The people of Hong Kong have a right to their opinions...but only if they're already the opinions that Beijing wants them to have. That's the basic message coming from the Chinese government, as it pretends to be "all ears" about changes to the legal and government system while imposing radical changes without the people's consent.

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Condoleezza Rice wrote, "Democracy is imperfect at the beginning and will remain so. But men and women still crave it: It alone affords human beings the dignity that comes when those who would govern them have to ask for their consent. There is simply no alternative." There's scarcely a better way to put it. And there is no possible way to interpret the behavior of China's Communist Party as "asking for consent". Thus, they afford the people of Hong Kong exactly no dignity. Sooner or later, any system that fails to respect human dignity is bound to collapse.

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By the way, whoever runs the social media tools for Radio-Television Hong Kong deserves an award for cramming devastating commentary into a brief story summary: