As Protesters Fill Hong Kong’s Streets, Businesses Are Alarmed, Too | Hacker News Reader

As Protesters Fill Hong Kong’s Streets, Businesses Are Alarmed, Too

nytimes.com

209 pointsishikawa120 comments

I'm in Hong Kong and went to the protests today. This feels like a continuation of the '14 umbrella movement, which was ended by police force, and which left up pent-up anger in the whole population. It's the biggest protest since the march in '97 when HK was handed over to China from British rule.

When I was there, the protests were peaceful, but you could certainly feel a tension building up, with the crowds gathering metal poles and bricks. I spoke to the police a few times and they were nice and friendly, but were doing their job. There is absolutely zero question that almost the entire HK population opposes the extradition bill which sparked this whole mess. Unfortunately, there's little that can be done… "one country two system" hasn't been abided to by China for a long time, and there's nothing the population or the Brits can do about it.

(My perspective is that of a foreigner who recently moved here, not a life-long hongkonger. Feel free to ask me anything.)

Are there options for recalling the legislature or triggering new elections, similar to a British vote of no-confidence?

No, not really. The government has been stacked with pro-Beijing people, who have all the executive and legislative power. The only choice people have is to vote for new representative, from a slate of options picked out by the CCP.

That was the reason for the 3-month long '14 protests. You can see their effect today.

How did the HK government get stacked that way, though - does the CCP formally pick out candidates, or is there something else going on?

The legislature isn't fully democratically elected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Ko...

In fact the pro-Beijing groups have never actually won an election, but always controlled Legco: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-democracy_camp_(Hong_Kon...

(To be fair, similar but less extreme issues exist in the United States where executive and legislative power doesn't cleanly map to votes)

There are no paramilitary/security forces loyal to Hong Kong capable of a coup, right? Just trying to put it in context with contentious protests in other nations.

The short answer is no. The People's Liberation Army has a Hong Kong garrison with ~6000 troops that could crush pretty much any coup attempt. The only security force that could even in theory do what you are asking about would be the HK police force which has ~30000 officers.

This doesn't even get into the bigger logistical issues around HK severing ties to mainland china. Last I checked HK is depended on water from the mainland which makes being fully independent of mainland china basically impossible.

6000 troops isn't alot

6000 troops on the ground locally, with support from the largest standing army in the world nearby.

More than enough to deal with any other form of armed opposition in the city. There is a question of just how far the PLA would be willing to go if things got out of hand, but that really isn't something anyone wants to test.

I disagree. A government usually requires less than 4% of the population forming an armed resistance to remove them, the protests have turned out about 14%. Assuming your typical home made bomb kills about 4 soldiers it would take 1500 bombs and that's not even including casualties from other things, a single person could probably accrue that across the span of about a year if they built 4 a day. 12 people could do it in a month, plus say 40 people for carrying out the operations and acquisition of materials, give or take so lets say 60 people per unit of the resistance, that's like 280000 resistance operations going simultaneously. Obviously I'm making alot of assumptions here, but I think they're reasonable. The real tricky bit is what you do after you remove the government as demonstrated by Libya and Syria.

It is if no one else has guns.

Please let us know how those of us overseas can be helpful. It’s tragic to be witnessing the disassembly of a system of limited democracy and rule of law like this, by force.

The bigger question might be, what price are you willing to pay? The Communist Party of China is now deeply entwined in the global economy.

I have an opposite view: once US and China disentangle via the complete tariff on all Chinese goods in June, China will become inward focused and isolationist, part of the protectionist trends around the world. It will have way less trade ties with others, since low end manufacturing will have completed its move out of China

Europe is a very important component there as well. The EU plus wider Europe is an economy the size of the US, so a very substantial part of the global economy to say the least.

It remains to be seen exactly how Europe will go in regards to dealing with China. I think that will have a considerable impact on the extent of China's economic isolation, if that is to be (assuming they don't liberalize access to their economy and end various negative trade practices).

Obviously most of the major economies of Europe are increasingly debating how to handle China. In terms of potentially limiting China's access to their markets, limiting the ability of China to buy their companies, forced technology transfer, and so on. The outcome of which way/s Europe breaks on this topic is an interesting wrench in the whole thing (eg Western Europe might put up further defenses, while parts of Southern Europe and Eastern Europe + Russia may go more heavily with China).

If you're eg German automobile makers or Italian & French fashion / cosmetics companies (LVMH is drowning in Chinese sales presently, making Bernard Arnault worth nearly $100b), you desperately want to maintain full access to China at low tariffs.

I would bet against any unified European action based on recent history and bet on "generally taking no action and leaving China relations to the member countries." This will almost certainly play to China's advantage as e.g. voters in France will ask why they aren't trading from China while Italy and Greece are benefiting from it.

Germany (the most powerful country in the EU) is particularly benefiting from trade with China, which also doesn't bode well.

I would love for it to turn out otherwise though.

The EU can only take unified (in)action on trade with China. Common trade agreements is one of the fundamental parts of the EU.

Had no idea he was worth a 100 B!

But China had started to take more control over Hong Kong well before any protectionist trends. Maybe they took the West’s blasé attitude as a signal that they could get away with anything, including concentration camps.

>since low end manufacturing will have completed its move out of China

This is not a quick, simple process. You don't need to just move your factory equipment from one building to another one on the different side of the border. You'll need to train new workers and quality staff, you'll probably need to adjust your supply base, you'll need to validate your processes. China still makes most of the consumer goods that an average person has, and it will continue to be that way for a while. They've spent decades creating an ecosystem of manufacturers, and that can't just be replicated overnight

Spread the word of the misdeeds? China had been censoring locally and abroad.

I don't have any real answers and I don't know that there is really much that can be done.

At the very least this should not be swept under the rug, I would want everyone to know what is happening. If the CCP can get away with it and pretend nothing ever happened, then they win.

Is there police from mainland China or are they local to HK? Would they always side with mainland interests?

nope.. Only local HK police.

From what I’ve read in British sources, there are persistent rumors about this but it’s all officially denied.

Local HK police.

>Would they always side with mainland interests?

It's not as if HK has means to resist the PLA, so...more than likely, yes.

Police from HK, military forces from China (though they're not involved in these matters). But like in most civilized countries, the police is there to uphold current law and order, not to side with some national or political interest.

China Tiananmen square incident, the local military wouldn't get rid of protestors. The government had to get military further away to do it.

With Hong Kong, the government can't do it as the country is too small. The only option is Chinese military. If you say the Chinese military is there, then a massacre is inevitable.

Local HK police, of which most have a deep hatred towards the protestors since the 2014 Occupy and have been waiting for opportunities to carry out revenge. Such sentiments were on full display yesterday.

There is a regiment of PLA troops inside the SAR, but they are not supposed to police anything.

The HK police won't disobey its government. If they did, it'd give China an excuse to use its army in HK which would undoubtedly make things an order of magnitude worse.

for some reason, that sort of reminds me of Colony on netflix

> and there's nothing the population or the Brits can do about it.

Do you see this attitude reflected in the other protestors you've met there?

Pretty much. I don't think anyone has much hope of achieving change, but they protest anyways because they feel it's their civic duty.

From what I gather from people, their only hope is that the international & business communities put enough pressure on Beijing to get them to back down. It seems quite unlikely at this point, but that doesn't make the protesters less passionate

I think if you are a businessman/woman that have significant assets in China, you must be aware that the current Chinese government is fighting 4 wars right now:

1.) political conflict between xi jing Ping the new guards, and the old guards that control the state owned firms

2.) internal conflicts in xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong

3.) near neighbor conflicts with Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia

4.) trade war with US and its allies (Japan, EU, Canada, Mexico, etc)

And the Chinese government doesn’t have the financial or the political assets to fight any of these wars, let alone all 4 at once. IMO it is losing all of them right now.

So if you were a businessman, it is probably safe to move out of such a risky place for your assets

Government said it would fight at 'all cost'. And we the people are the cost.

BTW, I put my bet on that PBSC member Han Zheng, who is in charge of Hong Kong affairs, would be scolded for mismanagement of on-going situation some day near future.

Han is a bloke in my opinion.

One of the quietest senior government figures, who was very likely given a high post just for that.

In line of premiership, the only person with political credentials is the last in line, fourth vice premier — Liu, and all others are pretty much "seat fillers"

Take a note, Liu is the only somewhat senior bureaucrat other than Wang with a personal connection to Xi, but even he was given no access to real executive power.

5.) Currency war featuring declining FX reserves and RMB devaluation.

6.) Economic war evidenced by domestic economic slowdown across most sectors, most recently autos.

7.) Influence war whereby increasing numbers of Asian and African countries are questioning China investment and loan agreements.

That said, displacing China's preeminent role as the world's manufacturer and low cost supplier (still) for many products doesn't disappear overnight. They have plenty of standing and resources to wait out the remainder of Trump's administration and - they hope - to encounter China friendly leadership post-Trump.

Good pickups on the other wars. I would actually say China is the midst of its own Great Depression right now.

I think their strategies to wait out trump is misguided. By the time he leaves office, most of the manufacturing will have already moved out. For example, a recent poll for Japanese business have said 60% of them have already left or are leaving within the year.

What's the evidence for #7? I know there's been some grumbling in the US about belt-and-road initiatives, but always figured it could be a sour grapes type situation being pushed domestically.

Can you share anything on (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...

Is that unusual for a superpower?

For example, the US government is fighting wars in the Middle East, the aforementioned trade war, internal conflicts between the increasingly radicalized left&right, and to say there's political conflict is a bit of an understatement.

> Is that unusual for a superpower?

China is a regional power, not a superpower. (Its long-range force projection capabilities are limited.)

China’s battles are all closer to home and more existential than America’s. (At least right now.) There is also the policy entrenchment that comes with Xi being a dictator.

There's roughly three levels of "superpower" as I see it

1) You can do what you want in your region and mostly tell the rest of the world to shove it (e.g. Monroe doctrine, annexation of Crimea, etc.)

2) You can do what you want worldwide but can't do it without consent of the local superpowers (e.g. The British getting tacit US permission to whack Argentina in the 80s)

3) You can do whatever the heck you want, where you want and it's up to everyone else to deal. (e.g. the USSR starting the Cuban missile crisis, the US invading Iraq).

China is a 1 right now but all the pieces are there for them to jump to a 2 or 3 quickly. They aren't lacking manpower, money, internal political cohesion or tech. They just need to practice and get good and they could be a 2 or 3. Obviously this has a lot of people in the west worried because we haven't had to deal an authoritarian regime that was a superpower on the world stage since the USSR fell apart.

What's your definition of superpower that it doesn't apply to all three out of USA, Russia and China? China is very much a superpower, just look at the "Made in ..." labels on the things you are using.

#3 you forgot India, Bhutan and Japan

It’s certainly more comforting to imagine that Xi is losing all four wars. But I do not see effective opposition anywhere. The party has lost, hence the removal of term limits. There is no effective protest in Xinjiang or Tibet. HK will soon follow once pan-democrats can be extradited and executed. China has the advantage in the South China Sea in that it has the equivalent of several aircraft carriers in the islands it controls under the status quo. It is only the trade war that might go awry for Xi, and rare earths are a relatively credible threat.

I would however withdraw money, because loss on those fronts isn’t necessary to cause unhelpful instability.

So for the political conflict, it’s loss for xi for the moment because the trade deal was rejected by the old guards. For the internal conflicts, Hong Kong is a wildcard and I wouldn’t count out how powerful a shutdown of the Hong Kong economy is. For the neighbor conflicts, Philippines and Australia used to be somewhat on the Chinese side but that has completely flipped the last year or two. Philippines just slammed China today for sinking Philippines fishing boat and called them ‘cowardly’. And the pro China members were voted out in Australia governments. As for Taiwan, it has got bolstered support from US, new arms deal, and its top presidential candidates have distanced themselves from China

In a Vox doc I just saw about HK they mention it is only 3% of China's economy.

That's massive

Ultimately, China owns Hong Kong and will subsume Hong Kong sooner or later. What leverage does HK have besides taking to the streets every few years? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests)

Because the Hong Kongers had a belief in Basic Law. They had a belief in the universal human right to that No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This the Communist Party of China rejects.

The Hong Kongers believe that All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. This the Communist Party of China rejects.

They believe that Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. This the Communist Party of China rejects.

They make these protests because they stand for human rights that the CPC rejects. They wish to make it known to the CPC and to the world what they stand for. They may eventually fall to the cruelty of the CPC, but not just yet.

The trouble is that the Hong Kongers who could do something about it relocated to Vancouver twenty years ago.

Mostly: trade relationships other countries have that are specifically relationships with Hong Kong, rather than with China generally; where, sometimes, those other nations aren't even interested in trading with China generally, only with Hong Kong specifically.

To the degree that China wants to maintain these relationships (and capture the GDP they represent), they treat Hong Kong as a peer. To the degree that China has built replacements for these relationships, they treat Hong Kong as a vassal.

At this point, the only thing I can think of that might work is a scorched earth policy like Switzerland has but they need to be ready willing and able to carry it out.

All the businesses that can move to another country should start doing so now.

> a scorched earth policy like Switzerland has

I'm not sure what this refers to, and I'm having trouble finding anything about it. Could you clarify?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Redoubt_(Switzerland)

Lots of explosives on critical infrastructure like bridges and tunnels. I just looked it up and it looks like they removed the last of them a few years ago so it's no longer a thing.

Anyways, besides nuclear deterrence, a suicide pact is about the only thing I could think would work as defense against a major global military power.

Tell me more about Switzerland's scorched earth policy

> Tell me more about Switzerland's scorched earth policy

Self-sabotage, mostly through destruction of critical transport infrastructure as front advances.

The only thing I can come with HK, it is it being played in Lamma channel, if it can be blocked by scuttled ships.

If HK want to go that way, it will not win much things other than time. If PLA will really launch an operation, it only has to turn off water pumps, and wait.

> If PLA will really launch an operation, it only has to turn off water pumps, and wait.

Can you elaborate?

Most of HK water comes from China

I understand the concept of scorched earth -- I just didn't know that Switzerland had any such plan (perhaps during the Cold War?) ... I wanted to read more about their plan specifically if you have any links.

This was more during WWII, when they were worried about a German invasion to secure more direct access to Italy.

Swiss strategy was generally to be costly to invade, and for its independence not to cause Germany any trouble. The National Redoubt strategy was as much a deterrent as a plan.

Rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

Mainland China has no independent juridical system. Only reason to establish business there is if your business does something in China and you have to be there. You never use it as financial or business center for the operations in elsewhere.

The success of Hong Kong and Singapore is based on good legal framework. They are ranked among the best judicial systems in Asia. Businesses feels safe run business from there. Abu Dhabi financial center decided to emulate them. They created fully independent common law framework to adjudicate civil and commercial disputes.

It's possible that China decides to get rid of the law, but it will eventually bite them back financially.

I think it's a telling statistic that since the handover, Hong Kong has gone from 18% of China's GDP to 3%. Granted, some of that may be the mainland playing games with GDP numbers, but HK isn't quite the same indispensable a golden-goose anymore.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-1...

10% of Chinese exports are to HK.

HK is tiny. The importance of HK for China is in international trade and finance.

I think Beijing cares about how the people of Taiwan perceive Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. If Taiwan views Beijing as a repressive regime then the independence movement would gain popularity.

> If Taiwan views Beijing as a repressive regime then the independence movement would gain popularity.

Is this even a question anymore? It seems like a given that Taiwan views Beijing as repressive, and the political differences in Taiwan are over how to deal with that reality: fight it or don't rock the boat.

What I wonder is what happens when China realizes it has nothing to gain by feigning acceptance of one country with two systems.

I would guess that is just the untapped potential of China's large population starting to be realized as the country developed in recent decades. Hong Kong only has 8 million people.

But yeah, it seems reasonable that this change in relative economic strength would affect the political dynamics.

> What leverage does HK have besides taking to the streets every few years?

Beijing is violating an agreement lodged with the UN.

The protesters just need to get the population in a G7 country pissed off enough to turn this bill into an international issue, thereby increasing the cost of its introduction to Beijing.

> Beijing is violating an agreement lodged with the UN.

Oh how I wish this mattered, but the UN has time and time again proven itself to be the world's most expensive essay-writing club and little more. What exactly are they going to do?

> What exactly are they going to do?

Nothing. As you said, the UN is toothless.

What having an agreement lodged with the UN does is properly escalate this into an international issue. That makes it easier for governments to react. Those reactions could be harshly-worded statements, diplomatic mediation or even the threat of sanctions.

People seem to mistake the UN for what is truely meant to be. The UN is not some government which can enforce agreements. Its mainly a "meeting room" for global and local powers to resolve conflict if they wish.

At the end of the day, this is still hugely important to prevent unnecessary war or conflict, but the UN is still bound by the actual realities on the ground, not the legal framework that sits above the reality.

It can act very decisively and strongly... when it's not trying to go against the interests of a veto-holding member of the Security Council. Can do a lot to Iran, can't do a lot about China.

USA is taking China on for violating WTO. The result is everyone saying it could be WW3. I don't think any other country will dare challenge China alone

Without smart phones and social media this could easily be 1989 all over again.

I'm not a huge fan of social media, but its ability to hold governments accountable is one of the truly transformative aspects of it.

I wish we could distill that aspect off it and discard the rest.

Accountable? What has this done to the Chinese government? They do not give half a fuck most likely. They've crushed bigger revolts, with more of the world's eyeballs watching. Social media just makes it easier to build this crowd. Sadly, that just provides a bigger crowd to crush.

Have they started crushing anyone with tanks yet?

I think you are being hyperbolic and ignoring the impact of the entire world watching these protests in real time vs a couple of journalists taking candid photos from hotel rooms and calling in to their home offices.

The world watched ukraine be split in half. The world IS watching the uyghur population in china being enslaved. The world's been doing an awful lot of watching lately...not much acting.

What can the world do? Military action against china? Insane. More trade sanctions? what what will we wear and where will we get batteries and plastics?

You are comparing direct military action to civilian protests.

I don't like what happened in Ukraine, but there is no realistic resolution to that problem without starting a world war. I don't like it but that's how it is.

The Uyghur's are another issue, and I feel like it supports my position more than yours. We wouldn't even know about what is happening to them without social media. The world is watching now.

Same could be said for the Rohinga.

The world sucks, and governments do evil shit all the time. The difference now is that they can't hide behind their lies.

> without starting a world war.

Without starting a flame war, lets check thoroughly if it is actually the case.

1. Who are Russian allies? How many of them? How much will their military capability contribute to fighting force? Answer: 0

2. Can enough Nato forces be deployed to decisively push the front? Yes

3. Can casualty ratio be sustained? Yes

4. Can subsequent enemy counterattack be made wasteful? Can your logistics train support prolonged defense? Yes, Nato militaries' trademark is tenths of kilometres long area denial killzones, enough to outrange even TBMs and nuclear artillery. American military logistics is second to none.

5. Can your gains be secured without you having to push further into enemy territory? Yes, to begin with, it was Russia here that had to operate across natural barriers, and frontline bottlenecks.

6. All of above boils down to conventional positional warfare.

Nato countries had all tools they need to enforce global order all these years, but they didn't because of their weak will.

When the Union collapsed, you saw a wave of all kinds of dictatorships and satrapies falling down or softening up, all because they knew that there is no longer a big guy behind their backs now, and that Nato can to "desert storm" any of them 10 times over.

All and everything was setup for the West to police the world for 3 decades, and use that time to clean the world from rouge states, but no, the West choose to simply walk away from that opportunity.

I think in a conventional war then yeah NATO clearly has the upper hand except that niggling doubt of "Do we really want to kill tens of thousands of soldiers belonging to a country with enough ICBM's to end global civilization".

The risk/reward is out of whack, the US and it's allies aren't going to risk it for a non-NATO allied country (even if we promised that we would after the cold war) because of that.

Since WWII the US and Soviets (then Russia) have never thought even a limited conventional war, it's always been by proxy or the odd pilot never people is US army uniforms shooting at people in Russian uniforms (or vice versa).

It has the capacity to go so very very wrong.

> enough ICBM's to end global civilization

There are enough conventional munitions stockpiled by major power to do this 10 times more than with ICBMs alone. A nuclear confrontation will not be the end of any global scale conflict today.

You think the major powers have the equivalant of 8 billion tonnes of TNT in conventional munitions?

Because I don't.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nwhmt.html

You don't need to completely vaporise a city to effectively "end the civilisation" within it.

Except you said.

> There are enough conventional munitions stockpiled by major power to do this 10 times more than with ICBMs alone

Now you are saying that you don't have to vapourise a city.

Except there are enough nukes to obliterate every major city on the planet with the side effects killing the rest.

You can’t fight a conventional war with a nuclear power.

Even with smartphones and social media, there's no reason it can't be 1989 again. Social media is controlled by the government in China; it's not like people get to discuss 1989 today.

Question: why is Taiwan okay with being involved in this bill? It seems strange since this bill is so much more beneficial to China than to Taiwan, and since if/when Taiwan returns to the fold it will likely be subjected to these same tactics. From the BBC:

>The [bill] came after a 19-year-old Hong Kong man allegedly murdered his 20-year-old pregnant girlfriend while they were holidaying in Taiwan together in February last year. The man fled to Hong Kong and could not be extradited to Taiwan because the two do not have an extradition treaty. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48615161

> why is Taiwan okay with being involved in this bill?

Taiwan supports the protesters [1]. Beijing threw Taiwan into the bill as a loose justification.

[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/taiwan-expresses...

Taiwan is not okay with the bill.

From the article you linked:

”Taiwanese Prime Minister Tsai Ing-wen tweeted that her nation supported the protesters' "demands for freedom".”

wow! "Prime minister" in order to avoid the fact that she is President.

Nice trolling. I see the pro prc upvoters have kept you upvoted while he downvoted the other dude with the legit answer

Actually I only just looked in on this thread. Whatever you saw was users, not mods.

Pro-PRC? Have a look at the hostile media effect: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Also https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hong%20kong%22%20points%3E3...

Links are legit. Updated. Didn’t mean to be rude

It was a legitimate question not intended as trolling. The other replies gave exactly the kind of information I was hoping for to clear up my confusion.

Businesses that were still acting like HK was not destined to become indistinguishable from China have only themselves to blame - especially since China stated that it no longer considered a treaty it signed with the British to be relevant (the irony of the non-british party reneging on a treaty signed with the British is not lost on me).

Mostly I feel sorry for the actual citizens of HK :-(

http://archive.is/0lnMW

Does Hong Kong enable foreign companies to do business with a China in a way that is not replaceable?

Might this be an indirect hit against Trump' tariffs by the Chinese Govt?

The UK should have given the people of Hong Kong full citizenship before handing control back to China. It's a disgrace that we allow China to mistreat the people of a former British territory.

The people of Hong Kong should have been just as entitled to self determination as any other people, and establishing full democracy and self governance would've been the ideal solution. But China apparently made it clear in the 60s that it would retake the territories with force if Britain tried to do that, so it was forced to remain a territory until handover.

To my knowledge, while this is not the case for all HK citizens, special considerations were given to professionals (at least, medical professionals), who wished to obtain UK citizenship.

It might not have been full citizenship, however.

While some fault can be given to the UK for not pressing it harder, China was not willing to accept that (for ethnic Chinese; non-ethnic-Chinese weren't granted Chinese citizenship).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas)

Fun fact: China also blocked universal suffrage for HK pre-1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_development_in_Hong...

> It's a disgrace that we allow China to mistreat the people of a former British territory.

Do you know how many people of former British (and French, and Dutch, and German) territories are mistreated? Why the faux outrage here?

I'm not familiar with the case surrounding other British territories however this is one case that is still within recent living memory and not something that happened 80/100/200 years ago. Many of those within Hong Kong who were given BNO passports are still quite alive and wont be going anywhere for a long time. I also consider the people of Hong Kong to be more British than French/Dutch/German.

>I also consider the people of Hong Kong to be more British than French/Dutch/German.

It's a bit... gross that you only seem to care for people who are "more British"

Who said I only care for people who are more British? You seem to be reaching. You could apply the same logic to those who care more for their family than a stranger and justify calling them gross/selfish. It's quite silly.

The husband and son of the 'chief executive' (ie Beijing puppet) have full UK citizenship (as well as the previous chef executive too).. The British should revoke all these government officials' citizenship (And their family) in fact.

The nation who allows future North Korean dictators to be educated at their schools? I doubt it.

And giving full citizenship to HK people is really not what they wanted. The people there want independence, full-democracy, not an escape route.

Agreed but China was never going to allow them to have independence so it only makes sense to give them an escape route if they so choose to use it.

The whole handing over of HK to China was a poison pill. The UK never gave them democracy or freedom.

Exactly. Like the Hong Kongers could have elected the chief government official before 1997.

Paywall, as happens more and more frequently.

Good

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