8 ms·

This is what Britain should have done back in 97. Instead, they spent the time trying to stop Portugal from offering citizenship to the people of Macau so that

This is what Britain should have done back in 97. Instead, they spent the time trying to stop Portugal from offering citizenship to the people of Macau so that Hongkongers wouldn’t try to ask for it.

skissane 7y ago
What Britain should have done, long before '97: (1) Made recognition of PRC conditional on PRC agreeing to an indefinite extension of lease on New Territories, such that no handover of HK was required (2) Threaten that, if PRC didn't agree, UK would return New Territories to ROC instead, with British troops deployed to defend it (3) Make clear to PRC that any military action against UK-controlled (or ROC-controlled) HK would result in a war between two nuclear weapon states (UK vs PRC) (4) Give HK real democracy back in the 50s/60s/70s/80s, rather than waiting until 5 years before handover (5) Build nuclear-powered desalination plants to remove HK dependency on mainland water
- forgingahead 7y ago
  Please don't keyboard warrior on complex topics -- nothing you have outlined was even remotely possible or sensible.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    And yet, quite compelling. It would be fascinating to read a point by point rebuttal.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > It would be fascinating to read a point by point rebuttal China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger. The only hope in hell for Britain would have been in Clinton. Given American optimism at the time, that would have been fruitless.
      - skissane 7y ago
        > China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger. UK has nukes. PRC has nukes. Did PRC want a shooting war with another nuclear power? > The only hope in hell for Britain would have been in Clinton. Given American optimism at the time, that would have been fruitless. You are talking about the 1990s. If you read my original comment, I was talking about the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. If at the height of the Cold War, Communist China had attacked a British colony, how would America have responded?
        NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        > If Communist China had attacked a British colony, how would America have responded Probably with fascinated interest. America was pressuring the UK to decolonise, and had been since 41. HK was not as strategically significant as Berlin or Korea, besides Korea had both China and the USSR supporting the invasion. I visualise something nearer Suez than Korea 2.
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Okay, then imagine if the UK had granted Hong Kong independence or given them to the ROC. Still counts as decolonization, right?
        NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        That's maybe a significant "what if" too far, but I'll play. HK independence in the 50s would have been difficult as most of the land area - 100x smaller than Taiwan - was leased. Not sure how ignoring that lease would play out internationally, but I suspect more provocation to CCP China than solution. HK island is just a few square miles, the rest - the leased portion - is part of the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is a few tens of thousands of square km of defensible island. Giving to ROC? I heavily suspect had that been an option at the time the US would have damn near insisted on picking it up, just as had happened with a number of the tiny naval and air bases. So it would probably have stayed as British territory, leased to the US. Actually passing to ROC would have to wait until after Chiang Kai Shek achieved some measure of stability. The US spent much of the 50s expecting Taiwan and Chiang Kai Shek to fall. By the 60s HK is developing in its own right, but Eisenhower had started to support Taiwan militarily. Now it's getting trickier.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Not quite point by point, but will this do? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20826375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20826375
    - tanilama 7y ago
      China is too close. UK is too far. UK's war claim on basically Chinese soil is laughable.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        >China is too close. >UK is too far. The UK whacked Argentina pretty good. While obviously China would have been able to put up a much better fight the UK can project force on the other side of the world if they need to.
    - bsbkekjdj 7y ago
      The UK can’t even handle being a member of the EU, do you really think the UK is capable of handling that?
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        The original post was about the UK back in the '50s to '90s.
- schuke 7y ago
  The UK did try to democratize HK governance in the 60s but China immediately threatened military invasion.
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    > The UK did try to democratize HK governance in the 60s but China immediately threatened military invasion. Not really due to fear of military invasion, but due to fear of economic fallout on UK and giving up some luxury for its own citizens for a right cause. Lavish lifestyle funded by colony's money is more important for UK than fight for the rights of the people of its colonies. They have milked every one of their colonies resources until the very last minute they left. Also before leaving they always sow seeds of division and failure. That's what they did for Hong Kong too. So saying they wanted to give democracy to HK is outlandish.
    - javagram 7y ago
      in reality consider other western countries which attempted to stop decolonization and protect their citizens in those lands. French Algeria, Portuguese Goa - they lost the military fights and had to give up. The PRC fought the combined UN forces to a standstill in the Korean war in the 1950s, and the British empire had already fallen apart and was in no shape to fight China then in the context of the cold war.
      - dragonsh 7y ago
        UK didn't fall apart for 150 years, still they couldn't offer any democracy to Hong Kong. Also China had a lost decade in cultural revolution after 1962. So again if you look at the facts and history, it's laughable to even suggest that British wanted democracy for Hong Kong. It's the same old story of old British empire in every colony, where they will promise but never keep it. They were just hypocrite, the main intention was always that colony should not prosper or challenge British empire in future, after they leave.
        javagram 7y ago
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  In the 1950s, when swathes of refugees were starting to give HK its transition from dusty backwater with a successful duty free transhipment port to the financial powerhouse we know in modernity, the UK tried. Prior to revolution there were few in HK, and nearly all were there for the port or base. China threatened to invade in 1960 if the moves to democratise didn't stop. We'd just had the Korean War, Britain alone wouldn't have won a rerun, the West might. Support for doing it again, without hostility from the other side first is just about unthinkable. Britain might have been able to achieve better terms on Kowloon and New Territories a hundred years previously during Pax Britannica, but those territories were only there as uninhabited military buffer zone for the transhipment port, naval base and coaling station. So when Britain could, no one thought it important, there was no one there. Development and them mattering came much, much later. Only really after the Chinese revolution started to provide an endless stream of well educated workers and families with a dislike of Communism. Now the UK started moves to democratise - there was getting to be a population that cared, and which fit with the policy of majority rule before independence, in the post war decolonisation era.
  - skissane 7y ago
    > China threatened to invade in 1960 if the moves to democratise didn't stop. And the UK gave in to PRC's threats. Was PRC really willing to start a war with the UK? Or were they bluffing, and the UK fell for PRC's bluff? Or maybe, the UK was never really that keen on HK democracy, and PRC's threats were just a convenient excuse to avoid doing something they weren't very keen on doing anyway? > We'd just had the Korean War, Britain alone wouldn't have won a rerun, the West might The Korean War is not exactly comparable. Neither North Korea nor South Korea were nuclear armed states (during the 1950s), although they both had nuclear powers as allies. A war between UK and PRC in the 1960s would have been a shooting war between two nuclear powers. Would the PRC really had been willing to risk such a thing? Especially given the state that PRC itself was in (millions of deaths in the Great Leap Forward, followed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, its isolation the Sino-Soviet split, an economy vastly weaker than it has today, etc.)
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

skissane 7y ago

What Britain should have done, long before '97: (1) Made recognition of PRC conditional on PRC agreeing to an indefinite extension of lease on New Territories, such that no handover of HK was required (2) Threaten that, if PRC didn't agree, UK would return New Territories to ROC instead, with British troops deployed to defend it (3) Make clear to PRC that any military action against UK-controlled (or ROC-controlled) HK would result in a war between two nuclear weapon states (UK vs PRC) (4) Give HK real democracy back in the 50s/60s/70s/80s, rather than waiting until 5 years before handover (5) Build nuclear-powered desalination plants to remove HK dependency on mainland water

forgingahead 7y ago
Please don't keyboard warrior on complex topics -- nothing you have outlined was even remotely possible or sensible.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  And yet, quite compelling. It would be fascinating to read a point by point rebuttal.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > It would be fascinating to read a point by point rebuttal China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger. The only hope in hell for Britain would have been in Clinton. Given American optimism at the time, that would have been fruitless.
    - skissane 7y ago
      > China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger, China’s army bigger. UK has nukes. PRC has nukes. Did PRC want a shooting war with another nuclear power? > The only hope in hell for Britain would have been in Clinton. Given American optimism at the time, that would have been fruitless. You are talking about the 1990s. If you read my original comment, I was talking about the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. If at the height of the Cold War, Communist China had attacked a British colony, how would America have responded?
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        > If Communist China had attacked a British colony, how would America have responded Probably with fascinated interest. America was pressuring the UK to decolonise, and had been since 41. HK was not as strategically significant as Berlin or Korea, besides Korea had both China and the USSR supporting the invasion. I visualise something nearer Suez than Korea 2.
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Okay, then imagine if the UK had granted Hong Kong independence or given them to the ROC. Still counts as decolonization, right?
        NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        That's maybe a significant "what if" too far, but I'll play. HK independence in the 50s would have been difficult as most of the land area - 100x smaller than Taiwan - was leased. Not sure how ignoring that lease would play out internationally, but I suspect more provocation to CCP China than solution. HK island is just a few square miles, the rest - the leased portion - is part of the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is a few tens of thousands of square km of defensible island. Giving to ROC? I heavily suspect had that been an option at the time the US would have damn near insisted on picking it up, just as had happened with a number of the tiny naval and air bases. So it would probably have stayed as British territory, leased to the US. Actually passing to ROC would have to wait until after Chiang Kai Shek achieved some measure of stability. The US spent much of the 50s expecting Taiwan and Chiang Kai Shek to fall. By the 60s HK is developing in its own right, but Eisenhower had started to support Taiwan militarily. Now it's getting trickier.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Not quite point by point, but will this do? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20826375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20826375
  - tanilama 7y ago
    China is too close. UK is too far. UK's war claim on basically Chinese soil is laughable.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      >China is too close. >UK is too far. The UK whacked Argentina pretty good. While obviously China would have been able to put up a much better fight the UK can project force on the other side of the world if they need to.
  - bsbkekjdj 7y ago
    The UK can’t even handle being a member of the EU, do you really think the UK is capable of handling that?
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      The original post was about the UK back in the '50s to '90s.
schuke 7y ago
The UK did try to democratize HK governance in the 60s but China immediately threatened military invasion.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  > The UK did try to democratize HK governance in the 60s but China immediately threatened military invasion. Not really due to fear of military invasion, but due to fear of economic fallout on UK and giving up some luxury for its own citizens for a right cause. Lavish lifestyle funded by colony's money is more important for UK than fight for the rights of the people of its colonies. They have milked every one of their colonies resources until the very last minute they left. Also before leaving they always sow seeds of division and failure. That's what they did for Hong Kong too. So saying they wanted to give democracy to HK is outlandish.
  - javagram 7y ago
    in reality consider other western countries which attempted to stop decolonization and protect their citizens in those lands. French Algeria, Portuguese Goa - they lost the military fights and had to give up. The PRC fought the combined UN forces to a standstill in the Korean war in the 1950s, and the British empire had already fallen apart and was in no shape to fight China then in the context of the cold war.
    - dragonsh 7y ago
      UK didn't fall apart for 150 years, still they couldn't offer any democracy to Hong Kong. Also China had a lost decade in cultural revolution after 1962. So again if you look at the facts and history, it's laughable to even suggest that British wanted democracy for Hong Kong. It's the same old story of old British empire in every colony, where they will promise but never keep it. They were just hypocrite, the main intention was always that colony should not prosper or challenge British empire in future, after they leave.
      - javagram 7y ago
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
In the 1950s, when swathes of refugees were starting to give HK its transition from dusty backwater with a successful duty free transhipment port to the financial powerhouse we know in modernity, the UK tried. Prior to revolution there were few in HK, and nearly all were there for the port or base. China threatened to invade in 1960 if the moves to democratise didn't stop. We'd just had the Korean War, Britain alone wouldn't have won a rerun, the West might. Support for doing it again, without hostility from the other side first is just about unthinkable. Britain might have been able to achieve better terms on Kowloon and New Territories a hundred years previously during Pax Britannica, but those territories were only there as uninhabited military buffer zone for the transhipment port, naval base and coaling station. So when Britain could, no one thought it important, there was no one there. Development and them mattering came much, much later. Only really after the Chinese revolution started to provide an endless stream of well educated workers and families with a dislike of Communism. Now the UK started moves to democratise - there was getting to be a population that cared, and which fit with the policy of majority rule before independence, in the post war decolonisation era.
- skissane 7y ago
  > China threatened to invade in 1960 if the moves to democratise didn't stop. And the UK gave in to PRC's threats. Was PRC really willing to start a war with the UK? Or were they bluffing, and the UK fell for PRC's bluff? Or maybe, the UK was never really that keen on HK democracy, and PRC's threats were just a convenient excuse to avoid doing something they weren't very keen on doing anyway? > We'd just had the Korean War, Britain alone wouldn't have won a rerun, the West might The Korean War is not exactly comparable. Neither North Korea nor South Korea were nuclear armed states (during the 1950s), although they both had nuclear powers as allies. A war between UK and PRC in the 1960s would have been a shooting war between two nuclear powers. Would the PRC really had been willing to risk such a thing? Especially given the state that PRC itself was in (millions of deaths in the Great Leap Forward, followed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, its isolation the Sino-Soviet split, an economy vastly weaker than it has today, etc.)
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]