Guest post by Ted Malloch

Daily riots in the streets of Hong Kong have reached a fever pitch – what began as an extradition case of one man has become the symbol of the oppression of all Hong Kongers.

Hong Kong needs to return and stay on the side of democracy and freedom—the values it was built on; and Trump and the free world needs to say so.

Would you want to live under the Chinese Communist Party? Given extra points on your social credit score for memorizing Xi Jinping “thought”? If, by fortune or hard work, you happened to be a resident of Hong Kong, one of the freest places in the world, the most open economies, would you willingly give Beijing the right to extract you from the city and judge you in a communist tribunal somewhere unfamiliar and foreign?

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3 million or so Hong Kongers have answered with a resounding, NO. Protests on workdays, with violent clashes with police forces and the looming threat of another Tiananmen Square all hang over the situation. The Communist PLA is ready to march. Then what?

The faction that won the power struggle after Tiananmen Square remains in power in Mainland China and has the same attitude toward protestors as it did back then.

1997 rolled along and Britain honored its commitment – made a century earlier between the Empire and a Chinese royal house that no longer existed. Hong Kongers themselves weren’t consulted on the matter, in an early demonstration of the hubris of the 90s.

Military force isn’t supposed to impede the self-determination of peoples. Is there any doubt that Hong Kongers would rather be independent?

Beijing would never let them. The latent threat of violence – which Tiananmen was only the most recent episode – is the only thing keeping China together. Actual violence is currently being employed against the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, to deafening silence from the international Islamic community.

The question of Taiwan also remains a vexing one for both Beijing and the West. To the extent that China’s claims in the South China sea are debatable (which they certainly are) the cards fall very differently for America’s allies if the one-china policy is recognized. Having been abandoned by all but the smallest of countries in the world, Taiwan’s independence should be seriously considered. China has said it will take the island nation. A security guarantee would be necessary for their survival, as Beijing has promised to invade should they ever try to separate from the mainland.

The world is on a collision course, mark Trump’s words. An aggressive and adversary China, a communist polity with a free economy is a contradiction in terms especially when it too is state run.

Inevitably at some point and likely during a Trump Administration it will have to be fully confronted—before it is too late.

Trump realizes this and is readying for the coming onslaught.