Britain Failed Hong Kong

foreignpolicy.com

12 points·notlukesky··9 comments

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Handing over a territory and it's citizens without a referendum seems like a mistake.

The whole Hong Kong scenario always seemed weird, utterly reminiscent of backroom negotiations and colonialism.

Forced opium trade, war, forcibly seizing foreign territory do seem like mistakes.

HK's retrocession to China was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately it seems that it is very hard for Britain to get over its lost Empire. They should really move on.

Yeah, the past is riddled with bad things, but you'll be judged for how you move forward, not for what you inherited..

Maybe, it should go to China, but why not have a referendum, it's cheaper than war -- and it makes a stronger argument too :)

It is a rethoric and disingenuous argument to call for a referendum. See Crimea.

The problem is states competing against each other and they know that HK is a way to create trouble for China.

A referendum today is too late..

But if the UK had called one, it might have been different.

We've successful solved territorial disputed with referendums in Europe. We just rarely talk about it, because there was no war to talk about :)

At the time of the handover the world was in a unipolar moment. People though that we were converging on an “end of history” where every state was inevably moving towards democracy. The relative importance of the Chinese economy in world was a tiny fraction of where it is today. It was a mainstream opinion in Western circles that Hong Kong would “take over” Beijing rather than vice versa.

How things change.

Why should Hong Kong be any different?

Different from what?

Our other ex-colonies, I presume

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