us
that the Chinese government is moving troops to the border
with Hong Kong. Everyone should be calm and safe, So

(58:00):
that specter of military intervention absolutely looms large in this
story from August. Right there you go. All right, So,
if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
but you still want to write to us or tell
us something, give us a suggestion, critique us, whatever you
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fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.

(58:41):
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