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Comment by free_rms | Hacker News Reader

Point of fact, colonization by the British wasn't exactly 'liberal government'. Anywhere. In HK's case, they only got their limited democracy in the last couple years immediately before handover to China. The 150 years prior, not so much.

Back in the 1980s, while Thatcher and Reagan were preaching about freedom, british-ruled HK had less freedom than they do now under the bad guy commies.

EDIT: This is not to cheerlead a regression of rights in HK. I'm just saying that being an imperial subject, being brutally put down every few decades when revolting, that's not some liberal utopia.

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Note that Beijing limited Hong Kong’s democracy since the 60s, threatening invasion.

See the following articles for the historical context [1][2]:

"Even in the '60s and '70s, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London attempted to introduce democracy and free elections only to be told by Beijing, including by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, that under no circumstances would [China] tolerate a democratically elected Hong Kong because they saw that as the first step toward independence," she said. [1]

"These documents … show that not only were the Brits mulling granting Hong Kong self-governance in the 1950s; it was the Chinese government under Mao Zedong who quashed these plans, threatening invasion." [2]

[1]: https://asiasociety.org/new-york/why-didnt-britain-democrati...

[2]: https://qz.com/279013/the-secret-history-of-hong-kongs-still...

Also note that if they do this, China will be in official violation of the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984.

Meaning Hong Kong would technically no longer be part of China, and would revert to British sovereignty.

Meaning, if they pass this law and take over defense/security in HK, they are essentially violating the Hong Kong Basic Law (Constitution) and invading what would then be (through their actions) a foreign country.

Defer to international lawyers on the technicalities, but that's how I've seen this read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration

As an academic exercise of what if the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984 is revoked, one alternative possibility to for Hong Kong to join Taiwan (quoting my earlier comment):

Note that Hong Kong was given to the Britain by three treaties in the 19th century (1842 Treaty of Nanking, 1860 Convention of Peking, 1898 The Second Convention of Peking), and the true copies of all treaties are in the hand of Taiwan, which were brought to Taiwan by the KMT government during its retreat to Taiwan before 1950.

So if the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the declaration behind the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, is revoked (partly because CCP declares it invalid), Britain might declare that Hong Kong should return to the holder of the three treaties–Taiwan.

Extremely unlikely, but arguably has legal justification.

How does this work? If a dude flies to Jamaica with these papers then Jamaica can own HK? Are those, like, bearer shares?

The Britain signed the treaties with the Qing government (the last dynasty in China until 1912), and the bearer shares of the treaties were brought to Taiwan by the KMT government before 1950.

So the issue is: who represents China? The government in Beijing or the government in Taipei?

Later, Britain signed the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984 with Beijing to decide the (then) future of Hong Kong. If the Sino–British Joint Declaration is revoked, things could be different.

Just recently US is asking the Beijing government to repay the debt of Qing dynasty [1], which Beijing said would be the responsibility of Taiwan. Following this logic, receiving Hong Kong from Britain could also be the responsibility of Taiwan.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-29/trump-s-n...

That article is amazing. I figured Trump was just shit stirring, I should have known he'd have a relationship with people who've been trading in that debt.

Since 2001! There's a century of this debt getting rolled over to greater fools.

The Taiwan still claim mainland and they are at civil war still. Well, Hk technically belong to Taiwan.

Having said that one must note Taiwan has a law in the pipeline (1st reading) to give up The claim of mainland. You may be surprise Of communist china Actual objection To it But not HKER or Taiwanese. In any case Even if they keep the claim This path is Only valid In theory but frankly not in Practice.

Personally i will continue our fight. Taiwan has enough of their own problems. If they can free from mainland, That is great already.

"they are essentially violating the Hong Kong Basic Law (Constitution) and invading what would then be (through their actions) a foreign country."

Sure. In that case, it would revert to British sovereignty, Britain wouldn't lift a finger to defend it, and it would go to China anyhow by right of conquest.

Treaties are nifty and all, but ultimately, no matter what pieces of paper are signed, you can't hold territory you have no intention to defend.

Maybe Britain wouldn’t lift a finger but Trump would lift a pen.

Gives legal pretext for any tariffs or sanctions you want, meaning we are at the beginning of these issues not the end...

A violation or complete destruction of the Joint Declaration does not result in HK returning to Britain because the territory has already been handed over. The consequences aren't really defined and would probably just be sanctions by any nations who happen to care enough.

The issue was not democracy, but rather independence of Hong Kong. China did not recognize the legitimacy of Britain's rule over Hong Kong, and considered it part of China. Any move to establish Hong Kong as an independent state would undermine China's claim to the territory.

The UK was actually in charge of HK, not Beijing.

If Beijing were able to control the fate of Hong Kong in the 1950s, they would have, and it wouldn't have been "leave it in british hands, sure, as long as there's no democracy".

I've never understood this line of thought. Things used to be bad, and it sucked. Then, they got better and that was good. But now if it gets bad again it'll be okay because it used to be bad? Regression away from freedom is always a bad thing.

I didn't say regression was ok, maybe I should have preempted such an accusation since I was criticizing the West.

I pushed back against imperialism dressed up as liberation. Everybody's soooo concerned about Hong Kong civil rights, just like they were about Iraqi civil rights.

Other places, where it's not to our geopolitical advantage? Crickets.

Yes, it would have been better if British imperialists had never decided to stick their swords where they didn't belong, but they did. Whether HK would have been freer today if Britain hadn't done so is conjecture. What we do know is that Britain violently subjugated HK, but before they left they liberalized the place to a greater degree than the CCP would have, as evidenced by the CCP's desire to deliberalize the place.

Bringing up "British rule was no panacea" when we're talking about the CCP's efforts to deliberalize a de facto free society reads like you're apologizing for what the CCP wants to do.

>What we do know is that Britain violently subjugated HK, but before they left they liberalized the place to a greater degree than the CCP would have...

Funny how Britain was happy to rule over Hong Kong for centuries without introducing democratic reform and then suddenly 'liberalised' things only when they were on the point of handing HK back to China. Almost as if it was done with precisely the intent of leaving the Chinese with as much of a hot potato as possible.

They don't call it "Perfidious Albion" for nothing!

> Funny how Britain was happy to rule over Hong Kong for centuries...

Britain first raised its flag over Hong Kong island in 1842. The New Territories, without which Hong Kong is not a viable independent entity, were leased to Britain under a 99-year lease in 1898.

This was a consequence of one of the worst aspects of colonial Britain, the Opium wars, but, as hker points out [1], since the 1960s Britain has attempted to democratize Hong Kong, but was constrained by China's realistic threat of invasion.

There's not much credit to any side here, but let's at least get the history right.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23260302

Agree on the part about China threatening since the 60s. If I recall correctly, there was a wave of movement on British Colonies raising referendum on independence from Britain since the 60s ? Hong Kong did not earn that right due to Communist China's threat on "liberating" Hong Kong if it was given independence.

Can you cite any documentary evidence for these Chinese threats, dating back to the 1960s?

I'm not saying you're wrong but China in the 1960s was an unindustrialised, agrarian 3rd-world country which was barely able to feed its own people. I suspect Britain [a rich, industrialised, nuclear-armed member of NATO] would have laughed in their face, if China had issued any threats.

We shouldn't fall into the trap of looking at the might & modernity of China today and thinking t'was ever thus. I'm old enough to remember when news footage from China would show countless thousands of people, clad in denim boiler suits, riding bicycles through Peking, with nary a car to be seen.

[ASIDE: Ironic that moving towards vehicle-free cities with a cycling populace is now seen as aspirational and a sign of progress whereas, back then, it was an indicator of how backward China was]

Go to the post I linked to for more evidence.

Furthermore, remember that it was China's intervention in Korea in the early 1950s that almost overran the US forces in Korea, and forced a negotiated settlement with the creation of two Koreas.

NATO is irrelevant, as that was an alliance for the defence of Western Europe, not small remnants of Britain's colonies. NATO was not about to go to war with China then, any more than it involved itself in Korea.

And what would Britain do with its nukes? Nothing more than the US did in Korea and Viet Nam. If Britain were to even threaten their use, it would seriously damage its relationship with the USA, by creating a precedent that the USSR (and, by 1964, a nuclear China) could invoke at any time. Remember what happened over Suez, which did not even go as far as a nuclear threat.

Even if Britain halted an initial invasion, China would still be there, on the border of Hong Kong, for as long as the British could afford to stay (or until 1997, if it came to that, which it would not.)

None of this analysis is dependent on "looking at the might & modernity of China today and thinking t'was ever thus."

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_independence#Colonia...

In the 60s/70s China was in bad terms with Soviet, US/UK saw the benefit of having China as "Allies". Thus, HK kind of became the scapegoat.

Finally, someone gets it.

I was responding to a comment that characterized British rule as 'liberal government'.

If we're so much better, maybe we can let up on the propaganda and whitewashing of history?

But it was liberal, except when it wasn’t. It’s not whitewashing to characterize the end result as liberal, and I don’t think it’s necessary or productive to add a disclaimer to every description when the discussion revolves around comparing today’s liberalism (which was a result of British rule) with the CCP’s (which would undoubtedly be less so).

(Edited to specify that the end result was liberal, not the whole thing)

Yeah, that is the thing, western mindset does not comprehend imperialism.

I can comprehend imperialism just fine, thanks. In fact I get to see my government do it even today, despite my literal protest.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but deep respect for you personally since I don't know you. I was talking about more broad western mindset.

Have you considered that China had vocally threatened military action against democratisation.

What are some examples of British-ruled HK citizens having less freedom than today’s PRC citizens?

From my limited knowledge, the government of Hong Kong was quite liberal, which created its large economic inequality, low literacy rate, and high spot in the freedom index today. Many would argue it was too liberal in some senses.

It maybe was not democratic, but its pretty hard to complain about your rulers if they transformed a poor small town into one of the richest places in the world, with pretty much every freedom of a comparable western democracy arguable in many aspects more free.

Exactly how were the people not free, in the 1980s?

Do you think its impossible to have freedom without local democracy?

That's actually how a lot of mainland Chinese feel about their government, and I can sympathize with them to an extent.

But it doesn't undo other things about their government, it's just a fuller picture. Same applies to UK colonialism.

Sure, I'm not saying it's "free and fair elections", but it had a functioning, western-style court system, a level of free speech recognizable to any part of the west, things like that.

And given that the UK itself has most of these things, I highly doubt they'd arbitrarily deny them to a dependent territory without good reason (especially when their other territories all have some measure of representative government). Other comments describing Chinese threats provide one possible good reason.

> And given that the UK itself has most of these things, I highly doubt they'd arbitrarily deny them to a dependent territory without good reason (especially when their other territories all have some measure of representative government).

Setting aside HK, we apparently have very different reads on how the British Empire acted everywhere else, as well.

Apples to apples--I'm comparing Hong Kong in 1995 to the rest of the mostly-self-governing British territories in 1995. I'm not comparing them to India in the 1940s (as the most obvious example of the Brits' abuse of other peoples they ruled).

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