 And we are live below how welcome to another episode of China Hawaii and you I am your host Andrew Zimmerman, and I'm really excited for our topic today. We're going to be talking about Hong Kong and Minneapolis. That may sound like a familiar city to those of you who are here because with me is our returning guest Robbie do be he's an attorney. That's working out in the area. We're really really excited to have him back on. Thank you very much for being with us Robbie. Yeah, happy to be back on. No aloha shirt this time I as a lawyer I'm still at work, which happens sometimes but I'm excited to be back on the show and excited to get going. Yeah, well don't worry we're matching on the attire today okay so I dropped the aloha shirt to we're just going you're very formal. Yeah yeah yeah we're keeping the we're keeping the formal. Okay, I'm not coming in with like a swimsuit. But you know today's topic is I think going to be one of the most interesting things that I've talked about in a really, really long time, which is we're going to be contrasting. We're going to be in Minneapolis now the really big significance of these is what we're talking about today is the riots that both of these countries experienced in the last two years. As you know as everybody may have remembered in 2019 there were really really large, large scale riots not just in Minneapolis but all over the country in the, in the wake of the George Floyd death, and there were thousands of more protests but we're going to save a lot of time for to talk about that with Robbie because Robbie is our certified Minneapolis expert knows everything about it. Now, the one thing that I want to sort of say at the outset for how we're going to frame this is, and I've discussed this with Robbie ahead of time is we're going to kind of be discussing this episode in the three parts. The first is going to be Robbie's going to talk about Minneapolis and kind of what's happened over there. The second part, I'm going to be talking about Hong Kong and what sort of led to the riots over there. But I'm going to make sure that after I've framed the issue I'm going to give Robbie a chance to respond to anything that I've said. And so if there's something that we don't agree on in the framing we can iron it out beforehand. And then for the third part, we're going to sort of contrast a lot of different things across these, namely the causes of the riots, the goals of the riots, you know, what are the consequences of it. And we're going to sort of see how the two countries really look broadly at violence, both just randomly and directly towards something like the state. So without further ado, before we get started Robbie I understand, and I could be wrong on this, that you are not a massive fan of the Chinese Communist Party am I incorrect in that statement. That's underselling it probably I have very little positive to say about that entity. Tough crowd tough crowd that's okay. I'm going to tell you out at the, at the very outset that my goal is to sort of change your mind. Okay, I don't have high hopes for it. We'll see where I can get. Alright, so without further ado, Robbie do you want to take it. Let's, let's, I'll let you frame it as kind of openly as you want without these sort of leading you into a question, but can you tell me sort of what happened with these Minneapolis protests and or riots but now these are obviously not all protests turned into violence right in fact the vast majority don't. But it seems to me that there's clearly more than one, you know, person dying to the hands of police that let off this massive massive social unrest. So can you talk a little bit more about what happened. Absolutely. So, I do appreciate you pointing out that obviously not all protests are riots and not all riots or protests the vast majority of what happened around the country with George, after George Floyd's death were protests, but there was a bit of Orwellian news articles with mostly peaceful protests which I think is would be to say not peaceful protests which would be rights. So that being said, Minneapolis has had. I think a lot of tension between the African American community and the police department for a long time, all the way back in 1998 the Human Rights Watch reported that the Minneapolis police department was committing human rights violations. There's been a string of police chiefs and mayors who have said we got to reform our police department we got to change things about how we're doing our police department. And a lot of the reform that's been asked for for a long time has not happened. A really important thing to kind of know going into George Floyd is in 2016, Philando Castile was also shot and killed by the cops. And that set up a large string of riots where, excuse me, law string of protests where the police department at the time said, Okay, we're going to change a lot about how we do this we're going to change about how we do traffic stops are going to change how we approach minorities who are having interactions with the cops. Well, then you have George Floyd murdered in on May 25, 2020 by Derek Chauvin, and it's this horrific video where for nine minutes and 27 seconds you see this police officer Neil on the back of George Floyd who's screaming I can't breathe, can't breathe he's asking, you know, the officer to stop and Derek Chauvin doesn't. Now, there's a lot of social media hot takes of well, this wasn't a murder because George Floyd was on these drugs or this was a murder and Derek Chauvin meant to do it the whole time. A jury has found the Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd and so personally I don't consider that to be up for debate I think the court of law has determined that and people social media takes don't particularly matter. But what this did spark was protests first at the death of George Floyd but then those did in my opinion turn into riots. You had burning you had hundreds of businesses burned down you had millions of dollars in property damages you had buildings being burned down as far as suburbs of Woodbury, which if you're a Minnesota person you know that's pretty far from the core of North Minneapolis where this happened and so I think that you had decades of building tension, where police department and mayor said we're going to change we're going to change we're going to change just give us time work with us here. Without the change, you had a murder in 2016, you had a murder in 2020 with George Floyd that sparked the protests at the same time that people have been locked in for COVID. And I think there's a lot of social unrest with that generally that that's spiraled and really resonated with a lot of people. And there's so many articles that have been written in research has been done to show that the Minneapolis police department in particular has a lot of work to do for actually disciplining its officers and actually making sure that it holds officers who violate those rights or who violate the code of contact accountable. And I think even the police department themselves and the current chief Arredondo has admitted, we have fallen short, and they have fallen short of the burden they need to do. So, I think to kind of sum it up, you know, people. You had some kind of extreme reactions of Oh, you know, all cops are terrible and we got to get rid of them, which I think is is frankly an absurd position. But then you also had well, you know, just don't commit crimes and things won't happen to you, which also doesn't take into account the number of incidences of Minneapolis police officers who have violated rights, or who have broken the code of conduct without having any discipline or any repercussions for that's a really, really great summary of what's happened in Minneapolis and that's the three things that I want to ask you to sort of set the framework for how we're going to analyze Minneapolis is what were the perceptions of the reaction with these protests and or riots that broke out at both the local level when it comes to Minneapolis, the national level and the international level to the best of your understanding. So, I was still living in Honolulu when George Floyd was murdered. And so a lot of my initial experience with it was through friends who were still living there or through the connections I had in different communities, seeing different communities burned down that I knew I had been there I've been to those businesses I've been in the streets. On the local level there was a lot of pain and a lot of heartbreak, because it just felt like the city was broken and that people couldn't understand why these things kept happening. There was a lot of anger at the experience of people in the city itself versus the suburbs versus the excerpts was all very different. You know, speaking to friends who lived in Minneapolis it was why is everyone focusing on on the riots when all this has been mostly peaceful and you know we need all these reforms and why is no one talking about it and then talking to friends in the excerpts who said you know the city's burning and why is no one doing anything about the city burning and why, you know, why can't people just stop, you know, rioting and I think a lot of disconnect between the two sides there. A lot of the people who didn't live in Minneapolis that I saw on social media were either we got to defund the police and abolish it and all cops are horrible or it was you know send the military in and crush all of this, which I think is really unhealthy and a sign that people had stopped seeing human beings in front of them and stopped seeing George Floyd as a human being who had died and he was instead of a symbol and stopped seeing Derek Chauvin as a man who had committed a crime and instead saw him as an automatic of all police officers everywhere, which is just not, in my opinion, fair. On the international level, you know there was a lot of outrage and around the world, you know, I think, particularly with China since we'll get to that, I think China really wanted to capitalize on this as a point to divert attention from themselves and divert attention to legitimate critiques of their policies in Hong Kong and around their country of how they are treating dissidents. But even in Europe and around the world, a lot of countries were just really appalled at what they were seeing and I think in a lot of ways rightly so. Yeah. Well, don't worry, we're going to get to the, we're going to get to the contrast in a second. But now that you've sort of set up the background for what's happened in Minneapolis and I think you did a really, really excellent job I don't think there's any if I can I pause you for one second Andrew apologize but I had a timer going for nine minutes and 27 seconds which just ended. So that entire time we've talked that's how long Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd. Wow. Wow. Wow, that's a really, he didn't, he didn't tell me this at a time everybody. Sorry to jump that on you but I thought I'm really, really hard to feel that impact until you really sit there with it. Yeah, I'm really glad that you did that for us because that gives us that gives a really good sense of, you know, how terrifying it must have been. So now but but now that you've given the contrast. I want to give a quick minute to sort of talk about Hong Kong. A lot of what I, what I say is not going to be something that's particularly like broadcast in western in like western media. That's not to say that you won't find it right for example there's plenty of things that you'll find and maybe not like CNN, or like Fox News but I did do a really, really thorough job I think in kind of making sure that my understanding of how Hong Kong got to a situation was correct. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay out my understanding of what brought over the Hong Kong riots, and then I'm going to give you a chance to tell me if there's like a quick point of like factual problems that you have with my framing. Cool. All right, so a lot of the problems that we sort of experienced with Hong Kong can they kind of is extend all the way back into the early 1800s. In the early 1800s the British were trying to figure out how they were going to finance a massive tea empire. At the time, something like 10% of the entire government's funding came out of tea duties or like imports that you would get for tea. It's unbelievably popular, but the problem was, the British were not able to find anything that would properly, you know that the Chinese really wanted, right. And then they found opium opium became very very quickly well known as through China and it was explosively popular. This was despite the fact that opium had been illegal for a very, very long time. But it was one of those things where similar to smoking marijuana in the United States. It is very technically illegal. But, you know, according to statistics right, there's something like 130 million Americans that admit to smoking weed at some point in their life, and we clearly don't have had, we don't have that many people who have gone to jail for it right so it was one of those is one of those kind of softly illegal things right. And so the British kind of played around with keeping keeping some amount of distance to selling opium in China, but they very much were doing a lot of smuggling operations that are maybe going to like an Indian border, trying to get it, get it sold out to there. And so, a lot of this kind of spiraled when when the Chinese viceroy means the shoe burns about 20,000 crates worth of opium publicly, and the British demand reparations for it. Chinese wouldn't do it quickly a war breaks out and the Chinese lost. There's no there's not really a way to get around it. Now, my, I am somebody who tries to read things from both sides but I will admit to you, I have a very difficult time, and I'd rather say I had a difficult time justifying the British position of selling opium within within China. I think it was very clearly a move of just economic greed at the expense of really destroying the social fabric of the whole country, and sort of bashing over its laws right. But regardless, the war sort of ended after a naval blockade that China wouldn't was really in the position to overcome, and a deal got broken in, which would lease Hong Kong which was at the time was basically a rocket was almost completely uninhabited. Yeah, I'm not kidding it was very, very, yeah, it was very, very, it was not even close to what it is now right much of that exists because of you know British funding and special economic privileges that it got. But anyway, they leased Hong Kong for 99 years, and that lease kind of got bumped to about 140 because the war ended in the war ended in 1800 but then World War two kind of mess with the clock a little bit but anyway, the factory government ended up seeding Hong Kong in on in June of 1997 back to the back to the Chinese and the the goal, the one of the things that was very clear in the in the handover right was that there would be a recognition of one country to systems in other words there would be a 50 year point 50 year period of special economic and several privileges that were not necessarily extended to mainland Chinese. Now, here's where things get a little bit messy. In 2018, there was a man, I cannot pronounce his name so I won't try that that went down to Taiwan. When he was with his girlfriend at his time, and he killed his girlfriend in Taiwan, and then went the one on a plane back to Hong Kong. He quickly ended up telling the police what happened, but the problem kind of came out that there was no, there was at the time between Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, there wasn't any kind of established extradition laws. So in other words if you had some and what the what Beijing kind of realized was that there was a loophole, such that if someone was from Hong Kong, and then committed a crime in China and then ran back to Hong Kong there would be really nothing they could do. And so what kind of came out of that was a bill for extradition. There was a bill of which is very very simple. You know we're just going to have an extradition law that says you can get tried in Hong Kong. And if you are found guilty, you get sent off to mainland China for you get sent off to mainland China for whoever knows what. Now this is what actually sparks the big protest. What not a lot of people know is that there were two layers of protest between Hong Kong and China, excuse me, between between Hong Kong and self. The two layers of protest right was the first one that came out was the immediate response to the extradition law. Now the funny thing about the extradition law is the extradition law was actually withdrawn. There was an overwhelming negative. What's that. Not withdrawn at first. Not withdrawn at first yeah and suspended it, and then only after protests would do it. Sure, sure. I think it's important. Okay, okay. No, no, no, I'll give you that. There was a second wave of protests that came out right and basically the second wave of protests was in response to what was called the national security law right now the national security law was I think where a lot of the more controversial elements came in because the rioting got extremely violent so we are talking. The airport was shut down because there were like bomb threats going off. It was very common to see people just, you know, starting fires in the street and molotovs. And eventually, the national security law itself was passed. And ultimately that sort of led to a full safe force and quiet and quieting of the of the riots here. That's basically my understanding of it there's there's some stuff that I've left out, but that is that is from what I've read so far. Do you have any with the exception of that one little bit do you have any issue with how it ended so far. I think an important aspect to remember is that as part of the two country one system Hong Kong is supposed to be able to develop its own laws it has its own separate Constitution that enables it to freedom of freedom of speech and different things that the Chinese Constitution effectively does not even if it, you know, claims to, and a large part of the concern over the national security large and the extradition bill was that it was going to be the beginning of China overriding the two party to one country two systems agreement and to eventually fully take over Hong Kong and I think without you have to have that context before you can't just say oh it's an extradition bill or it's a security bill you have to have the context of what Hong Kongers were afraid it represented. Okay, okay. Now, we've only got about 10 minutes left but I think. Yeah, I still think that we can get we can we have time for some interesting questions right. So the first thing that I kind of want to talk about is at the time of Hong Kong's at the time of Hong Kong's heat of the riots right. A lot of the things that were happening seem to me very very controversial in the sense that people were kind of being apolitical about the situation. And they were just saying it doesn't really matter what your political views are, you don't really have the right to start to like burn down a building right. But this sort of apolitical sense of this apolitical dedication to non violence is a big thing that explains opposition to riots in America. I think Americans in general do not like the use of political violence or the especially when it comes to the destruction of property the loss of human life. I think, you know, it's interesting. You know, our country was founded on revolution. It was founded on, you know, using political violence to overthrow the government that existed to overthrow a tyrannical government. You know, we have the right to assemble. We have the right to protest. We have the right to free speech, which has given the American citizens a constitutional peaceful way of which to express their anger express their concerns express their desire for change. And I think because of that we've developed a political system that doesn't view rioting and doesn't view violence as a politically legitimate tool. Because there are such a myriad number of non violent ways to change and to be effective in government that the use of violence just isn't justifiable. And I think that that's how Americans very much most Americans view this you have people on the political fringes the left and right to view violence as a political a valid political tool but I would say the vast vast majority of Americans do not. Okay. Yeah, no one of the things that's really interesting to me is. I think that this is written explicitly in the Constitution but I seem to remember something something to the effect of Jefferson writing that should the people of the United States find themselves in a government that is oppressive that they have the right of revolution right and this concept of a right of revolution is completely alien in many, many parts of the world, not just China but I would say probably well over half the countries on Earth, if not much higher than that. Do you think that that those sort of attitudes of maintaining this right to revolution explain a lot of Americans attitude. Well because I know you were talking about Americans generally do not support political violence, but it seems like there's always this undertone of like, but we could if we wanted to. Yeah, I mean I think Jefferson is an interesting one he was very influenced by the French Revolution where they decided to cut everyone's heads off, which is a little bit different than how we did it. And certainly no one writes like the French but I do think that there is a sense in America that you know I think you see this a little bit more on the political right and the political left but there's a sense that we have the right to oppose. And we have the right to oppose a government that goes beyond the boundaries that we set for it. And I think that, you know, that's part of what the idea behind the second amendment was is, you know, the citizens have the right to bear arms, and an armed citizenry is one that the government cannot oppress. So I do think that there was a sense in the American people in a sense in the American tradition that there is somewhat a right to revolution. I do think that there are limits to that I think, you know, the Civil War was a very clear limit of no you don't get to succeed from the country you don't get to fight over owning one another's property there are limits but I do think there's an undercurrent of that and I think it mostly comes in the idea of Liberty, right that Americans feel that, you know, Liberty is a value worth fighting for and that gets projected into the international stage to and I think, especially with Hong Kong the American responses to the Hong Kong protest, compared to in riots here, I think reflect an idea of it was viewed as Hong Kong was fighting for Liberty, and fighting for Liberty from, you know, the Chinese, the communist Chinese government, versus riots here, because you have those legitimate political mechanisms for change, we're not a valid form of fighting and using political violence that answered your question. No, I think it gives me really interesting insight. You know, it's interesting that the Chinese conception of political violence is that you can't do it. For sure. And the current, you know, power over the over China the Chinese Communist Party right in many ways use itself as like a large standing extension of the past 5000 years of Chinese civilization which is always really really Now, one of the things that's been interested with that's most interesting is I think that these the dynasties the Ming dynasty the Qing dynasty has historically observed what's called the mandate of heaven. And the idea behind the mandate of heaven is basically that should there be a case where the government does fall to like a violent power, it is basically an indication that heaven wanted this state to fall right right. And I think that modern China is sort of moving away from those from those terms in other words we're they're trying to get away from a world in which violent revolution is is even conceivable as a method of government change right. Do you think that do you think that more countries are going to kind of adopt this attitude of like, we sort of want to get to a post violence form of governance. Yeah, I will say a few things. It is ironic that the Chinese government is not in favor of violent revolutions when that is how the Chinese government that currently exists here to power. And also not surprising that they especially wouldn't want the term mandate of heaven, given their, their approach to religion, but that being said, I think a big idea of the end of history that came around in the 90s with the fall the Soviet Union is that we were in a post war society, we were in a post conflict society that everything from here on out was going to be the rise of democracies going to be the rise of free trade and prosperity globally. And, and that's an idea that you know has really stood on, obviously no government wants to be overthrown and I think anyone. There should always be the position of any government that peaceful change is the appropriate way to change. But, and it also has to be the case that peaceful change has to be possible that change there has to be a mechanism for which the citizens of any government can peacefully change the system of their government. So I think no government wants to get violently overthrown. I think you are seeing a large rise in authoritarianism and totalitarianism and surveillance states, which instead of creating the conditions where the citizens don't feel the need to overthrow their government because they have legitimate ways to address change. The governments are instead focused on so completely surveilling and oppressing their people that they cannot overthrow them. And I think it, you know, there's two ways to achieve peaceful governance one is to oppress your people so much they can't fight back or one is to create such a peaceful system that there is no need for fighting. And I think a lot of countries, you know in the 90s into history, we were going to go on the peaceful system route but I think a lot of systems now a lot of countries now are going on the oppressive route of oppress your citizens so much that they, they literally can't fight back against you. Well, that's a really, I think we've laid an incredible conversations, incredible conversations foundations but unfortunately, time has blown by. I'm still very pleased with how much, with how much we got done. Robbie, I want to thank you very very much for coming and coming down on and talking to us again. It was really really interesting getting your perspective and hopefully this is something that on this show, maybe with maybe with other guests maybe with you sometime in the late future because you're quite busy I don't want to have you on every week. But we're very, very glad that you came on is there anything you want to tell people about where they can find you or any projects that you're working on or anything like that. Yeah, so, like I said last time I'm on LinkedIn I'm on Facebook. You know, you can email me as well I think something that is particularly interesting to me at this time period is the United States government has been very reluctant to actually accept any refugees from Hong Kong right now. They've done a big talk about how we got to help Hong Kong fight for democracy and we need to make sure the Chinese government isn't unjustly imprisoning people and stuff but if you actually look at the numbers of asylum and refugee, given to Hong Kong it's it's pathetically low, in my opinion, and I think that the United States has a duty to accept, you know, democracy, people who fight for democracy so if I can pitch anything it would be to call your representatives call your senators and ask them to fight for for freedom fighters from Hong Kong, not freedom fighters but to mock people fighting for democracy to get asylum and refugee status in America. I agree look someone doesn't want to be in Hong Kong I want to get them I want to get my way out I feel that I extend that I extend that to all immigrants okay I'm very very pro freedom of the guy. But that's a lot of things that we could lay on the table but we're going to have to end it there. Robby thank you very very much for coming back on telling us a little bit more and helping us kind of make these comparisons of how the two countries see riots and violence I really really liked your perspective. I'm sorry I did get to change your mind on the CPC but maybe that'll come someday. Well probably not but I respect you trying. Alright thank you very much a lot everybody.