[O6ret]

Since my first visit to the then Crown Colony in '69 courtesy of my all expenses paid 13-month holiday in SEA (Pip Wong where are you???) I've been back perhaps a dozen times. It just keeps getting better.

But as to the point of your post, it's not just Hong Kong in the slow-boiling pot. The entire Pacific rim (and indeed the West) should be wary of China's growing economic and military power.

[maui_hawaii]

I always hear some ignoramus Chinese say stuff like 'the US did not like China when it was communist, and now we are capitalists they STILL don't like us...'

Nothing could be a more stupid statement IMO.

Under 'communism' China tried to exert itself over Asia in its own brand of subversion. Now, even under the (self proclaimed, but not so true) "capitalism" China is STILL employing the same old communist tactics.

They want to force, and enforce, views on people. They want to impose themselves as ultimate rulers. The CCP wants it all, and THEY are the rulers, and THEY should have it, and THEY are entitled to it, because "china is the grandpapa of all of Asia" or so the saying goes.

Not very much has changed at all in the mode of operandi of the CCP. Its hard to describe in words, but its true.

Economics alone are only partially the issue. The stinking party line, and ideology, and people willing to kill over that ideology is the problem. They are expansionists just like China always has been expansionists.