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I would have said that returning Hong Kong back to China was one of the biggest mistakes the UK has made, but here we are in 2020. It would have been better if

• swarnie_ 6y ago
  If you don't return something at the end of a contract is that theft? or piracy? Its not like the UK had a choice. We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
  • delecti 6y ago
    The government they made the contract with didn't even exist anymore. The Qing Empire made that contract with the UK. Independence or just keeping HK in the UK both make at least as much sense as giving it to a country that didn't even exist when the contract was formed.
    • throwaway1997 6y ago
      It may have made sense technically but China has a huge army and HK is dependent on water, electricity and food which comes from the mainland. The mainland government made very clear that if HK wasn't returned, they would cut off the water supply.
      • delecti 6y ago
        That's a separate issue though. That China had the military might to take HK doesn't mean they were the legitimate government to have HK returned to. It's not stealing from China to not give them something taken from someone else.
        • free_rms 6y ago
          The UK running HK in the first place was stealing from China. They originally got it as part of the peace settlement from the Opium Wars, then signed the 99-year lease later when the Qing empire was in terminal decline and unable to resist.
          • skissane 6y ago
            If UK had not switched recognition from ROC to PRC, they could have returned it to ROC instead. UK could have demanded a lease renewal from PRC as the price for switching recognition. Instead they just got some “alliance” against the Soviets and it is questionable what that actually delivered.
            • free_rms 6y ago
              If you're gonna go pro-colonialist might makes right, that's your prerogative, but then you're just gonna have to eat it on the fact that the PRC had a lot more might nearby.
              • skissane 6y ago
                I don’t see how handing HK over to ROC would have been “pro-colonialist”.
                • free_rms 6y ago
                  Presuming to control HKs fate after taking it in the freaking opium wars is. Giving HK back to China is an act of decolonization. Putting them under Taiwan and loading up the island with US weapons would not be.
                  • skissane 6y ago
                    Is Taiwan’s democracy “pro-colonialism” too? PRC is itself a colonialist power. See all the Uighurs in concentration camps.
                  • 6y ago
    • prewett 6y ago
      The government that ruled the territory of the Qing Empire was willing to roll tanks into HK--Deng Xiaoping said "I could take it in an afternoon". China made it clear that they were going to end up with HK one way or another. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
    • tasogare 6y ago
      Then Honk Hong should have been given back to the Republic of China (Taiwan) which is the direct successor of the Qing empire, not the PRC. RPC is not a successor of Qing nor ROC since ROC still exists.
      • delecti 6y ago
        Honestly I think so too, but I doubt the UK government wanted to start a war with China.
        • tasogare 6y ago
          Hum I was half trolling half serious, having skin in the game in favour of Taiwan. Interesting the game Wargame: Red Dragon has exactly a campaign about UK vs PRC over HK. And I spoke that after having of talk with a Japanese people today and they fear they are the next on the list. I told them Japan at like 6th or 5th powerful army despite Article 9, + US alliance (that we all understand as half trustable only), so quite able to defend themselves. A lot of people in East Asian (HK, Vietnam, Philipines, Japan) fear China. This is what I got from talking with friends from this country. Everyone think there will be war at some point, only the time and starting place is unknown.
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        The UK already formally recognized the PRC as the sole government of China, and, as such the successor to ROC and Qing interests. Sure, this was in large part about who has the most guns, but it's not like the UK control of HK itself was a result of a free and uncoerced agreement of the parties, either.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > The Qing Empire made that contract with the UK. You really want to set the precedent that regime change voids all international agreements, rather than obligations and rights under them passing to successor regimes?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • hungryhobo 6y ago
      So if country A asks for a loan, then immediately dissolve its government and form a new one, should the loan be forgiven?
      • delecti 6y ago
        That's a wildly different situation for a couple reasons. The debt is in the opposite direction, and the UK had HK for 100 years, not "immediately". It's not really a relevant thought experiment.
  • woodpanel 6y ago
    While the reasoning resonates with me, it does have undertones of whataboutism in it: Do I really expect CPC-historians to label colonial era contracts to be legitimate? Anyways, Singapore's independence wasn't a given either, they had to fight for theirs from "the mother land" as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_in_Malaysia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_in_Malaysia Edit: I stand corrected - Not "to fight". However, the point being (as with Belize, Israel, India or other colonies which became independent) by no means was it clear what entities were to became out of its former colonies.
    • magicsmoke 6y ago
      Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia because they were majority Han Chinese and Malaysia wanted racial policies favoring Malays which would get outvoted in a democratic Malysia with Singapore in it. Singapore is one of those unusual countries where they didn't want independence but was forced into it.
  • ViViDboarder 6y ago
    Apparently contracts between nations don’t mean much given this situation we’re in is because China is violating one.
  • ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
    The British could have done what they did with Belize. Belize wanted independence but Guatemala claimed that it was actually a province/state of Guatemala. The British supported independence and left a battalion of troops in Belize, the British Forces Belize, in order to act as a deterrent to a Guatemalan invasion.[1][2] While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years. The real issue is that HK wasn't viable without support from the mainland -- support they would have lost had this tactic been tried. "Although not quite a piece of "barren rock" as derided by Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary during the First Opium War, from 1839 to 1842, the fact remains that Hong Kong isn’t endowed with the necessary natural resources to support its population of 7 million. The Hong Kong special administrative region of China gets over 70 percent of its water from Dongjiang, a river in neighboring Guangdong province. Meanwhile, over 90 percent of fresh meat and vegetables consumed in Hong Kong is sourced from the mainland. And mainland energy sources generate more than half of the electricity consumed locally."[3] They would have had to bear a massive cost, investing in desalination plants, nuclear power plants, and imported their food from elsewhere. That cost -- while extreme -- might be looked at in hindsight as cheaper than the current outcome with the likely significant brain drain from HK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_territorial_dispute#Post-independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_te... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Support_Unit_Belize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Supp... [3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient-truth/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient...
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, China isn't just more powerful than Guatemala, it's more powerful than the UK. > they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. If Deng Xiaoping really thought the UK would accept nuclear ese as the cost of keeping China out of HK, sure, that might have kept China out. But literally no one would believe that.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > If you don't return something at the end of a contract is that theft? or piracy? I'll take, “A routine practice of European (including states that are former European colonies) colonialism in dealing with non-Europeans”. So, like, no one would have been surprised with Hong Kong. > We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it? The UK was pulling that kind of thing before the US existed, so, sure, why not? I lean, ignoring the poder balance in the región, which is the real issue.
• 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  The UK didn't have much of choice. Their lease on the New Territories (basically all of HK except Kowloon and the Island) expired in 1997, so that was going back to China regardless, and they concluded that HK was not viable without it.
  • skissane 6y ago
    If they still recognised ROC instead of PRC they could have returned it to ROC instead. Alternatively, UK could have made switching recognition from ROC to PRC conditional on a New Territories lease renewal.
    • GordonS 6y ago
      That would never have happened for obvious political reasons (China). If it ever had happened, I don't think it would have ended well for the HK citizens...
      • skissane 6y ago
        The UK (and other Western countries) had a massive bargaining chip over PRC as long as they recognised ROC instead. They could have demanded a higher price for recognising PRC, and I think PRC wanted their recognition enough they would have paid. (And a better deal on HK could have been part of that price.) Instead, the West gave this bargaining chip away for cheap-some short-term alliance against the Soviets which the end of the Cold War made irrelevant, which probably did little or nothing to contribute to the Soviet Union’s fall, and which cost PRC very little since PRC and USSR were already on bad terms anyway. PRC played their hand very well, the West played very poorly.
• sasum 6y ago
  Not a very savory opinion to say "I wish colonialism had gone even further".
  • Veen 6y ago
    In theory perhaps, but in reality when the choice is between two Empires, people have often embraced the one that they perceive as less harmful to their interests. An independent Hong Kong was never a realistic prospect.
    • sasum 6y ago
      I don't understand this comment. People in Hong Kong don't want to be a part of the British empire. Most want to be a part of the PRC. Less than 20% want to be independent.
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    I bet the residents of HK are going to bed thinking that tonight.
  • ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
    Supporting HK in gaining independence wouldn't have been an act of Colonialism. It would have been enabling self determination of a population. Colonialism is "the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically." Giving the HK people independence is literally the opposite of colonialism. In contrast, the new law by by the CPC is an act of colonialism by definition as it is the CPC overriding 1 country, 2 systems and asserting political control over HK. The British providing a path to independence could have been very similar to Belize (with CPC being equivalent to Guatemala in this case). The British left a battalion of troops in Belize, the British Forces Belize, in order to act as a deterrent to a Guatemalan invasion.[1][2] While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_territorial_dispute#Post-independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_te... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Support_Unit_Belize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Supp...
• kiba 6y ago
  UK isn't going to be able to protect Hong Kong territory from the Chinese military. It would be a bloody fight and there will be a lot of lives lost, and likely anger from the people of Hong Kong.
  • dingaling 6y ago
    The UK wouldn't have to win a stand-up fight against the PLA. Just taking China to the brink would be sufficient. Is the CCP willing to jeopardise its position and future in the World for the sake of a few humid islands with no natural resources or strategic advantages? And even more mind-focusing is the fact that the UK had the nuclear option on the table against Argentina in 1982.
• euix 6y ago
  Not like they had much of a choice. I think Deng Xiaoping said to Thatcher "we'll roll the PLA in come 1997 with or without an agreement". Basically, we can have an agreement to save face all around or will just go in. Especially since the water and food from Hong Kong are basically supplied from the mainland. We are well pass the time when a technologically advance oceanic power can establish and hold enclaves on the heartland. That was only possible in the past because of the huge development lead the European power's developed through industrialization and colonialism.
  • skissane 6y ago
    > Especially since the water and food from Hong Kong are basically supplied from the mainland. Hong Kong used to have a desalination plant. The British closed it because importing water from PRC was cheaper. Instead, they could have expanded desalination for water self-reliance, and built nuclear power stations to produce electricity to power it. But the UK wasn’t willing to make that investment.
• mjw1007 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's best to think of that situation as an occasion when the UK made a choice. If the US had said "we wish Hong Kong to declare independence and will provide military backing as required", I expect the UK would have gone along with it (I offer no opinion on whether that would have worked). But in the absence of that that I don't think there was much of a decision to make. Quite possibly the UK were out-diplomatted and a somewhat better deal would have been available in principle. But ultimately (as we have seen in recent years) there's nothing that stops a superpower saying "we're now going to walk away from this treaty we previously signed".
• bjourne 6y ago
  Hong Kong was a corrupt state long before China took over.