> Why just HK, why not for all former colonies which UK is responsible for Prior to (and because of) a bunch of HK residents fleeing to the UK when china first

> Why just HK, why not for all former colonies which UK is responsible for Prior to (and because of) a bunch of HK residents fleeing to the UK when china first started trying to assimilate it, it was much easier to get out of there and into the UK. (anything involving politics in the UK is never a single thing, it's probably about 40 interacting things, spread out over about 800 non-consecutive years.) HK is really a special case, because it was doing so very well with "european-levels of freedom", and then china strong-armed them into giving it up. (I won't make a moral judgement on that, it's just worth point out how complicated the issue is.)