When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire
oikofuge.com
oikofuge.com
> The Brazil–France border is the line, located in the Amazon Rainforest, that limits the territories of Brazil and France. The border is located between the Brazilian state of Amapá and French Guiana. It is 730 kilometres (450 mi) in length. [2]
I'll be damned!
I don't mean to suggest that there's no sensible way to do it; I just wonder if people might be using inconsistent methods sometimes, leading to not-very-comparable estimates.
In this case, the length of the border is dominated by the length of the thalweg of the Oyapock river. Using thalwegs is SOP in international law when using rivers as the natural border and the choice of river is due to treaties that are hundreds of years old.
So yes, the length of the border is dominated by the length of the river, but that's just repeating the question, precisely because the thalweg is a physical thing, not a geometric delineation.
In international law (w.r.t. borders) thalwegs are not dependent on coastlines but on navigable channels with a finite precision. The boundary monuments are often kilometers apart which creates a straight line regardless of the shifting coastline (which is a much bigger problem than the coastline paradox, since rivers can change on a dime).
But when I look at Google Maps, the Oyapock river is extremely meandering. Major 180° bends within just 500 ft, e.g.:
https://www.google.com/maps/@2.3210582,-52.7667375,16z/data=...
Are you sure there's an official survey of every twist and turn, composed of "boundary monuments"? Is there a link to these things or something? It's not really clear to me there's any official "navigable channel" at all.
Is there anything you can link to that shows the actual legal boundary if it's made of vector segments? Or do we know if that's what Google Maps uses directly, or if that's what's being used for the length calculation?
Best I can find is the CIA World Factbook [1] which lists France's border with Spain at 646 km (under "France" and "Spain", same value), and Brazil's border with French Guiana at 649 km (under "Brazil").
So, already a radical difference -- from a 45km difference to a 3km difference (just 0.5%). But there's more:
> When available, official lengths published by national statistical agencies are used. Because surveying methods may differ, country border lengths reported by contiguous countries may differ.
But there's no indication whether these particular measurements are made by the CIA using the same technique with maps of the same resolution... or, being so close to begin with, whether different resolutions would change the asnwer... or if these are official lengths derived using totally different and ultimately incomparable procedures.
So maybe it's not so cut-and-dried that France's longest border is with Brazil...?
[1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2022/f...
Anyway, true fractal shorelines definitely never put sugar on their porridge.
France has much more margin though, IIRC no single territory becoming independent would make the sun set on France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_longest_domestic_fli...
The person you're responding to was talking about the Paris-Réunion flight that has been active for a long time and still active today. I took it 15 years ago when I had to go to Réunion.
On Friday 21st March 2025, the sun will set on the British "Empire" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41957938 - Oct 2024 (23 comments)
When (if ever) did the Sun set on the British Empire? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40631309 - June 2024 (41 comments)
It's not the first time a TLD has been removed; a couple of TLDs have been scrapped in the past when countries split up or got merged (chiefly in the aftermath of the cold war)[0]. For the most part, those domain names weren't in heavy use. There's also a few high-profile failures of removal: .uk was used instead of .gb in the early days of the internet before 2-letter codes were standardized to ISO, which is why the UK uses .uk instead of .gb (an attempt to scrap .uk was attempted, but failed almost immediately). .su also should have been scrapped ages ago, but because the Russian entity that manages it refuses to cooperate with ICANN, the TLD is still in use, from what I can tell just because they don't want to risk breaking the internet.
The .su TLD is the one with the closest amount of use as the .io TLD has today. That said, it's unlikely that the entity currently managing .io (a hedge fund if I'm not mistaken) has the legal muscle to force ICANN to keep it in the list, the way the Russian domain name registrar has been able to.
[0]: See a more detailed explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain#...
ICANN periodically lets anyone with $1 million create random new generic TLDs like .top and .win and .google and .hiv and .amazon and .zip - it's pretty clear there aren't any real rules or standards for TLDs apart from having money.
Why should ICANN break things for .io and its users, when they could instead keep things working, and extract $1M from a hedge fund, at the same time?
example: what happen if canada break up into 2 different state that want to their unique tld???? also what happen to current .ca ??? do you migrate all that domain and .ca ceased to exist????
internet is faily new in terms of human history (30+ years) while countries or kingdom has been ceased to exist and "rebrand" all the time
its not so simple to just put on "acronym" countries name
I cant imagine nation have enough power that can keep these thing for years just for historical standpoint
.su is one such domain. The Soviet Union of course no longer exists, but .su continues on. ICANN has told Russia they want to phase it out by 2030 (after Russia more or less refused to shut it down in the 90s), but who knows if that will happen.
.su even still accepts new domain registrations!
I think you can predict the average kind of people who wants a .su domain, though...
Why? Isn't ICANN non profit?
There's actually a bunch of rules gTLDs have to follow compared to ccTLDs. The main one I know of is that they can't randomly screw you over if you've already registered a domain name with them - they're allowed to force conditions on initial signups, but they are required to respond to things like trademark disputes in the ICANN process or domain name registrar transfers (if you ever wondered why this is a relatively easy thing - it's because ICANN punishes registrars that don't cooperate).
Freenom got in a lot of trouble back in the day for not following the rules and got suspended+fined a few times by ICANN for gTLD registrations. It took a Facebook lawsuit for them to finally go under though.
> Why should ICANN break things for .io and its users, when they could instead keep things working, and extract $1M from a hedge fund, at the same time?
Because ccTLDs follow a different standard. ICANN makes no money from ccTLDs - they're given to the country that owns the territory in question (or whatever pseudo-legal authority comes closest), and the country then has the right to sublicense out the right to those TLDs under any conditions it wants to use. Some countries don't let you do top-level registrations or any registrations at all, reserving the entire space for government websites. Others make them basically open to registration by anyone. ICANN has no real financial ties for .io in specific; any money that the hedge fund pays for it goes to the British government.
This system as I understand it, is this way in part to appease countries that would otherwise have bad relationships with the US to accept ICANN as the central naming authority of the internet even though it's a US-based entity; 2 letter TLDs are given to the country in question and in exchange, they follow the other rules of ICANN.
Making an exception would basically require the UK to make a fuss about it (since that's what Russia did with .su), which seems unlikely given the UK is also changing the legal status of the British Indian Ocean Territories in such a way that they cease to exist.
They will just move .io from ccTLD to gTLD, with the UK government's blessing. Everyone realizes there is no point in stopping the money from flowing.
Only 3 characters and up can be gTLDs.
Modern ICANN is not about policies for policies' sake.
To my mind, the only reason to unregister a TLD would be the TLD falling into disuse (the registrar having gone incomunicado, too-level DNS servers unmaintained, etc), and nobody agreeing to pick it up at the price of a new TLD ($1M?).
It wouldn't be nonsense for northern Irish businesses to have .gb domains, because that's what the ISO convention says it would be.
The change will basically never happen though; ICANN has basically acquiesced any attempt to change it (after a weak attempt to do so in the 90s), and since it's pretty unlikely in the near future that another country gets "uk" as their alpha 2 designation, they aren't in any hurry to force the matter. "gb" is still marked as reserved though.
Unfortunately the venture failed (and I went unpaid!), but the Nicaraguan NIC stepped in to continue service for the handful of .co.ni domains that had been registered at that point.
There'd been a similar effort for Scotland, using both .co.sc and .co.al (for Alba, in Scots Gaelic), but it was even less successful.
These days, there are gTLDs with .scot, .cymru, .wales, and .london existing since 2014-ish. There'll be another round of gTLD applications next year, so I suppose someone might register .unitedkingdom or .ukogbani, but the domain name goldrush days are long over...
Sorry to hear you didn’t get paid.
Side note: I suspect the real reason Google wants to discontinue goo.gl links is because they believe Trump will eventually succeed in annexing Greenland to the US.
By that argument, Americans can leave the US right now and give it back to the original inhabitants of the country.
Various parties want more autonomy in New Caledonia which France is more than ready to give. The process is somewhat sabotaged by a tiny group of Marxist but it is moving in the right direction.
The Fijians have had multiple coup, and changes to their constitution to ensure that only indigenous people can run the country
Whether I agree with that or not is beside the point, the point is that what you claim is false, what can happen has happened elsewhere, and where things end up is very much determined by whether or not the "sun is setting on the French empire"
The question is why should it happen in the first place? Why do you think people who have been there for 150 years and ask nothing more than cohabitation should be forcefully removed from a place?
As I said, it is not that simple. It has absolutely nothing to do with "the sun setting on the French empire".
Please, do try to make an effort.
Once again the question is not if it’s doable but why it should be done. Indian in Fiji is entirely irrelevant here (unless you think a military dictatorship supported by the church is somehow what New Caledonia needs).
If you are arguing they should leave because New Caledonia is the ancestral land of the indigenous population, well, I will let you apply the argument to the USA and Israel. See, it’s not that simple.
Ok angry dude.. what point am I supposedly "intentionally missing"
> why it should be done
Yes, why should people have the right to self determination of a land they have occupied for thousands of years.
> Indian in Fiji is entirely irrelevant here
Since f*cking when?
> unless you think a military dictatorship supported by the church is somehow what New Caledonia needs
I explicitly pointed out that whether I think things should or shouldn't happen is besides the point, and you deliberately ignore that because you have a problem.
Facts don't need me to agree or not, what has happened has happened.
> If you are arguing they should leave because New Caledonia
Please, do copy and paste where I have said, or inferred, anything of the sort.
> apply the argument to the USA and Israel.
So, now they're relevant, but not Fiji and the Indians.
Well the argument was about the French empire sun setting, and the evidence is what's happening in the Caledonian political sphere.
You are providing a perfect example of the USA's empire still being alive and well, and more than in control of what it considers to be its territories.
Once the USA's empire does recede, like every empire before it, whomever is the strongest will take those lands.
Thanks to you for proving my point.
You are pretending to have no opinion while clearly pushing that New Caledonia should legitimately be given back to the Kanak but at the same time pretend you don’t which makes discussing difficult.
It’s pretty clear to me that you come at the issue from a postcolonial, anti-imperialist view point somehow rooted in post-structuralism. That doesn’t make the question of the legitimacy of said viewpoint less central. I will be clear that I don’t myself adhere to it at all but it’s definitely part of what needs to be considered if a solution is to be found for New Caledonia.
> why should people have the right to self determination of a land they have occupied for thousands of years.
Why should people who have been there since their birth leave the only place they have ever called home and where their grandparents were living to satisfy the idea that the legitimate owner of the land are population whose ancestors somehow came before?
Don’t they also have a right to self determination?
> So, now they're relevant, but not Fiji and the Indians.
They are not more or less relevant. I’m simply pointing that if you use the argument of a supposed rightful ownership of the land and applies it equally to other places than Fiji, it’s obvious that the question is not as simple as you make it seems.
I’m not proving your point - accepting you actually have one something I’m not at this time completely convinced of. I’m merely pointing to you that you refuse to engage with the problem in its full complexity and that there can be no simple answer to complex situation.
As you keep coming back to the Fiji example, refuse to admit the postulate your clearly holds, refuse to consider the moral question of what should be done with descendants of settlers, I’m personally standing by my opinion that you are the one using bad faith here. I’m personally entirely fine with leaving the discussion as is as an illustration of my vision of the New Caledonian issue. I don’t think it makes me look bad.
The OP never indicated if they agreed with the claims or not. They raised it just because it was relevant to the sun setting on the French Empire.
Instead of just showing the (relevant) example that should be watched to see if the sun is setting on the French Empire.
I mean, if you were seriously just enumerating examples you would have included more than 1... right?
You literally complained that I had only given one example and then did the exact same thing yourself.
New Caledonia becoming independent would not have an effect on this though, the sun would still not set on France, as New Amsterdam and Wallis-et-Futuna are close enough to prevent that and very unlikely to leave France in the foreseeable future.
New Caledonia becoming independent isn't going to cause the French empire to see the sun setting, it's a signal that the French empire is.
The empire losing New Caledonia demonstrates the influence and reach of that empire has waned.
As a Frenchman I don't really care about what other people think about French influence.
Right, given that there have been two other... trolls.. arguing in bad faith, putting words into peoples mouths, claiming that nobody is engaging in their true argument
I want to see, from you, citations, and factual evidence thatyour claims are valid.
This is also a vote where people who had recently moved (e.g. in the last 30 years) to New Caledonia were ineligible to vote (including people born on New Caledonia if their parents couldn't vote). If Quebec had had similar restrictions on the franchise, they would have easily become independent from Canada.
Also what would be your proposed solution? Make the island be independent and let the Kanak expulse anyone who isn't like them? Because such blood and soil were usually spouted by people wearing brown shirts in Europe in the 30s.
I have not proposed any solution because I have zero skin in the game, it was merely produced as an example of the sun setting on an empire.
Why all you trolls feel the need to make accusations, put words into other people's mouths, and demand "proposals" is beyond me - seems like either an inability to read and comprehend things, or a deliberate attempt to derail conversations - which one are you?
Personally I don't see New Caledonia getting independent anytime soon, because the current French government isn't interested in granting it and the Kanaks don't have the numbers or foreign support to stage a successful independence war.
The 20th century decline of the British empire is one of civilization's worst failures, on par with the decline of the Roman Empire.
My grandparents and their generation were all born in Ireland, and had a very different outlook than the people who remained and folks you talk to today there. People just want to live their lives.
But then again, without the British, there wouldn't have been a unified India but a multitude of states, sort of resembling the EU (in the best case). Worst case scenario, mini Africa.
Having a common hated enemy did have its benefits.
The caste divisions did exist before British rule but it wasn't as systematic and unified across India as after.
Boy how do we even talk about neocolonialism today if there are still people with full on colonialist sympathies holy shit
Also I think you likely meant widely, not wildly.
No I think that is a bad thing and a failure of our society if there are still people around repeating talking points from 1850s British colonial rule for christ sake!
Its like saying the Roman empire was great because it brought Aqueducts to the savages or something, like that is just education/knowledge of history + basic moral principles. The genocidal barbarism of colonialism should be something we left behind collectively. Or do you think whether or not the holocaust was good or bad is a matter of opinion too?
Caste is far older than western colonialism. The genetic evidence shows that castes oppression has been enough to suppress intermarriage for millennia:
https://www.livescience.com/38751-genetic-study-reveals-cast...
> Boy how do we even talk about neocolonialism today if there are still people with full on colonialist sympathies holy shit
How do we talk to people who are in denial bout historic oppression?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734
and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_B...
The brits also largely permitted the caste system to proceed. my experience is that upper caste indians preferred the brits, where the lower caste ones dont really discern the difference.
Travancore and British forces defeated Tippu Sultan which resulted in the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792).
Travancore was extremely prosperous under the Britsh Empire and was given special status. The same could not be said of the Northern Indian states which faced heavy subjugation and exploitation by the East India Company.
I wonder what the aggregate sentiment of colonialism is in former British colonies.
That's not at all true. There are many examples, but no need to look farther afield than Ireland, which has not yet recovered from the deliberate genocide of the Irish famine.
The island of Ireland had not yet reached the population it held pre-famine, and if Ireland had grown at the rate of its neighbours, it would now being closing in on 25 million+ instead of the ~7 million across the island.
> The ones who are thriving today owe a huge debt of gratitude, and the languishing ones are that way because they decided not to continue the British tradition.
Britain owes a debt to its colonies. The colonies owe nothing to it, except contempt.
> The 20th century decline of the British empire is one of civilization's worst failures, on par with the decline of the Roman Empire.
In a comment brimming with ignorance, this becomes absurd. The dissolution of the British empire is the great victory of the 20th century. A victory of human rights, decency, and even off the British population, who are disposable to the empire as foreign "subjects" were.
There's pretty clearly a distinction between different individual colonies on this one. Something like the Falkland Islands which had no indigenous population is very very different from Jamaica which was a plantation colony full of slaves, which is yet again very different something like Aden (now part of Yemen) which had about 600 people living there at the time it was annexed and which has had a very very difficult post-independence story.
Unbelievable eh? Maybe it's a case of Stockholm Syndrome.
On the other hand it could have been worse. We should remember that for almost every colonized people, the alternative to British Jurisdiction was not unmolested progress towards modernity but conquest by someone else, the French, the Germans,the Turks, the Russians,the Japanese and worst of all, the Belgians.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand did alright, though.
United States too in a way (i.e. I doubt it would be what it is now if the same territory was colonized by the Spanish or even the French. Of course unless you were Native American…).
Ireland and Wales are no where near where they would be without being colonised. Let alone states further from the core of the empire.
>The 20th century decline of the British empire is one of civilization's worst failures
Greatest successes. Honestly it could only be better if the britons pushed the angles and saxons back into the ocean.
Bear in mind that a lot of the bad policies only started to be repealed in like the 60s. And that among other things, both suffered through a lot of the forced cultural assimilation the british empire was peddling.
It's not like Ireland and Wales are doing much to preserve their legacies regardless. So it's hard, as an outsider, to intuit how much they actually care.
So of course I'm inferring the writers values here.
I can’t tell whether this is a joke or a sincere opinion, but HN readers might be misled if it’s allowed to stand. Briefly, this is an absurd claim.
I can speak confidently about India, and I am pretty sure the story is similar for other unfortunate colonies. Instead of arguing here, let me provide an accessible starting point to learning about it:
The podcast “Empire,” by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. The first series looks at the British in India, covering The East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, Independence and Partition.
Yeah, the 100-200 million Indians who were killed by the East India Company through famines after being forced to raise opium instead of grain to help EIC to sell opium to kill 10-20 million Chinese every year would definitely agree...
Every great regime will experience crisis. But you have to ask yourself -- where would I have been otherwise?
Indians are still clamoring to get into this supposedly genocidal regime.
(original url sometimes times out)
I think I saw it in the fortune file first.
That being said, I don't think the sun can ever set on the British Empire, because the empire shifted to a financial once as opposed to one based on the idea of controlling physical land. You'd have to take out its entire financial/banking network spread out across the world for the sun to "set" on it.
Hard to think otherwise as they have the same king.
In practice Taylor Swift might have more.
If he does something that is openly obviously defying the will of the democratic majority, sure. But there are a lot of ways he can put his thumb on the scale in more subtle situations where the legal course of action is unclear.
For example, if the Queen had refused Boris Johnson's request to prorogue parliament in 2019 -- which was later ruled illegal anyway -- I doubt it would have led to the end of the monarchy.
The Governor General has in recent times prorogued Parliament when the Prime Minister asked them to. Ie. "This is politically nasty. Let's hit the pause button and come back when things are better and we're not about to be ejected from power..." And that has been politically controversial. Historically the Governor General just says yes because they want to avoid playing a political role at all (ie. preserving this convention that the Monarchy is really just a decoration of our government).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitution...
In principle this power still exists. Whether Charles could pull off the same trick depends on the political situation on the ground.
I'm old enough to remember it and remember a statement from the palace saying something like "The Queen is watching events in Australia with interest" but I don't think she took an active part.
I quick search reveals this. I don't know this site but if true then some letters seem to confirm the above. She told the GG to obey the Australian Constitution.
https://constitution-unit.com/2020/07/16/palace-letters-show...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the...
It's true that the palace was involved in discussions with the GG to a greater extent than most Australians though was acceptable though.
However this was before the 1986 Australia Act which cleared up the ambiguity around that.
Constitutionally, the king of Canada is the commander in chief of its armed forces, provides consent or assent to all laws passed by Parliament, has some immunity from prosecution, and has a pardon power. In actual practice, most of those powers are performed perfunctorily by delegates based on either action by Parliament or by recommendation of ministers determined by the Prime Minister.
assert(king_of_canada === king_of_england);
Arguably, Buckingham Palace should be turned into a museum (like several other former royal residences, e.g. Tower of London, Kew Palace).
Once I was in London I saw Harry and William being ferried to the Clearance House while I was walking The Mall.
So only Elizabeth and Charles.
Should you care, here’s the link to correct Wikipedia:
Previous to that, the UK’s monarch had dominion over Canada. In 1984 the roles were made distinct.
“”” Charles III, by the Grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. “””
So in my head canon, he is the King of the UK and Canada … the same person and the same office. Ie there is no King of Canada officially - the title is always King of UK (first) and of other places as well … in short whilst Canada has a King, there is not a title “King Of Canada” that he can hold as well as holding “king of UK”
Reference: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/crown-ca...
""" Queen Elizabeth II was the first of Canada's sovereigns to be proclaimed separately as Queen of Canada in 1953, when a Canadian law, the Royal Style and Titles Act, formally conferred upon her the title of "Queen of Canada". The proclamation reaffirmed the monarch’s role in Canada as independent of the monarch’s role in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. """
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_titles_and_honours_of_...
In Masai he's known as "The Helper of the Cows" (literally: he whom the cows love so much they call for him when they are in times of distress)
Jamaica has the monarchy. Jamaican forces were part of the US-led coalition that invaded Grenada in 1983, after the communists seized power. The communists found it politically expedient to maintain the structure of parliamentary government, and so the head of state of Grenada also remained nominally, Elizabeth II.
I looked it up, and you are kinda right in the theory of it, and I was wrong in the practice of it. The practical power lies with the Cabinet.
From Wikipedia:
"A declaration of war by Canada [...] is an exercise of the royal prerogative on the constitutional advice of the ministers of the Crown in Cabinet and does not require the direct approval of the Parliament of Canada, though such can be sought by the government."
Americans had 200 year dramatic and violent head start and everyone has figured that out by now. The details of Canada’s status are understandably less well known.
So Elizabeth was a British monarch on Canadian money, and Canadian monarch on Canadian money, uniquely.
Of course she is no longer put on newly made money.
The local Indians have two words for settlements - one word for their own settlements, and another word for the settlements of other peoples who have come to their lands. Canada is the latter - it actually means "foreigner's settlement on our land" or "invader's settlement". Interestingly, I just tried to Google it and the only two websites I looked at - Wikipedia and some official Canada site - both conveniently leave out the part about it being a foreign settlement. Both simply translate the word as settlement, without the nuance.
"Our word for village is kanata, "canada" is a totally different word for the 'village of the invaders'"
Something like that.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/queen-s-secret-letters-re...
Am I the only one getting this ?
You mean follow the treaty they signed ages ago?
Or that it’s ever been about ‘protecting’ anyone when the British Crown fights anyone over territory? As compared to asserting ownership?
Not to mention the UK nearly lost it’s fight with Argentina - it wouldn’t even be pissing in the wind to go to war with China over Hong Kong.
They lost 6 ships (including 2 destroyers and 2 frigates), 24 helicopters, and 10 fighters + 255 KIA in the debacle. If the french hadn’t disabled those missiles, it would have been an even bigger mess. Do you think the UK gov’t wants to admit they got saved by the French?
If Argentina had their act even a little more together, or had even a little more commitment, there is nothing the UK could have done about it - except maybe nuke Buenos Aires. Which would probably have been a step too far, even for Thatcher.
Argentina was expecting zero resistance and got embarrassed they lost ships and soldiers too, and pulled out because it was making the Argentinian gov’t look bad.
But it was also really embarrassing for the UK. They had more losses there than they did fighting the Gulf War alongside the US.
In fact, since Northern Ireland, it took Afghanistan to even come close - and that was over a period of 10 years compared to ~ 6 months. [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6605529d91a32...]
As to how they think that has anything to do with their points, it doesn’t of course - and the UK agreed, which is why they left. Also, because it’s not like the UK had any other choice.
The argument that it shouldn’t have gone to the CCP was one I heard from someone who lived there.
Taiwan is democratic today, because of transitional justice, but at the time when the PRC succeeded the ROC in China, the nationalists led by Chiang were as dictatorial as you can get
Whether that would have protected the people of Hong Kong is another matter. I think at the time people were still optimistic about the direction China was taking and they might have thought China would be a democracy by 2047.
It’s honestly amazing that China didn’t apply more ‘direct’ pressure to get HK bad sooner. There is nothing the UK likely would have done about it. Bad for business I guess? Macau transferred over around the same time.
The Qing dynasty ‘remnants’ in Taiwan would have just been steamrolled if they’d gone anywhere near it. And not like there was any real cultural reason why HK’ers would accept them anyway, or that the Qing were well loved. CCP steamrolled them in mainland China like they did because they were, by all accounts, terrible.
Sometimes, life just sucks.
Oh no, I definitely don't think that.
>It’s honestly amazing that China didn’t apply more ‘direct’ pressure to get HK bad sooner. There is nothing the UK likely would have done about it. Bad for business I guess? Macau transferred over around the same time.
The 80-90's were a bit too early to take such a risk I think, now they wouldn't take such a deal. The British likely got the best deal they could get.
>The Qing dynasty ‘remnants’ in Taiwan would have just been steamrolled if they’d gone anywhere near it. And not like there was any real cultural reason why HK’ers would accept them anyway, or that the Qing were well loved. CCP steamrolled them in mainland China like they did because they were, by all accounts, terrible.
The Republic of China government is no more (or less) a Qing dynasty remnant than the CCP is. They were indeed terrible, but that's a long time a go, most people involved are dead by now and the country has changed a lot. The CCP on the other hand is going back to the Mao era.
The civil war took two decades, in which the Kuomintang nearly defeated the Communists and had to fight off the Japanese while the Communists got bankrolled by the Soviets. I'd hardly call that steamrolled.
As for the Chagos islands, it's by far the best thing to get rid of them. There's no value at all and a lot of trouble keeping them.
Again the chagos islands, I know very little about them, but I understand that the islanders themselves hate the deal. And the UK is offering a whole lot of money to keep the military bases they had for free. You can say it was a matter of international law but Mauritius claim to the island is laughable, they are more than 1000 miles away. Also the way the deal was presented as a step away from colonialism etc just feels wrong. Timid apologetics isn't a good way to advance the UKs interest, nor is it helpful for the rest of the world for the UK to be weak and ineffective. Just look at how they helped Ukraine. Again the politicians have no will or national pride to stand up for the UKs interests and it's a shame.
Do we know that? Presumably there were negotiations. Normally both parties in a negotiation start at extreme opposites and make their way somewhere in the middle. Obviously we don’t/won’t know every detail but I don’t know you can say they didn’t try. Simple reality is that the UK wasn’t holding a lot of cards in that negotiation.
> Last time I checked, most countries today, aside from Russia, aren't in the business of invading other countries and expanding territory
How about Israel that the UK is arming? Though in the case of the UK it is contracting.
> The UK will be just fine - it's doing as much as any other western country to keep it's relevance.
That's reassuring.
Do you mean:
a) agency
b) influence
c) something else?
I heard a Hong Kong national argue that that the end of the agreement should have seen Hong Kong go back to Taiwan, not China, because the initial agreement wasn’t made with the CCP and the Taiwanese government is closer to being the natural successor.
I can only begin to imagine the shit storm this would have caused.
In a similar vein, Russia should never have got USSR's UN security council seat.
Now that's an interesting counterfactual. The legal case was weak, and certainly they didn't have to on account of Russia's strength. Other than nukes, which a few non-SC members have, a lot of mostly empty land area and a space programme, Russia's credentials as a superpower aren't great when it's not the same country as Ukraine and central Asia and doesn't also hold sway over Warsaw Pact countries. Not sure China necessarily saw them as a friendly counterweight to the West then either. On the other hand, they had the other CIS states all insisting Russia was the true continuation of the USSR, no objections and they probably thought that it would help Russia become friends. Does the world look vastly different if Russia goes through an application process to rejoin the UN and doesn't get a seat on the Security Council? Perhaps not, but I'm sure Mearsheimer et al would explain that every act of violence Russia undertook afterwards was a natural response to it...
Is the idea that Chagossian repatriation now becomes a Mauritian problem? Had the British been taking that problem particularly seriously?
Or more to do with the British not really wanting to be caught between the Americans and increasingly assertive regional powers who may be annoyed by the Americans’ stronghold there?
China is currently the largest or 2nd largest buyer of UK Pork.
Although I won't be surprised in 2-3 years time China will use it as leverage. As they did with Denmark.
And it is not that China wants any of these either. UK is currently desperately trying to increase its export ( without success )
If the UK had stuck with Truss, that mightn’t have been true. She was opening up new pork markets.
I think the people that lived there in 1997 would absolutely want to go back to British rule. But you have to remember that it's been nearly 30 years since it went to Chinese rule. All the young people there prefer Chinese rule, because they grew up with schools teaching them that the British were bad and the Chinese were good.
And at the same time, the most pro-British people left, either going to the USA or Canada, or actually taking advantage of the UKs right-to-return programs and going to the UK itself.
So if you asked the people who lived there today, they majority say they prefer Chinese rule.
My prediction is that they will no longer operate as an SEZ within the decade and will be folded fully into China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/28/i-was-so-naive...
But more importantly, it's more complicated than just China good/bad:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/05/how-peopl...
However what that shows is that the majority of adults in HK (74%) feel an attachment to China, and in the meantime China is making it illegal to disagree with them.
You make me feel old
>In June 2019, millions took to the streets again in massive pro-democracy protests.
This was only 6 years ago.
>Hong Kongers ages 35 and older are more likely than their younger counterparts to feel very close to China.
That's the exact opposite of what you claim.
I agree they'll likely succeed in the end but they have not yet made HK just another part of China.
I watched the changeover live on TV in my 20s. :)
>> Hong Kongers ages 35 and older are more likely than their younger counterparts to feel very close to China.
> That's the exact opposite of what you claim.
No, it's not. What I said was young people have been growing up with propaganda, and of the people who were there for the changeover and remember it (people over 35), the ones who don't like China have left the country because they could. The ones under 35 (well technically 28) don't have that option, because you had to be born before the changeover to get the British citizenship, which is what lets you easily move to Canada, Australia, and lots of other places.
Which would mean that those over 35 that are still there are the ones that were already pro-China. So that tracks with the data.
In other words, China is indoctrinating the youth and the people who have to option to leave and hate China are leaving, so only the people that love China or were indoctrinated by it are left behind.
But even then, less than 50% of people under 35 call themselves Chinese (not even both Hong Konger and Chinese). And half of the adults call China a major threat, 22% a minor threat. Those are pretty bad numbers for indoctrination.
If they really really wanted too, they could have tried to go the USA route and kick both parties out and be independent. But there is approximately zero chance they would have succeeded, eh?
Look at the one month Treasury bill to see the actual situation.
Maybe 20 years from now, you will be on a resort laughing at the treasury bill rates of 2025 and compare their accuracy to pets.com.
Rising rates at long maturities is a signal of uncertainty. The market is wanting shorter maturities. So stop issuing the long stuff the market doesn’t want and issue the shorter stuff it does want. Even to the point of leaving all of it on overnight until the dust settles
These journalists do not say that Britain is bankrupt. Their article was arbitrarily cited by someone else to support his claim about Britain.
This reminds me of an interview with the CCP spokesperson from last year when asked about how China sees the UK (timestamped): https://youtu.be/8jZ0KTRUgpU?t=240
They mostly don’t have a seat because they don’t actually want one - and China would get nervous. it pays better and is more stable for them to be the outsider.
History doesn't repeat, but I think we're well into the realm of history rhyming here.
You can't be serious.
Whenever the British Empire is mentioned, I involuntary have to think of this German slogan from WW1. The only military memorabilia I own carries this slogan. I came across the slogan in a meme featuring Donald Duck and found the vignette on a flea market.
Honestly it is crazy that this country still exists as a monarchy in the 21st century.
Going back in time, if you read about the Duchess of Sutherland, the UK created their own internal Nakba where they internally displaced peasants to make way to "Sheepe Walks" and forced them to the sea to benefit the textile industry. Then they later wanted that land and attacked them again. The West is very familiar with creating Gaza-like situations.
Now, I feel they are a joke. They seem like a strong example of what absolutely not to do. Their cultural exports have sunk. The arrested citizens for social media posts seems draconian. The economy barely hanging on.
I understand the Media has a bias and they been hitting the UK hard since Brexit (liberals think it ended the world) and now even conservative/alternative media hates UK for the pro-immigration stances.
With all that said even trying very hard to find things to like about the UK in a neutral way (I am a fan of PG, who I assume makes very smart decisions) I think the country is completely toast. Worse off than SPAIN! I never had a high opinion of Spain but it looks more likely to outgrow its troubles than the UK.
Prince Andrew and Kate seem nice. The British countryside seems nice. But what else will these people ever be capable of again?
When I read or interact with Britains irl I lump them in one of the lowest buckets for intellectual conversation. Does anyone have any hope for Britain to share or at least data to tell me I’m wrong about the UK?
I get the largest amount of my news from Bloomberg. And you think I need to get laid. I have no issues with women or mental health.
This entire exchange, especially with your reply - means I’m right on the money!
I will find a way to short the UK. It’s all been going downhill since WWII, and the population alive hasn’t the gruff to fix the backslide.
Britons
I'd be interested in knowing what you think those problems are?