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Are you saying the rest of the world should have stood up for what ultimately is colonialism? And colonialism of the British out of all the people? And also in

Are you saying the rest of the world should have stood up for what ultimately is colonialism? And colonialism of the British out of all the people? And also in a territory, that is directly on or neighboring the Chinese landmass? The Chinese people have a long history of others trying to conquer them or colonize them. They are probably pretty allergic to such notions, and will reject them. Realistically speaking, no one would have had the resources to force HK staying the same enclave it has been. This all sounds rather unrealistic. We can agree on the treatment of HK being far from ideal, and I would go as far as saying, that even economically for China itself, it was not good to handle the matter as they did. That is where their ideology shows. HK was an economical hub. In recent times though many businesses left and more are unwilling to invest. This is the economical downside, that could simply have been avoided by not doing what they did. The question should be asked "Why not just leave it as it is, since it is working well, economically?" But they had to mess with it. Another downside is international reputation damage of course. China has achieved many great things in the past decades and now has cities more modern and convenient than most of what you find in Europe. Their one problem remains ideology. That they sometimes feel the need to do things, that are not economically sound, for the sake of ideology. However, I can't agree with anyone arguing, that HK should not be part of China, like some people do in the comments here. It's a separate matter from policies implemented. Of course I wish for HKers to keep their freedoms. Who doesn't. Of course I wish China would not implement policies, that endanger the freedom of its people. But territorial? Nope, HK always was bound to become a part of China. What I can say more from visiting HK twice is, that they still got Internet (uncensored), in contrast to other parts of China. Every week I am speaking with someone from HK, using Signal, which is not practical for anyone from (most?) other parts of China. When traveling in China, I used a HK eSIM, to have reliable and uncensored Internet. I hope that these aspects still remain intact for a long time, or that the rest of China will open up. At some point they should have the confidence in their own economy to compete on global scale.

StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
Last time, I checked Hong-Kong didn't become a free city but part of another country. So they have traded a master for another one. I am genuinely lost in your argument. You start against colonialism then justify Hong-Kong being reintegrated to China because they would have taken it by force anyway which is pretty much the same thing as colonialism. You then pivot to arguing HK was always going to be part of China for a reason I find unclear. Hong-Kong was never part of the PRC before the handover so I don't really see the appeal to continuity. Have you considered that people are not arguing for colonialism but actually against any form of coercitive control?
- zelphirkalt 9mo ago
  Why are you lost in the argument? The point I am making is, that it would be great to have both. HK as part of China, no longer a UK colony, but also having freedoms remain intact. Shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Furthermore, I am saying, that economically how HK has been handled does not make much sense, and that ideology was at play. Giving back HK might have been the only sensible move back then, and it might have bought HKers time and avoided a more open conflict, that wouldn't have ended well for HK. At least Wikipedia disagrees with your sentiment, that HK was never part of China. Well, technically you said "PRC", maybe even intentionally, and you could take some weird position of claiming, that nothing inside China is part of China, because it was a different entity before PRC. But then so do many countries all over the world lose any claim to their territory. Germany, after second world war, France after French revolution, most prominently the US, after its founding ... Historically, HK was a grab of land by the UK. Granted, they built something nice up there, but only after the despicable acts they committed historically in the region. If we get into what the UK did historically in the region, it will not lead to a moral high ground.
morsecodist 9mo ago
> HK always was bound to become a part of China Why so? Do you think Monaco should be part of France? Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia? A lot of big countries respect the sovereignty of neighboring smaller countries, although that is unfortunately becoming less true now. It isn't about colonialism. I have never seen anyone seriously argue it should go back to the British. It is about a framework to ensure they maintain their rights. It would be great if that looked like expanded rights for all of China but it can also look like some degree of sovereignty, which was in place for quite some time.
- Bayart 9mo ago
  > Do you think Monaco should be part of France? Monaco is already 90% part of France. There was an agreement until recently that Monaco would become French if the Princeship went extinct. By law the Prime Minister and the Police has to be French. France also handles their defense etc. It's very conditional sovereignty, the deal being that they can be a tax heaven if they want to, but not to France and Italy. > Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia? AFAIK they've been expelled from Malaysia after independence. I'm not trying to disprove your point, just that it's fluid and fragile. Sovereignty itself has only been conceptually defined with the Treaties of Westphalia, it's recent and quintessentially Western.
  - morsecodist 9mo ago
    This is kind of the point I am trying to make that sovereignty is somewhat of a spectrum and there are a lot of options for preserving parts of it. I think the Westphalia thing is somewhat overblown there were lots of sovereignty analogs throughout human history all over the world before that.
    - Bayart 9mo ago
      > I think the Westphalia thing is somewhat overblown there were lots of sovereignty analogs throughout human history all over the world before that. I'm sure you understand there's a deep qualitative difference between a thing existing and the same thing being described, formalized and conceptualized. The latter allows us to use it with intent. For example rationalism, which is a favoured subject on HN (I'm picking this because I've had a similar discussion recently with a friend of mine who uses to teach Philosophy, especially Epistemology, at UCSB) : it's obvious reason and structured rational thought existed before Descartes and Leibniz. But it's also undeniable there's been an extreme change is Human society after they defined it. Conceptualizing ends up bringing changes at the cognitive level to the entire species. It's not a very deeply researched subject because of the lag time between the written material and observable anthropological effects, but at this point it's common knowledge, even if intuitively. I'll digress for a bit and say that in my opinion there's a superior quality of knowledge, above Cartesianism, that'll I call informed intuitional. And I credit Srinivasa Ramanujan for forcefully bringing it back into Western Thought. [1] In any case regarding Sovereignty, once we're sophisticated enough we'll accept multiple sovereignty as the rule. I don't see why, for example, Monaco couldn't be all at the same time the Sovereign State of Monaco, part of French Department of Alpes Maritimes, part of the Italian Province of Imperia and part of the European Federation. The specific conditions can be decided ad hoc with contract law, we've got the tools, we invented them. [1]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-genius-math-is-still-catching-up-20241021/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-gen...

StopDisinfo910 9mo ago

Last time, I checked Hong-Kong didn't become a free city but part of another country. So they have traded a master for another one. I am genuinely lost in your argument. You start against colonialism then justify Hong-Kong being reintegrated to China because they would have taken it by force anyway which is pretty much the same thing as colonialism. You then pivot to arguing HK was always going to be part of China for a reason I find unclear. Hong-Kong was never part of the PRC before the handover so I don't really see the appeal to continuity. Have you considered that people are not arguing for colonialism but actually against any form of coercitive control?

zelphirkalt 9mo ago
Why are you lost in the argument? The point I am making is, that it would be great to have both. HK as part of China, no longer a UK colony, but also having freedoms remain intact. Shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Furthermore, I am saying, that economically how HK has been handled does not make much sense, and that ideology was at play. Giving back HK might have been the only sensible move back then, and it might have bought HKers time and avoided a more open conflict, that wouldn't have ended well for HK. At least Wikipedia disagrees with your sentiment, that HK was never part of China. Well, technically you said "PRC", maybe even intentionally, and you could take some weird position of claiming, that nothing inside China is part of China, because it was a different entity before PRC. But then so do many countries all over the world lose any claim to their territory. Germany, after second world war, France after French revolution, most prominently the US, after its founding ... Historically, HK was a grab of land by the UK. Granted, they built something nice up there, but only after the despicable acts they committed historically in the region. If we get into what the UK did historically in the region, it will not lead to a moral high ground.

morsecodist 9mo ago

> HK always was bound to become a part of China Why so? Do you think Monaco should be part of France? Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia? A lot of big countries respect the sovereignty of neighboring smaller countries, although that is unfortunately becoming less true now. It isn't about colonialism. I have never seen anyone seriously argue it should go back to the British. It is about a framework to ensure they maintain their rights. It would be great if that looked like expanded rights for all of China but it can also look like some degree of sovereignty, which was in place for quite some time.

Bayart 9mo ago
> Do you think Monaco should be part of France? Monaco is already 90% part of France. There was an agreement until recently that Monaco would become French if the Princeship went extinct. By law the Prime Minister and the Police has to be French. France also handles their defense etc. It's very conditional sovereignty, the deal being that they can be a tax heaven if they want to, but not to France and Italy. > Do you think Singapore should be part of Malaysia? AFAIK they've been expelled from Malaysia after independence. I'm not trying to disprove your point, just that it's fluid and fragile. Sovereignty itself has only been conceptually defined with the Treaties of Westphalia, it's recent and quintessentially Western.
- morsecodist 9mo ago
  This is kind of the point I am trying to make that sovereignty is somewhat of a spectrum and there are a lot of options for preserving parts of it. I think the Westphalia thing is somewhat overblown there were lots of sovereignty analogs throughout human history all over the world before that.
  - Bayart 9mo ago
    > I think the Westphalia thing is somewhat overblown there were lots of sovereignty analogs throughout human history all over the world before that. I'm sure you understand there's a deep qualitative difference between a thing existing and the same thing being described, formalized and conceptualized. The latter allows us to use it with intent. For example rationalism, which is a favoured subject on HN (I'm picking this because I've had a similar discussion recently with a friend of mine who uses to teach Philosophy, especially Epistemology, at UCSB) : it's obvious reason and structured rational thought existed before Descartes and Leibniz. But it's also undeniable there's been an extreme change is Human society after they defined it. Conceptualizing ends up bringing changes at the cognitive level to the entire species. It's not a very deeply researched subject because of the lag time between the written material and observable anthropological effects, but at this point it's common knowledge, even if intuitively. I'll digress for a bit and say that in my opinion there's a superior quality of knowledge, above Cartesianism, that'll I call informed intuitional. And I credit Srinivasa Ramanujan for forcefully bringing it back into Western Thought. [1] In any case regarding Sovereignty, once we're sophisticated enough we'll accept multiple sovereignty as the rule. I don't see why, for example, Monaco couldn't be all at the same time the Sovereign State of Monaco, part of French Department of Alpes Maritimes, part of the Italian Province of Imperia and part of the European Federation. The specific conditions can be decided ad hoc with contract law, we've got the tools, we invented them. [1]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-genius-math-is-still-catching-up-20241021/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-gen...