Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover negotiations even began. You can thank Murray MacLehose for the mess they're in now.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_(Overseas)
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Portugal-give-full-citizenship...
Canada was particularly affected. It absorbed the most immigrants, they were a larger share of the population, and this was a major increase in ethnic diversity. The resulting cultural clashes were sometimes an issue. Here is one that literally doubled car insurance rates in British Columbia around the time I left.
Three cars, 2 in front with the left-hand car being driven by a Canadian, and the back car driven by a recent immigrant. The immigrant sees the opportunity to pass, swings out into oncoming traffic, and guns it. Leaving just a few inches of room. Normal Hong Kong driving.
The Canadian has no idea that this is happening until OMG I'M ABOUT TO BE HIT! The Canadian then swerves right to avoid the emergency, and hits the car on the right.
The immigrant drives off. Presumably wondering about these crazy Canadians who don't know how to drive.
Everyone involved behaved reasonably for how they were used to driving. But the combination worked out very poorly...
When you immigrate into a country, all of a sudden all of your reflexes are wrong. Some are obviously wrong. Some are more subtle. It is overwhelming, and too much.
While in retrospect it is easy to say that they should prioritize some things over others, in practice they tend to learn from experience after people respond badly, and those who are a little more used to the culture explain why they are wrong. And the experience of being told that they are wrong all of the time will make many hold on to some of their old habits extremely strongly.
Don't criticize how slowly immigrants adapt to a new country, until you've been an immigrant in a foreign culture.
I agree with you that it takes a while to adapt to new sociale mores and it's worth cutting immigrants some slack but that's different from driving a multi-ton heap of metal where safety is important.
Sidenote: Of the different cities I've lived in Asia, HK drivers are some of the worst. Combination of aggressive driving with refusal to signal their attention (by using their turn signal) makes for very poor driving. Not everyone but a significant percentage.
I am an immigrant and find this line of thinking to be a cheap rhetorical trick, a thought-terminating cliché. Yes, people who are not immigrants can share their opinion on the behaviors of immigrants. Maybe we can all learn a little from each other instead of gatekeeping anybody who has had a different lived experience.
Can I ask if you've ever lost someone you love because of a mistake made by a driver?
I'm sorry to have to say this so bluntly to you but migration status is not an excuse.
You should get lessons if you're unsure how to drive correctly and if you can't follow the local rules of the road you shouldn't be driving at all.
The problem here is not what you know that you don't know. It is what you don't know that you don't know. You can believe yourself safe, when you aren't.
The theory "it happened like they said it" explains why the rise in accidents happened, and fits with normal driving habits in Hong Kong.
> BN(O)s are British nationals and Commonwealth citizens, but not British citizens. They are subject to immigration controls when entering the United Kingdom and do not have automatic right of abode there
Things were different before the 1981 British Nationality Act but it's not too relevant for HK as the 1981 act is before the Sino British Declaration.
And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first place. China threatened to invade and there is very little the UK could have done to prevent a full control.
Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
You can’t gloat that the sun never sets on your empire and then absolve yourself from responsibility for events that you had a heavy hand in influencing. Regardless, if you think the article is wrong, your point would he better served by providing examples of where it’s wrong and stating why.
That would be like blaming me for the Gulf War when I was in diapers.
The Holocaust, for example, is, in my opinion, more accurately described as being the fault of the Nazi party of Germany, which is a subset of the German population that was politically active in the early-mid 20th century, rather than just being "Germany's" fault.
The war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan during WWII are similarly the fault of a subset of the politically active population during that time, not "Japan".
I believe this method of attribution has the added advantage of noting that certain citizens, or groups of citizens can make mistakes, and using them as an example of what NOT to do, for other citizens to learn from, rather than tarring everyone with the same bad brush, which I think can have negative psychological consequences - people should be held accountable for their actions, rather than stigmatized for belonging to a specific group by no fault of their own (it's not your fault you were born with citizenship in X country, but it is your fault if you start killing people).
The fact that British HK liberalized a little at the very last second before handover is better than nothing, and the National Security Law is definitely bad, but right now the scoreboard is 7/150 years of free speech under the UK, compared to 23/28 years of free speech under PRC. It'll take another 100 years for the PRC to have a worse record than the UK.
The Netherlands has a longer history of monarchy under their current government (present monarchy founded 1813) than North Korea (current government established 1948). Does that mean you’d rather live in North Korea than the Netherlands?
The plain and obvious fact remains that Hong Kongers would have more political liberties today if the UK retained control of the territory, regardless of the complete colonial insanity of the original arrangement.
Can you name one present existing British overseas territory that has less of a right to criticize the government than Hong Kong? There are still a bunch of them to choose from from.
Also they appear to be arresting more people for speech in total and per-capita than HK:
https://insider.iea.org.uk/p/30-people-arrested-daily-for-sp...
https://insider.iea.org.uk/p/30-people-arrested-daily-for-sp...
I do not like the UK's hate speech laws at all, but the fact is that I can criticise them, from the UK, without fear, and I can criticise the government. Could I do that in China? Of course not.
They've charged like 250 people in 5 years under this law[1], I don't like any one of those cases, I'm also against it, but it gets characterized like nobody ever catches a bullshit charge in the West.
[1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/06/hong-kong-nat...
Yes, it shows. 11th hour liberalization was the spiked punch that subverted/prevented PRC from doing useful reforms, like (patriotic) education (MNE / moral national education in 2010s), getting rid of colonial british textbooks that koolaid generations of minds and tethered them to muh anglo liberal values, libtards that would later collude with foreign powers to sanction their own gov. Instead PRC had to waste 20 years unwinding the shitshow because they didn't want to rock the boat too hard during period of heightened end of history wank, i.e. didn't want to risk unrolling last minute landmine reforms which could lead to sanctions / capital flight.
Then there's liberalization bullshit like court of final appeal (staffed with overseas anglo "judges", read compradors, friendly to UK values and interests) that replaced UK privy council to enshrine liberal, UK aligned, rulings vs Beijing. Under colonial UK rule, privy council, decision makers in London, got to overrule HK local moves that countered UK interest. Or Legco reforms that enabled direct elections / local veto that didn't exist prior, which stalled art 23 / NSL implementation for 20 years, something Beijing would have otherwise been able to ram through using old colonial system where governor or Beijing equivalent get to rubber stamp whatever the fuck they wanted... like NSL. Or retooling societies ordinance, public order ordinance, bill of rights ordinance, that was previously used by UK crush dissenting groups with absolute power/prejudice into liberal instruments that now allow retooled ordinance to proliferate with greater judicial power over PRC appointed executive vs pre 90s when these were all tools UK executives used to crush dissent. Liberalization took away all the fancy authoritarian killswitch UK used to rule HK as colony with iron fist.
Post NSL, PRC gave all the compromised none-Chinese judges the boot and get to designate PRC aligned judges that rule on PRC interests. Nature is healing etc.
I don't think I'm being superficial here. There are a few distinct events during the 20th century which can be attributed to the British. The handover of Hong Kong, Suez Crisis and the Balfour Declaration stand out the most.
> And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first place. China threatened to invade and there is very little the UK could have done to prevent a full control.
The leased territories are Chinese territory. Full stop. Hong Kong island and the ceded land could not survive alone. All of the water processing happens in the New Territories. It would have been impossible to either break up HK or defend it.
https://i.redd.it/zghghoib1k1a1.png
China has not rolled back any reforms that happened before negotiations began [0]. They did rollback the last-ditch efforts of Chris Patten [1] because at that point it was seen a malicious attempt to undermine the handover.
The mechanisms for China to take control were largely left in place by the British so they bare some responsibility, but it is the PRC asserting this control and there's an argument to be made that most of HK supports the PRC and it's their right to do what they wish with their own territory.
> Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
It'll be interesting to see what is kept. China's experimenting already in Hainan. They could structure Hong Kong in a similar fashion.
[0] The PRC did introduce PR with the idea that it would reduce the risk of majorities forming but the system is arguably more democratic than FPTP.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Hong_Kong_electoral_refor...
How would it have made a difference when the Chinese military invaded?