4 ms·

Remember Hong Kong

72 points by throw0101d 15d ago

boxed 15d ago
This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.
- kstenerud 15d ago
  > This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right. No, it wasn't. It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
  - boxed 15d ago
    It was right every day after the communists took over China. That's quite a few years. And it was wrong of the UK to give back Hong Kong, as can be clearly seen today as China can't be trusted to honor the treaty, and certainly not be trusted to treat its citizens with a minimum of dignity.
    - vrganj 15d ago
      Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK and the fact they were treated differently from other Chinese citizens in the first place is a historic injustice rooted in the UK's desire to force Chinese citizens into opium addiction for their own profit? Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?
      - Starman_Jones 15d ago
        Why should one party to an agreement hold the other party accountable to the terms of the agreement?
        vrganj 15d ago
        Why should anyone honor an agreement with the drug dealer that attacked you so they could keep selling drugs and stole some of your property in the process? If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.
        Starman_Jones 15d ago
        Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.
        KaiserPro 15d ago
        Why should the UK have any agreement with France, who for so long agitated and sponsored terorism in the UK? Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago? Or russia that killed parts of our royal family? Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936) the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)
        deleted 15d ago
        [deleted]
      - boxed 14d ago
        > Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK Humane treatment of humans is the business of all humans everywhere. > Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P
        vrganj 14d ago
        Who are you to define what is humane? Is the treatment of the homeless and the drug addicts in the capitalist US humane? Why don't you prioritize the humane treatment in your own backyard before lecturing a country on the other end of the world about your ideas? The universalism rings real shallow when the particular isn't even dealt with yet. > Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P I would recommend refamiliarizing yourself with the HN guidelines.
  - thaumasiotes 15d ago
    Note that the lease was on the mainland part of Hong Kong. The island was conquered outright and Britain formally owned it in perpetuity.
  - KaiserPro 15d ago
    > How they got the lease in the first place is another matter. Are you suggesting that flooding a country with opium so that the ruling classes would sell them tea, causing huge addiction, is somehow immoral? Its not the british empires finest moment. mind you, france, portugal and the USA were very happy to collude with us to get decent trading terms. (hence why there are some really well preserved portugese style neighbourhoods in Macau )
- ii41 15d ago
  Well no. This series of events happened exactly because the laws set up by colonial British would let loose a murderer. Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.
  - spaqin 15d ago
    nice rephrase of the story; the extradition bill was written in a very convenient way that somehow included completely unrelated to the case PRC that normal people would have rightful doubts about sounds like the whole op was a setup from the very beginning, very convenient indeed and i wouldn't put it past them to even plan a murder
31337Logic 15d ago
...and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
jmclnx 15d ago
At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK. Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.
- ramesh31 15d ago
  As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.
  - camillomiller 15d ago
    So, America good, China bad?
    - ramesh31 15d ago
      >"So, America good, China bad?" No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
      - jackb4040 15d ago
        A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
        rayiner 15d ago
        > In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire. This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
roenxi 15d ago
> Millions of Hong Kongers were determined to keep the freedom they had enjoyed. The CCP has won, at least for now. Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades. It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.
garou 15d ago
USA propaganda. They try to weaken any democracy so they seems the least worst option. (Of course there is other "worst option" countries, who wants to live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Rwanda, Uganda, Etc.? [allies of usa]).
- phantomathkg 15d ago
  Propaganda of what? If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.
  - garou 15d ago
    [flagged]
camillomiller 15d ago
This is bad American propaganda. I’m sorry but what Hong Kong are we talking about? And what advantages of democracy are we talking about? Unbridled inequalities fostered by a crooked ruling class with absolutely zero respect for international laws and diplomatic order? This narrative could work when the US were still disguising their true nature. Nowadays… not so much
- boxed 15d ago
  [flagged]
  - garou 15d ago
    the usa propaganda is strong on you
    - lenerdenator 15d ago
      It's not propaganda. It's just the result of the policies that the CCP has implemented in the past, and given their death grip on politics in China, it could very well happen again should it be found advantageous to the survival of the party.
    - boxed 15d ago
      Even the CCP admits the starvations they created under Mao dude.
- F3nd0 15d ago
  Democracy ≠ US.
est 15d ago
Here's how it started https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing A guy commited homicide and walks free after 19 months in jail.
- ii41 15d ago
  And those "Free Hong Kong" protesters were for him, not against him.
sajithdilshan 15d ago
> We should not let Hong Kong fade away. We should not let Joshua Wong fade away. Or Jimmy Lai, or others Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.
- jplrssn 15d ago
  > Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems. Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?
  - sajithdilshan 15d ago
    I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo. Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business
    - jplrssn 15d ago
      > I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo. Fair enough, but many have the ability to empathise with people even if they don’t know them personally.
      - sajithdilshan 15d ago
        True, but empathy and calling for actions is two different things
aurareturn 15d ago
I was living in Hong Kong when the protests first started and stayed through the entire 2019 year. First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged. Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically. Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government. [0]https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-crisis-an-underlying-factor-in-the-2019-riots/ https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-cris... [1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-affordable-housing-feeds-hong-kongs-discontent https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-afford... [2]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001
- lenerdenator 15d ago
  > Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.
  - garou 15d ago
    ICE is so healthy…
    - lenerdenator 15d ago
      You're right. Violent authoritarian thugs are bad. There should be systems in place to sweep them away. Ideally, through peaceful means. I'd be interested to see what has been implemented with regard to this under the stewardship of the CCP.
swiftcoder 15d ago
The return of Hong Kong to China is the first global news item I really remember from my childhood (the death of Princess Dianna shortly thereafter being the second). One really felt a shift in england that day: this then is the final nail in the coffin of the british empire. I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.
- rwmj 15d ago
  One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.
m4r1k 15d ago
Through my hong kongese friends, I got pretty active in the 2019 umbrella protest. To me, one of the most impressive image of that era is the Kai Lan Egg japanese-styke manga use to show the world and the CCP what was going on. https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-art-kai-lan-egg/ https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-...
- usui 15d ago
  Wow that artist is nice. Reading that unlocked a memory of this animated video https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"
  - m4r1k 15d ago
    it is so depressing even after this many years. Thanks for sharing the video, I forgot about it ..
jackb4040 15d ago
They really fucked up when they started wearing Maga hats and making signs asking Donald Trump to save them. Personal feelings aside, it was a strategic mistake and completely turned China and probably a majority of HK itself against them. And obviously they did not get the intervention they were looking for. If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.
- mytailorisrich 15d ago
  Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910
maxglute 15d ago
HK topics seems to active disproportionate amount of almonds in western discourse. 10-15 years from now, new HK gen under decolonized patrioitc education going to be thoroughly Sinicized and wonder why west still can't take the L.
- mieses 14d ago
  I don't like almonds and AI word-salads very much. Walnuts are yummy.
maeln 15d ago
I found that (like many things) it's impossible to talk about the HK protest (and somewhat HK future) on the internet. Aside from the obvious trolls, the misinformed and those with a vested interest in pushing a narrative, the protest in themselves regrouped a lot of people, had a lot of things going on, and make you able to push whatever narrative you want. They were some prodemocratic demonstrators. Laudable but sadly they had no chance of winning that fight. There were some genuinely weird people with weird demands too (like some far-right ultranationalist HKer). The attacks on some politician, journalist and medias, and extradition law passed at all cost, was a clear authoritarian push. But from a chinese perspective, it is just putting HK in line with the rest of the country. There was some weird disappearance of some protestor, the clear usage of the triad to inflict violence on some protestor, and some protestors turn violent too. One could say, every country would react the same to a part of a country trying to secede. But if we look at, for example, Spain and Catalonia, will independence is firmly denied, there was way less violence and authoritarianism (Catalonia still have some special status). All in all, the sad part is that some well-meaning idealistic kids might never be able to go back to HK. And with the integration with china, HK will slowly lose its identify and distinct culture. Now that it's no different than most other chinese territory, there is no real interest for foreign investor to invest there specifically, which was a part of what made HK rich. Its landscape will probably change a lot as the land value is not as prized anymore (which, tbf, might be a win for a lot of HKer). A lot of HKer now move to the bigger and richer Shenzhen for work, as more mandarin-speaking chinese move to HK. There are too many speakers for Cantonese to disappear overnight, but it might become a secondary language for most over time. The one you use to talk with you grandparent and feel slightly unique.

Remember Hong Kong

72 points by throw0101d 15d ago

boxed 15d ago

This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.

kstenerud 15d ago
> This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right. No, it wasn't. It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.
- boxed 15d ago
  It was right every day after the communists took over China. That's quite a few years. And it was wrong of the UK to give back Hong Kong, as can be clearly seen today as China can't be trusted to honor the treaty, and certainly not be trusted to treat its citizens with a minimum of dignity.
  - vrganj 15d ago
    Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK and the fact they were treated differently from other Chinese citizens in the first place is a historic injustice rooted in the UK's desire to force Chinese citizens into opium addiction for their own profit? Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?
    - Starman_Jones 15d ago
      Why should one party to an agreement hold the other party accountable to the terms of the agreement?
      - vrganj 15d ago
        Why should anyone honor an agreement with the drug dealer that attacked you so they could keep selling drugs and stole some of your property in the process? If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.
        Starman_Jones 15d ago
        Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.
        KaiserPro 15d ago
        Why should the UK have any agreement with France, who for so long agitated and sponsored terorism in the UK? Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago? Or russia that killed parts of our royal family? Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936) the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)
        deleted 15d ago
        [deleted]
    - boxed 14d ago
      > Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK Humane treatment of humans is the business of all humans everywhere. > Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P
      - vrganj 14d ago
        Who are you to define what is humane? Is the treatment of the homeless and the drug addicts in the capitalist US humane? Why don't you prioritize the humane treatment in your own backyard before lecturing a country on the other end of the world about your ideas? The universalism rings real shallow when the particular isn't even dealt with yet. > Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P I would recommend refamiliarizing yourself with the HN guidelines.
- thaumasiotes 15d ago
  Note that the lease was on the mainland part of Hong Kong. The island was conquered outright and Britain formally owned it in perpetuity.
- KaiserPro 15d ago
  > How they got the lease in the first place is another matter. Are you suggesting that flooding a country with opium so that the ruling classes would sell them tea, causing huge addiction, is somehow immoral? Its not the british empires finest moment. mind you, france, portugal and the USA were very happy to collude with us to get decent trading terms. (hence why there are some really well preserved portugese style neighbourhoods in Macau )
ii41 15d ago
Well no. This series of events happened exactly because the laws set up by colonial British would let loose a murderer. Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.
- spaqin 15d ago
  nice rephrase of the story; the extradition bill was written in a very convenient way that somehow included completely unrelated to the case PRC that normal people would have rightful doubts about sounds like the whole op was a setup from the very beginning, very convenient indeed and i wouldn't put it past them to even plan a murder

31337Logic 15d ago

...and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

jmclnx 15d ago

At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK. Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.

ramesh31 15d ago
As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.
- camillomiller 15d ago
  So, America good, China bad?
  - ramesh31 15d ago
    >"So, America good, China bad?" No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
    - jackb4040 15d ago
      A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
      - rayiner 15d ago
        > In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire. This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.

roenxi 15d ago

> Millions of Hong Kongers were determined to keep the freedom they had enjoyed. The CCP has won, at least for now. Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades. It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.

garou 15d ago

USA propaganda. They try to weaken any democracy so they seems the least worst option. (Of course there is other "worst option" countries, who wants to live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Rwanda, Uganda, Etc.? [allies of usa]).

phantomathkg 15d ago
Propaganda of what? If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.
- garou 15d ago
  [flagged]

camillomiller 15d ago

This is bad American propaganda. I’m sorry but what Hong Kong are we talking about? And what advantages of democracy are we talking about? Unbridled inequalities fostered by a crooked ruling class with absolutely zero respect for international laws and diplomatic order? This narrative could work when the US were still disguising their true nature. Nowadays… not so much

boxed 15d ago
[flagged]
- garou 15d ago
  the usa propaganda is strong on you
  - lenerdenator 15d ago
    It's not propaganda. It's just the result of the policies that the CCP has implemented in the past, and given their death grip on politics in China, it could very well happen again should it be found advantageous to the survival of the party.
  - boxed 15d ago
    Even the CCP admits the starvations they created under Mao dude.
F3nd0 15d ago
Democracy ≠ US.

est 15d ago

Here's how it started https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing A guy commited homicide and walks free after 19 months in jail.

ii41 15d ago
And those "Free Hong Kong" protesters were for him, not against him.

sajithdilshan 15d ago

> We should not let Hong Kong fade away. We should not let Joshua Wong fade away. Or Jimmy Lai, or others Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.

jplrssn 15d ago
> Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems. Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?
- sajithdilshan 15d ago
  I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo. Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business
  - jplrssn 15d ago
    > I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo. Fair enough, but many have the ability to empathise with people even if they don’t know them personally.
    - sajithdilshan 15d ago
      True, but empathy and calling for actions is two different things

aurareturn 15d ago

I was living in Hong Kong when the protests first started and stayed through the entire 2019 year. First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged. Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically. Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government. [0]https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-crisis-an-underlying-factor-in-the-2019-riots/ https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-cris... [1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-affordable-housing-feeds-hong-kongs-discontent https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-afford... [2]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001

lenerdenator 15d ago
> Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.
- garou 15d ago
  ICE is so healthy…
  - lenerdenator 15d ago
    You're right. Violent authoritarian thugs are bad. There should be systems in place to sweep them away. Ideally, through peaceful means. I'd be interested to see what has been implemented with regard to this under the stewardship of the CCP.

swiftcoder 15d ago

The return of Hong Kong to China is the first global news item I really remember from my childhood (the death of Princess Dianna shortly thereafter being the second). One really felt a shift in england that day: this then is the final nail in the coffin of the british empire. I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.

rwmj 15d ago
One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.

m4r1k 15d ago

Through my hong kongese friends, I got pretty active in the 2019 umbrella protest. To me, one of the most impressive image of that era is the Kai Lan Egg japanese-styke manga use to show the world and the CCP what was going on. https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-art-kai-lan-egg/ https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-...

usui 15d ago
Wow that artist is nice. Reading that unlocked a memory of this animated video https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"
- m4r1k 15d ago
  it is so depressing even after this many years. Thanks for sharing the video, I forgot about it ..

jackb4040 15d ago

They really fucked up when they started wearing Maga hats and making signs asking Donald Trump to save them. Personal feelings aside, it was a strategic mistake and completely turned China and probably a majority of HK itself against them. And obviously they did not get the intervention they were looking for. If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.

mytailorisrich 15d ago
Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910

maxglute 15d ago

HK topics seems to active disproportionate amount of almonds in western discourse. 10-15 years from now, new HK gen under decolonized patrioitc education going to be thoroughly Sinicized and wonder why west still can't take the L.

mieses 14d ago
I don't like almonds and AI word-salads very much. Walnuts are yummy.

maeln 15d ago

I found that (like many things) it's impossible to talk about the HK protest (and somewhat HK future) on the internet. Aside from the obvious trolls, the misinformed and those with a vested interest in pushing a narrative, the protest in themselves regrouped a lot of people, had a lot of things going on, and make you able to push whatever narrative you want. They were some prodemocratic demonstrators. Laudable but sadly they had no chance of winning that fight. There were some genuinely weird people with weird demands too (like some far-right ultranationalist HKer). The attacks on some politician, journalist and medias, and extradition law passed at all cost, was a clear authoritarian push. But from a chinese perspective, it is just putting HK in line with the rest of the country. There was some weird disappearance of some protestor, the clear usage of the triad to inflict violence on some protestor, and some protestors turn violent too. One could say, every country would react the same to a part of a country trying to secede. But if we look at, for example, Spain and Catalonia, will independence is firmly denied, there was way less violence and authoritarianism (Catalonia still have some special status). All in all, the sad part is that some well-meaning idealistic kids might never be able to go back to HK. And with the integration with china, HK will slowly lose its identify and distinct culture. Now that it's no different than most other chinese territory, there is no real interest for foreign investor to invest there specifically, which was a part of what made HK rich. Its landscape will probably change a lot as the land value is not as prized anymore (which, tbf, might be a win for a lot of HKer). A lot of HKer now move to the bigger and richer Shenzhen for work, as more mandarin-speaking chinese move to HK. There are too many speakers for Cantonese to disappear overnight, but it might become a secondary language for most over time. The one you use to talk with you grandparent and feel slightly unique.