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Sure, I'm not saying it's "free and fair elections", but it had a functioning, western-style court system, a level of free speech recognizable to any part of th
by koenigdavidmj 6y ago
Sure, I'm not saying it's "free and fair elections", but it had a functioning, western-style court system, a level of free speech recognizable to any part of the west, things like that.
And given that the UK itself has most of these things, I highly doubt they'd arbitrarily deny them to a dependent territory without good reason (especially when their other territories all have some measure of representative government). Other comments describing Chinese threats provide one possible good reason.
- free_rms 6y ago> And given that the UK itself has most of these things, I highly doubt they'd arbitrarily deny them to a dependent territory without good reason (especially when their other territories all have some measure of representative government). Setting aside HK, we apparently have very different reads on how the British Empire acted everywhere else, as well.
- koenigdavidmj 6y agoApples to apples--I'm comparing Hong Kong in 1995 to the rest of the mostly-self-governing British territories in 1995. I'm not comparing them to India in the 1940s (as the most obvious example of the Brits' abuse of other peoples they ruled).