My TakeScapegoating China will not solve your problems or the world’s
- Systemic failures in public education, health care and social welfare can be perfectly explained by bad government policies, not ‘mainlandisation’
All over the world, populist politics has turned ugly, and so it has in Hong Kong.
The global financial crisis and its aftermath have exposed the long-praised Western systems of economics and politics as rigged. It is not only that people in many of the world’s most advanced democratic states have suffered, but they do so unfairly. People least responsible for the crisis bear the brunt of government-induced austerities while those most responsible recover quickly and even see their wealth multiply.
The effects of deprivation – just like the opportunities available to children of the wealthy – are long-lasting and may pass on through the generations. This is especially the case if social mobility – thanks to underfunded and badly run public school systems – is being eroded.
Major Western publications now frequently run stories and commentaries about the existential threats facing democracy and how China and its authoritarian values, whatever they are, are posing a grave danger.
A typical specimen is a recent article titled “How China brings us together: An existential threat for the 21st century”, by famed New York Times columnist David Brooks. Not really, Mr Brooks; from Donald Trump to Brexit, the major English-speaking democracies have proved themselves perfectly capable of undermining themselves without help from China.
While Hong Kong has escaped the worst of the global crisis, many people here are facing similar problems.