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They will argue that, sure. But if their position is that any agreement they have ever signed can retroactively be declared invalid whenever it suits them, that’s bad news not just for Hong Kong but for the entire world. Signing treaties and then tearing them up when they became inconvenient was the behavior by Hitler that dragged the world into World War II.

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International agreements are routinely abrogated when they no longer suit one or both parties. Every country is guilty of this.

Might makes right in geopolitics. There is no international court to take a broken treaty to. Nation states pretty much always act in their self interest when they can.

China thinks that it is in their self interest to do this. Someone can try to change their mind, but it probably won't be easy.

HK has always been part of China. It was a Chinese territory under foreign colonial rule.

What we're seeing now is a domestic Chinese political issue that has developed ultimately as a result of the Chinese Civil War.

It's really a masterstroke to have convinced Western opinion that this was an international issue between HK and China.

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