"We have to watch whether its status as a financial hub and a tourist destination would change."
"We have to watch whether its status as a financial hub and a tourist destination would change."
Many who have been following the news on the Hong Kong protests are wondering what could happen if Beijing decides to order military action on the protesters, which now number about 1.7 million.
Will it be a repeat of the Tiananmen Square incident where tanks and armed soldiers quelled the uprising? Will Hong Kong cease to be a financial hub and tourist destination?
What will happen to our OFWs? The many Filipino expatriates there? Disneyland, Santa Banana?
As a journalist who has been to Hong Kong many times, I can only guess what will happen to the former crown colony. If the police is unable to stop the protests, Beijing will order the military to intervene. This will have effects that will reach the world’s democratic countries.
I don’t think, however, that Hong Kong will cease to be a tourist destination. Beijing will not allow this to happen because it also benefits from the flood of tourists that go to Hong Kong every year.
For sure, though, there will be restrictions since the People’s Republic of China is a country with two systems—the other one is capitalism
I wonder how the billionaires of Hong Kong will take the military intervention. I am sure they have already prepared for the inevitable. They have homes in Canada and European countries.
It’s the future of our overseas workers I am uncertain about. For sure, illegal workers would be deported. Domestics’ advantage is that the Chinese cannot take over their jobs.
President Rodrigo Duterte should be prepared for the worst; Hong Kong is so near us.
I will miss Hong Kong as a tourist destination. I hope the impact here would be insignificant or minimal.
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That was a stupid remark of the Chinese ambassador, who reacted to the comments of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana that the proximity of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations to both Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame could be a security risk since the Chinese can be used to spy on the camps.
The ambassador said that in the same manner, OFWs can also be spying on China!
In any case, President Duterte said that spying is done through modern technology; it is not a matter of proximity. Spying can be done from a hundred miles away.
I believe that the influx of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers is indeed a national concern considering the fact that China has been taking over and occupying reefs and shoals in the West Philippine Sea, and even intruding into the Exclusive Economic Zone.
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I consider the efforts of Foreign Secretary Teddyboy Locsin—filing one diplomatic protest after another on the incursions of Chinese warships—as an exercise in futility. Has it not occurred to him that despite his protests, China will continue to ignore them? We can file all the protests we want—they will all just be ignored.
This is the tragedy of our country. We can only acquiesce to and accommodate China knowing that we cannot go to war with it.
My gulay, we won in the arbitral tribunal in The Hague and yet nothing has come of it. How pathetic!
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I admire the tenacity and dedication of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong even as the military is just there and can crack down on them anytime.
In a way, I envy them. They are not scared to protest their concerns against the policies adopted by the head of the Special Administrative Region.
Compare them to Filipinos who seem cowed into silence. There has been no protest against the perceived autocratic policies of President Duterte.
Even the militants, who normally protest anything about the government, have been silent.
This is why I welcome the voices of Senators Antonio Trillanes and Leila de Lima.
The tragedy of the opposition, I think, is that it has no leader around whom people can rally.
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I join the people in mourning the demise of former Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez. We lost a passionate crusader in her.
I did not agree with everything she stood for, but I was proud that there was somebody like her who truly advocates for the environment.
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