Hacker News Reader

Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this will cause any political discomfort in the UK. Everyone knows that the UK is failing to enforce the terms of the Joint Declaration because they have no leverage, but they sort of quietly pretend this isn't happening, which will be untenable after this declaration.

View on HN

The "no leverage" will still be true. It's just that they won't be able to pretend any longer.

On the other hand, they didn't have enough leverage to change things when they signed the Joint Declaration, and the people who signed it are no longer in power. So maybe they'll just act like it's no change, because they knew it all along.

> Everyone knows that the UK is failing to enforce the terms of the Joint Declaration

INAN but according to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration...

> Those basic policies will be stipulated in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the PRC by the National People's Congress and will remain unchanged for 50 years.

The Chinese introduced a security bill via People's Congress. It isn't exactly a violation?

UK joined the AIIB and Belt And Road program. They won't be objecting except perhaps in the meekest, mildest manner possible.

The bigger problem is that the British electorate still believes they are the ones calling the shots here. There is no opposition to China with Hong Kong. China is the more powerful political entity now.

We’ve been too busy with Brexit and now the Coronavirus not exactly being handled well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com