 financial system from interference / controls in the longer term. Or that they might be extradited to China for financial crimes (or even political reasons) that previously weren't a concern.
Obviously, I'm not unaware of those points of view and situations.
On the other hand, for someone running a business in Hong Kong, working a 9-to-5 job, or even at a typical multinational corporation, or growing up going to school, or settling in for retirement, or traveling to/from the city, life shows no hour-by-hour or day-to-day difference for the vast majority of people.
Whether on balance, these factors would lead someone to declare that a city (or the idea of a city) has been "destroyed" overall is I guess what we're debating.
I take the point of view that jumping without further clarification to say that Hong Kong has been destroyed, is just a bit of a fashionable hyperbolic opinion to put out there -- an opinion that heavily overweights the concerns (even legitimate concerns) of a, let's call it 1%, special subset of the population. Are you one of that group / are you from Hong Kong? If not, how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed, rather than the rest of the city for whom it continues with no perceptible change in daily life?
I come from the direction that a place is most aptly defined by it’s culture. Buildings are inert. Infrastructure isn’t very distinguishable other than good and bad. Businesses are fairly interchangeable. People come and go. If you sum up the entirety of a place's values, interactions, and operations, its very way of life, I would call that culture.
So when I say “Hong Kong was destroyed,” the meaning is that there was a destruction of its culture. The word destruction is emotionally charged because a Chinese person probably doesn’t see what is fundamentally a replacement of Hong Kong culture (pretty western) with Chinese culture as destruction. So what you picked up on and dislike (the difference between explicit reality, and my coloring of it) probably has its heart in this interpretation. If you were a Chinese (nationality) person you might, somewhat rightly, feel insulted or wronged by this interpretation of events. I definitely agree it is somewhat hyperbolic, not because it is "fashionable," but because it's an emotional reaction to an atrocious appearing saga.
My first hand experience in Hong Kong is that it was one of the most open and diversity friendly places in Asia. It felt free. I had political conversations people felt safe having. People were fairly vibrant. It was filled with money and ambitious people. I met more rich people in Hong Kong than anywhere else by far. English was better in Hong Kong than anywhere else in Asia by several orders of magnitude. It was, apparently, a bastion of rule of law, rather than rule by law. It certainly seemed well run. I could use the internet.
My experience in China is that it was the least diversity friendly place in Asia. It's the only place I traveled I experienced direct racism (at me and at others). It did not feel remotely free. I experienced people scared to have political conversations. Some areas felt vibrant, and some areas did not. I have never gotten the sense that china was a place with rule of law. I have heard first hand from one American English teacher arrested for saying the wrong thing, and another who was threatened with it. The internet is restricted and free thought is denied. When I said the wrong thing it was “corrected,” like I can’t have my own opinion or at the very least it's dangerous to.
I talked with a fair number of Hong Kong people while in Hong Kong. China was very much seen as an enemy. They certainly had the opinion that china conducted itself as an oppressing force, forcibly migrating people in, forcibly redistributing resources, forcing political change via edict, gutting of the legal system, corrupting the rule of law, and imposing cultural changes. Hong Kong people I met in other countries shifted from vibrant to discouraged over time. I have not heard any Hong Kong person praise China once.
Add in the very good marketing/propaganda by the protestors and there is a very compelling case to me that china’s goal is not to integrate Hong Kong, but to dominate or extinguish Hong Kong culture entirely, which in my estimation has been successful.
How much grassroots pro china press was there? None, because they had no moral or just claim to do what they did. It was all about power, and china executed its power. I could not imagine myself as a Chinese person at all, but when I was in Hong Kong I felt like a Hong Kong person. I can empathize with the videos I saw. I can empathize with the statements I read. I can empathize with the people I talked to. I can empathize with the outrage that made it to the internet. I cannot see how a good person would find ruling of another people without their consent palatable, much less with their explicit protest.
A free people have been turned into an oppressed people and, to me, that is the destruction of a free culture, a culture tied directly to the city.
> how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed?
Those are the people I talked to. Those are the stories that made it to media I read. I have never seen, heard, or experienced anything that contradicts my interpretation of the situation except by people exerting power (Chinese government) in a way that made me feel it was bad faith propaganda.
The Hong Kong protests were to some degree freedom porn to Americans. Our indoctrination from birth glorifies exactly what the protestors were doing to the highest most patriotic thing one can do. From the revolution to the civil rights movement, the protests resonate with our curriculum on multiple levels. When comparing our history to what we see, Hong Kong protestors are clearly and unequivocally the good guys.
On related points: The framing that this is a fight that only matters to the 1% is a framing I personally consider to be mostly Chinese propaganda, but I can see why a reasonable person would find it compelling. The framing that this is an American plot to mess with the Chinese government is something I guess there is historical precedent for and certainly alignment for, but it's hard to excuse the authoritarian response. I don't find it even remotely compelling personally.
I grew up in Latin America and and moved to the US for university. I have lived and worked in the US my entire adult life (other than a brief stint as a tour guide in Mexico). I'm very pale, so I was often treated with distain growing up because I was assumed to be a rich tourist. Regularly I would be ripped off and lied to because of my skin color.
After working as a tour guide, I realized I hated to be seen as a tourist, because it felt so superficial. Showing people around places I lived in, they missed the most important parts: the people.
Then I realized something very important, travel with another person bonds you together in a unique way.
Sharing a meal with someone builds a little bit of trust between you, it links you together. Travel with another person is that, but 100x stronger. This is why many people break up while traveling, they get to a new level of intimacy very quickly and realize they can't stand each other, they just didn't really know each other before, but it took travel to actually let them see the other person.
Similarly, I met my wife while working as a tour guide. She was a trainee guide, and I was the trainer. Being the only two who spoke the language, we had to rely on each other in very unique ways. When the the whole tour group got sick except for us, we had to take care of them. I got to know this woman in very close proximity and intimacy. We quickly learned that we matched very well together, and 15 years later we still agree getting married was the best decision of our lives.
So travel in my mind is much less about seeing new things, but it's all about seeing new things with another person, and bonding with them, either romantically or platonically. Many of my strongest friends were made traveling, because we shared something together.
People everywhere, regardless of their race, religion, politics, or wealth are generally decent and primarily interested in making a better living for themselves and their family.
Some may see this as an obvious fact about human nature. However, for someone like me who grew up viewing the world through the lens of the US media, I used to think otherwise. Travel fundamentally changed my views in this regard.
But you don’t know what you want to do, until you experience it. And you experience so many new activities when travelling. Like food. There is so much good in different countries that you will not get at a dozen restaurants of the same country.
People actually treat you differently if your travelling in their country. They are a lot nicer to you, and want to show you around, and include the unique parts of their culture.
When I was a child, everyday so many things were new for me, summer holidays took seemingly forever because there was a small adventure behind every corner. Interactions with people and the nature were very often memorable, instructive, sometimes life-changing. Food was usually some kind of experience, sometimes even frightening. Using different tools and machines for the first time, mindblowing superpowers in my hands. Getting hurt in various ways for the first time. Emotions, learning, surprises, memories, touching and tasting and smelling the wonderful world. That was the childhood.
Then the adulthood arrived - a successful one so far. But during