I would have said that returning Hong Kong back to China was one of the biggest mistakes the UK has made, but here we are in 2020.
It would have been better if they made it into an independent city state like Singapore.
It would have been better if they made it into an independent city state like Singapore.
Alternatively, UK could have made switching recognition from ROC to PRC conditional on a New Territories lease renewal.
We are well pass the time when a technologically advance oceanic power can establish and hold enclaves on the heartland. That was only possible in the past because of the huge development lead the European power's developed through industrialization and colonialism.
Hong Kong used to have a desalination plant. The British closed it because importing water from PRC was cheaper. Instead, they could have expanded desalination for water self-reliance, and built nuclear power stations to produce electricity to power it. But the UK wasn’t willing to make that investment.
If the US had said "we wish Hong Kong to declare independence and will provide military backing as required", I expect the UK would have gone along with it (I offer no opinion on whether that would have worked). But in the absence of that that I don't think there was much of a decision to make.
Quite possibly the UK were out-diplomatted and a somewhat better deal would have been available in principle. But ultimately (as we have seen in recent years) there's nothing that stops a superpower saying "we're now going to walk away from this treaty we previously signed".
Is the CCP willing to jeopardise its position and future in the World for the sake of a few humid islands with no natural resources or strategic advantages?
And even more mind-focusing is the fact that the UK had the nuclear option on the table against Argentina in 1982.
Its not like the UK had a choice. We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
It's not stealing from China to not give them something taken from someone else.
UK could have demanded a lease renewal from PRC as the price for switching recognition. Instead they just got some “alliance” against the Soviets and it is questionable what that actually delivered.
China doesn't like to take credit for that, but personally I believe its alliance with the West was instrumental in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Giving HK back to China is an act of decolonization. Putting them under Taiwan and loading up the island with US weapons would not be.
I don't want to devalue your experience, but Anglo powers have a terrible record of "colonialism for their own good", "we'll be greeted as liberators", etc.
PRC is itself a colonialist power. See all the Uighurs in concentration camps.
You really want to set the precedent that regime change voids all international agreements, rather than obligations and rights under them passing to successor regimes?
And I spoke that after having of talk with a Japanese people today and they fear they are the next on the list. I told them Japan at like 6th or 5th powerful army despite Article 9, + US alliance (that we all understand as half trustable only), so quite able to defend themselves. A lot of people in East Asian (HK, Vietnam, Philipines, Japan) fear China. This is what I got from talking with friends from this country. Everyone think there will be war at some point, only the time and starting place is unknown.
While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. Also, at that point China was much weaker economically so an economic war would have severely hurt their economic growth, undermining the key source of their power over the past 20 years.
The real issue is that HK wasn't viable without support from the mainland -- support they would have lost had this tactic been tried.
"Although not quite a piece of "barren rock" as derided by Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary during the First Opium War, from 1839 to 1842, the fact remains that Hong Kong isn’t endowed with the necessary natural resources to support its population of 7 million. The Hong Kong special administrative region of China gets over 70 percent of its water from Dongjiang, a river in neighboring Guangdong province. Meanwhile, over 90 percent of fresh meat and vegetables consumed in Hong Kong is sourced from the mainland. And mainland energy sources generate more than half of the electricity consumed locally."[3]
They would have had to bear a massive cost, investing in desalination plants, nuclear power plants, and imported their food from elsewhere.
That cost -- while extreme -- might be looked at in hindsight as cheaper than the current outcome with the likely significant brain drain from HK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizean%E2%80%93Guatemalan_te...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Training_and_Supp...
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient...
China isn't just more powerful than Guatemala, it's more powerful than the UK.
> they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war.
If Deng Xiaoping really thought the UK would accept nuclear ese as the cost of keeping China out of HK, sure, that might have kept China out. But literally no one would believe that.
The USA previously had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. That was replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
"The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan nor does it relinquish it, as its primary purpose is to ensure the US's Taiwan policy will not be changed unilaterally by the president and ensure any decision to defend Taiwan will be made with the consent of Congress. The act states that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities". However, the decision about the nature and quantity of defense services that America will provide to Taiwan is to be determined by the President and Congress. America's policy has been called "strategic ambiguity" and it is designed to dissuade Taiwan from a unilateral declaration of independence, and to dissuade the PRC from unilaterally unifying Taiwan with the PRC."[1]
If the US didn't have this agreement with Taiwan, I believe the PRC would have invaded long ago. Instead, they have been playing a long game of deeply entangling their economies and increasing their influence in the region with the hope of Taiwan following HK and joining the one country, two systems approach. I believe that is fundamentally dead now that the PRC has revealed one country, two systems to be a complete lie.
Thus, I hope Taiwan declares independence and has the backing the USA in such a manner that China won't consider invading.
Nonetheless, the point stands that China hasn't invaded Taiwan with a far less secure security guarantee than the one I proposed by the UK for HK.
No nuclear power has yet wanted to test whether or not a rival nuclear power is willing to follow through on their promise. Nuclear deterrence has been exceedingly effective. Furthermore, while China is more powerful than the UK, in 1997 the UK had a larger GDP and the EU was on the upswing.[2][3] That would have been sufficient counterweight to China then.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act#Military_...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=china+gdp+1997&oq=china+GDP+...
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=UK+GDP+1997&oq=UK+GDP+1997&a...
Which, while it could reasonably have been taken as an indication of the capacity to generate power over the long term if that advantage was preserved, has pretty much nothing to do with immediate power of the relevant type, whether globally or, more to the point, locally applicable to HK. Which, actually, creates more of an incentive for China to fully exploit it's then-current power advantage.
I'll take, “A routine practice of European (including states that are former European colonies) colonialism in dealing with non-Europeans”. So, like, no one would have been surprised with Hong Kong.
> We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?
The UK was pulling that kind of thing before the US existed, so, sure, why not? I lean, ignoring the poder balance in the región, which is the real issue.
Anyways, Singapore's independence wasn't a given either, they had to fight for theirs from "the mother land" as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_in_Malaysia
Edit: I stand corrected - Not "to fight". However, the point being (as with Belize, Israel, India or other colonies which became independent) by no means was it clear what entities were to became out of its former colonies.