What do you mean Xiter irrational? He’s ideologically driven, yes. (He is a Chinese history buff like Mao and most ambitious Communist men in China). He might have followed his poor rationale but he is rational.
Take HK. To most, it would seem like the best approach to HK is softly softly. There are obvious advantages to China having a pre-built flourishing international finance and culture hub and little advantages to destroying it. Likewise, it will take 50 years for Hong Kongese to fully embrace Chineseness after so long of Western rule. The worst thing you could do is to push brainwashing, commie education on them and do everything in your power to make them feel like their way of life is being encroached upon at every beating second.
Welcome to Xi’s China.
Hong Kong is not a problem to CCP’s China. Hong Kong is not a state actor. So when you say "the best “approach,” you are talking as if Hong Kong were a problem, a rival, or a neighbouring state. But it’s really just a city geographically within China.
Quite the opposite to what you’d think, Hong Kong is a useful tool to demonstrate China’s civilization, the Chinese system, is superior than the West. China makes the best use of Hong Kong by laundering money through it and cracking down on Hong Kong’s democracy exactly so that China can send a propaganda message to the word: that there’s nothing that the West can do, and the Chinese political system is superior. It brings huge satisfaction to Beijing and to the Chinese people to show that Hong Kong can be re-sinocized, reprogrammed, re-habilitated into patriotic Chinese.
By the way right now China does not want to be viewed as a good pupil of the West. China is not even pretending to be one anymore.
Today there was an interesting article:
This statement is the worst case of derreire kissing I have seen lately. Worse, it gives ideas to oportunist idjits, like the ones who relinquish their ROC passports “temporarily” so they do not pay a visa to Rusia.
In nations where Chinese passport holders enjoy visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry, but ROC passport holders do not, Beijing is looking to help Taiwanese enjoy the same benefits by presenting their ROC passport and Beijing-issued “Taiwan compatriot travel document,” the Chinese-language China Times reported yesterday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
Now, while truly China’s passport strenght has improved, Taiwan is still quite ahead on this issue.
Now I have a question: which countries can Taiwanese covet so much that they accept a PRC ID so they do not have to get a visa?