Remember Hong Kong | Hacker News Reader

Remember Hong Kong

thenextmove.org

72 pointsthrow0101d108 comments

The return of Hong Kong to China is the first global news item I really remember from my childhood (the death of Princess Dianna shortly thereafter being the second). One really felt a shift in england that day: this then is the final nail in the coffin of the british empire.

I wish the whole thing had gone better for the folks on the receiving end. I was at university with a crowd who had grown up there seeing themselves as british, suddenly thrust into a strange nationality they didn't match their internal identity, and with no say in the matter.

One good thing is that we've extended UK residency and a path to citizenship to anyone who was born in Hong Kong before the handover (so everyone over about 30 y.o). It's pretty much the extent of what the UK could do under the circumstances - not much chance of changing the CCP to respect human rights.

I was living in Hong Kong when the protests first started and stayed through the entire 2019 year.

First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.

Second, most of the protests were done by young people who lost hope in Hong Kong's ultra expensive housing and ultra stressful life. They live in tiny studio sized apartments with the entire family. Buying a home was out of reach for most young HK people unless they have financial help from parents. This was a key trigger in why the youth were protesting.[0][1][2] Again, this was never reported or mentioned by western media. Zoom out 10,000ft and the HK protests and Occupy Wallstreet protests aren't really all that different. Young people felt hopeless economically.

Third, Joshua Wong went to foreign governments and invited them to help him against China. Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot. This is considered treason in just about any country. Imagine if BLM protestors physically went to China's CIA equivalent to ask them for help against the US government.

[0]https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/04/hong-kongs-housing-cris...

[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/8/11/a-lack-of-afford...

[2]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.70001

> Hong Kong belongs to China if you forgot

If that's not a healthy attitude to take towards a territorial possession, I don't know what is.

ICE is so healthy…

You're right. Violent authoritarian thugs are bad. There should be systems in place to sweep them away. Ideally, through peaceful means.

I'd be interested to see what has been implemented with regard to this under the stewardship of the CCP.

China belongs to Taiwan if you want to go down that route.

A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".

It does seem most widespread revolutions only happen when the discomfort grows big enough (as the saying (1) goes, "civilisation is n missed meals away from anarchy" (n = a number below 10, I thought 3, but it's 9)).

It's interesting though, the CCP does chicken out. The last time that I remember this happening is when enough citizens in Beijing protested against their prison-like Covid restrictions, that they relaxed it within a day or two.

Same thing with Russians and the war: 2). Heck, Americans are anguishing but most are too comfortable/don't want to go through the discomfort to actually do anything against the rising fascism in their country.

1) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/05/02/nine-meals/

2) https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/06/war-of-the-worl...

A lot of Americans do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "they're doing it for the Middle Eastern people's freedom!"

Or to spread democracy across the world and to protect human rights…

Feels like you wrote this without reading my comment to the end, where I do point out with Americans it's not much different.

Well, sorry but not really sorry for that. We all know that literature aka the art of conveying something regardless of what that thing is is an art. We all need to take responsibility for not only what we say but also how we say it.

Sorry for your non-existant attention span.

(Not actually sorry)

> A lot of Chinese do have a policy of "as long as we're comfortable (economically, etc), we'll let the government do whatever they want.", some justifying it by saying "society needs their government to be a strict parent".

On a spectrum from like Appalachians at one end to the CCP on the other, most societies in the world are closer to the Chinese end of the spectrum. Appalachians will forgo civilization to avoid government. But most people in the world do want government to be a strict parent and maintain order and a well-functioning society. This is something that Americans completely do not understand.

> First, the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them. This isn't reported by the western media. The media reported it as all HK people were being wronged.

Not everyone is an American, and that's fine. Asians--on average--just care more that things "just work" than having more freedom to faff around. It's like Apple users versus Linux users. The Chinese government is a good government for the things that most Chinese people actually care about: economic development, building infrastructure, keeping trains running, etc. At the end of the day, most Chinese people in Hong Kong aren't missing the political freedoms that Americans would miss in their shoes, and value the things they do have that the government is good at.

The way you've talked about the average Asian it seems like you're describing a cultural predisposition but representing it as a racial one.

And it's easy to see why HK citizens would have cultural preferences towards independent legal systems and political freedom. Their 'being Asian' is independent of this.

> the vast majority of the locals hated the protests and didn't support them

Totally false

I was there too.

It's just absolutely false that "a vast majority of the locals hated the protests". See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1]. There was also a District Council election in November 2019 in which the establishment (pro-government) parties were utterly wiped out [2].

To your second point, HK's housing situation is an unmitigated disaster that undoubtedly contributed to the overall atmosphere of discontent with the government, but it was not a proximate cause of the protests.

To your third point, merely going to a foreign government and asking them to put pressure on your home government would not remotely reach the bar for a treason conviction in the U.S. This idea that what Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai did would be considered sedition or treason in Western democracies is something that everyone in China seems to "know" that just isn't so.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-hong-kongers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_local_elections

>put pressure on your home government

They literally petitioned US gov to sanction HK politicians, and drew up lists, which US did. That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.

Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate. Lets not pretend any west reporting on HK was/is legitimate.

> That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.

Evidence please. You're unintentionally illustrating my point here.

> Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate

The polling was conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute at the University of Hong Kong. Do you think Mike Pompeo infiltrated the District Council elections too?

Evidence of what? That asking foreign power / geopolitical competitor to sanction domestic politicians is not treasonous? You're unintentionally failing an IQ test here.

>infiltrated ... too

Yes? This isn't complicated, there's reason lack of NSL turned HK into one of the largest western intelligence hubs in Asian, targeting mainland. HK is thoroughly infiltrated / influenced, full of compradors who thought they had immunity because PRC too magnanimous to ram NSL down their throats like any other sane country.

I was at the 2019 Tiananmen Square vigil that kick started the protests.

Don't mistake the local population being sympathetic to some of the protester's messages over supporting the protests. When the protestors became disruptive and violent, I distinctly remembered most locals did not want the protests to continue anymore.

  See for example the contemporaneous polling done by Reuters below - 59% of the population supported the protests at the end of 2019 and 30% had participated [1].

I looked into this source.

First, it was commissioned by Reuters, a news agency based in UK.

  polled in a survey conducted for Reuters by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute

Second, Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute had a CEO who was pro-succession, anti-Beijing views and has since been exiled to UK.

Personally, I wouldn't call this survey unbiased.

The housing prices are sky high in HK because of artificial zoning and regulations, not because of geographical limitations. There are vast empty spaces that can be used for housing in HK, but the elites/politicians wouldn’t allow buildings in those areas because that would result in a collapse of real estate values and ultimately the wealth of elites.

What HK need is politicians that works for people and have a spine to go against the elites

Yes, exactly. See this report: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3030209...

Basically, it was pent up frustration from the youth over housing controlled by Hong Kong's property tycoons. The extradition law was just the final trigger.

People aren't property. Hong Kong belongs to Hong Kong people. If you ask a typical Chinese people to explain why Hong Kong or Taiwan belong to China, they will never at any point consider the will of the born and raised there. They will instead blabber on about history how they used to belong to "them", where the delusion of identity leads them to believe something of the past once belonging to someone else, now belongs to them because of this arbitrary "us" and "china". They have no capacity to consider the living breathing humans alive in the current era and attempt to derive from first principles what is best for everyone.

No one said people are property. Hong Kong people still enjoy disproportionally high quality of life compared to Mainland Chinese people. In fact, they are ranked #14 world wide in GDP PPP per capita.[0]

The biggest reason for this is because of China. Hong Kong acts as a financial hub for business between China and the outside world.

Can we stop pretending like Hong Kong people are oppressed?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Land/soil is in fact, property, and HK land belongs to PRC not HKers. HK belongs to all Chinese of which HKers are <1%. HKers simply got privileged arrangement / exclusive access enforced by CCP via limited freedom of movement from mainland and got wealthy off it, but they went full retarded and fucked it up by being treasonous.

> used to belong to "them"

Not "used" to, legally belongs to PRC/China, under Westphalia / UN law, HK belongs to PRC, TW belongs to One China territory. Liberal World Order idiots have no conception that international law matters when it favors PRC. There is no need to reach for muh history copium when it's plain literal current legal international order is built around HK (and Tibet and XJ) legally belonging to PRC, and TW/PRC part of One China both at UN and PRC/ROC constitutional level.

And it is in fact pieces of paper that determines ownership not living breathing humans who come and go. Ultimately self determination doesn't (and shouldn't) factor into sovereignty, but if it just so happens in China's case, the mandate overwhelming favors PRC who has 98% of consensus. What is best for everyone is 1400m mainlanders vs 40m greater China.

It's well reported matter public record that hundreds of thousands people protested, daily. And it's trivial to find polling that showed that about two thirds of Hong Kongers supported the protests, while only a third took your point of view.

Just because it is convenient for the CCP to coerce "confessions" about CIA involvement, and it's convenient for willing accomplices to their dishonest and cruel misrule to pretend that this is relevant, no one else needs to take this seriously.

Reported by who? The famously neutral The Guardian?

There were large participation in non-violent protests in the beginning.

By the time it got violent, it was almost all just students and the youth protesting. It lasted for almost an entire year.

Saying a vast majority hated the protests seems like a too strong of a statement. Here are some sources which reports 57% supported [1] and 58.3% supported [2]. It has also been estimated that 36.4% had attended a demonstration against it in August 2019, and a year later 45.6% [3].

This paper directly contradicts your claim it was mainly due to housing [4].

> Our empirical findings suggested that the systematic threat concerning the erosion of the city's values and institutions imposed by the extradition bill was a primary cause of the unprecedented mobilization.

[1]https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/exclusive-hong-kon...

[2]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asia...

[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/arti...

[4]https://www.proquest.com/docview/2714819043

(On my phone, so some sources are secondary sources).

A poll conducted for Reuters by an institute whose ex-CEO has historically expressed anti-Beijing and HK pro-succession views and has since moved to UK.[1] Yea, no bias there.

  Reuters is a British news agency wholly owned by Thomson Reuters[0]

Even in that survey, you can clearly see that the locals did not want all the things the protestors/western media wanted.

  Nevertheless, only 17% expressed support for seeking independence from China, and 20% were opposed to "the current path of one country, two systems" - the arrangement under which Hong Kong is governed by Beijing.

  Many protesters say Beijing has used its authority under the system to gradually undermine certain freedoms - such as an independent judiciary and freedom of speech - that are supposed to be guaranteed at least until 2047 under the arrangement.

  The results of the survey, involving 1,021 people and conducted from Dec. 17-20, also showed a large plurality of respondents mainly blamed the Hong Kong government for the crisis, the worst civil unrest to hit the city in decades, rather than the central government in Beijing.

  This paper directly contradicts your claim it was mainly due to housing [4].

Summarize it? Having lived in Hong Kong and talked to many locals, had local friends, talked to young HKers, no one could convince me that housing wasn't the biggest reason for the pent up frustration that ultimately led to the protests.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kim-wah

Normally numbers are countered with numbers that back up your position, not personal anecdotes and attacks on source credibility.

I mean, the numbers speak for themselves right? Only 37% participated in any demonstration - likely only the non-violent ones in the beginning.

His source doesn't actually disprove what I said - that most locals hated the protests.

37% participating in demonstrations implies that for your statement to hold true, around 80% of all the remaining people who did not participate in a demonstration would’ve had to hate the protests. I find it somewhat implausible that less than 20% of the people who didn’t go to a demonstration had either positive or somewhat neutral feelings on the matter. Surely the population of Hong Kong is not this neatly divided between two extremes?

There is a difference between demonstrations and violent protests. The protests lasted nearly a year.

Lastly, let's just say that the survey source is highly suspect. It's commissioned by a British news agency with an institute whose CEO has been accused for treason and has expressed pro-succession views and has since been exiled to the UK.

> Lastly, let's just say that the survey source is highly suspect. It's commissioned by a British news agency with an institute whose CEO has been accused for treason and has expressed pro-succession views and has since been exiled to the UK.

Now you mistake [3] for [1] too? [3] is a peer reviewed paper (just like [2]), and neither [2] nor [3] has anything to do with Reuters (the British news agency you refer to).

Let me link [3] again for you:

[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/arti...

edit:

Since max depth I'll just reply here (since you clearly also argue in bad faith). You claimed the paper had relation to a British news agency, it doesn't. So factually you are wrong, end of story.

"Peer reviewed". My goodness.

No, I'm not mistaken.

Regardless, how was your experience living in HK in 2019? Hopefully you've talked to many locals in cantonese?

Okay use my 2nd source then? Data source:

> The survey data reported in this article were collected via a telephone survey conducted by a research centre at a university in Hong Kong from May to June 2020.

And they also quote this paper with very similar results

> Chung, Ting-Yiu Robert, Pang, Ka-Lai Karie, Lee, Wing-Yi Winnie, and Edward, Chit-Fai, comp. 2020. Survey on Hong Kong People’s Views Regarding the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement (Round 3). Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute. July 10. Accessed March 19, 2025.

I summarized it with a quote? What do you want? Alternatively/also read 2nd source, which also discuss it, and again they say economic/housing was a factor, but not the largest like you claimed.

  Okay use my 2nd source then? Data source:

That's the Reuters one.

  I summarized it with a quote? What do you want? Alternatively/also read 2nd source, which also discuss it, and again they say economic/housing was a factor, but not the largest like you claimed.

Why did they say housing wasn't a reason or the main reason for the youth that continued the year long violent protests?

What is Reuters about the data source being a phone survey conducted by a research centre at a university in Hong Kong? (Or the 2nd source they linked to which I quoted above)?

They collected the data FOR Reuters.

I guess you didn’t check your own source.

Source? And just so we are clear, are you suggesting academic malpractice, that the university intentionally designed it to be biased?

The source is literally in your link. Read it carefully.

  residents polled in a survey conducted **for Reuters** by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute

It's literally commission by Reuters, a British news agency. It isn't academic malpractice because the institute was no longer part of HKU. Further more, their chief executive was accused of treason and has historically expressed anti-Beijing, pro-succession ideas. Clearly this institution was not going to be unbiased.

Anyways, how was your experience living in Hong Kong in 2019?

Polls use sampling to avoid the sort of social bias suggested by your question.

Ask the right person, like someone who protested, and they could tell you that literally everyone supports the protests. Why, everyone they know participated in at least one, and most of them went to many of them!

Regardless, I'm not sure why injustice should be subject to a popular referendum. If greater than 50% of polled North Koreans praise their current political leadership, does that make their current leadership good?

Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities, and I was there in 2019 as it happens, though not for the full year. I knew people who participated in protests, and people who sniffed and said they were stupid, although when pressed, that was more out of a belief (correct, it turns out) that they would be ineffective, and were dangerous to participate in.

It is still true that something of value has been lost, while it remains a fantastic city. It is still true that multiple political prisoners are being held on charges most of us would identify as unjust.

It is also true that protesters were upset about many varied things, including the outrageous cost of housing. But it's not clear what you're trying to say with that and silly arguing about polling sources. That Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, and many others deserve their imprisonment? That nothing of value has been lost as China has suppressed dissent and the free press in Hong Kong?

They absolutely deserved imprisonment. They broke laws and went to foreign countries for aid.

Imagine if Hawaii tried advocated for succession and went to China for help. The US isn't going to do anything? Come on. This double standard is ridiculous.

By the way, the protests lasted for an entire year before it ended. Clearly China gave them a lot of leeway. But in the end, if you tried to get foreign governments to interfere, you better have a good plan.

This is from 1st link, not 2nd like I said?

> residents polled in a survey conducted *for Reuters* by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute

You managed to mistake [1] with [2] three times, really?

The University of Cambridge, UK source is the 2nd one right?

What about it makes you think that it's right and not the other sources citing housing? How much do you know about the HK housing situation in 2014-2019?

  The survey data reported in this article were collected via a telephone survey conducted by a research centre at a university in Hong Kong from May to June 2020.

What survey was this?

Yes which says nothing about Reuter like you wrote 3 times?

edit:

I'll just reply here since max depth. You made a claim, that [2] has relation to Reuters. It doesn't, end of story.

Huh? I'm just wondering why you even linked me to a source that is commissioned by a British news agency done by an institution that has historically been pro-sucession. And then another one by authors at The China Quarterly which has clearly been anti-China historically.

Can we at least check biases first?

I'm still looking for how your life was living in HK in 2019. Or are you just basing this purely on western media and institutions, like I mentioned in the OP?

We don’t have to rely on polling as the 2019 district elections happened in HK that November and the message was extremely clear that the bulk of the population was pro-protestors and anti-the HK government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_local_elections

> Nearly three million people voted, equivalent to 71 per cent of registered voters, an unprecedented turnout in the electoral history of Hong Kong. The election was widely viewed as a de facto referendum on the concurrent anti-extradition protests.[3]

> All pro-Beijing parties suffered major setbacks and losses, including the flagship pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), which received its largest defeat in history, losing 96 seats. Executive Councillor Regina Ip's New People's Party failed to obtain a single seat, and was ousted from all District Councils as a result.[4][5] Dozens of prominent pro-Beijing heavyweights lost their campaigns for re-election, including Junius Ho, a controversial anti-protest figure who had expressed support for the triads behind the mob attack in Yuen Long on 21 July.[4][5]

> In contrast, the pro-democracy camp in conjunction with the localist camp achieved its biggest landslide victory in the history of Hong Kong, gaining absolute majority in votes and electoral seats in all of the 18 District Councils and tripling their seats from around 124 to about 388.

Through my hong kongese friends, I got pretty active in the 2019 umbrella protest. To me, one of the most impressive image of that era is the Kai Lan Egg japanese-styke manga use to show the world and the CCP what was going on.

https://china-underground.com/2019/10/28/hong-kong-protests-...

Wow that artist is nice. Reading that unlocked a memory of this animated video

https://youtu.be/RXAHywPLaD8 "Say No to China Extradition!"

it is so depressing even after this many years. Thanks for sharing the video, I forgot about it ..

> Millions of Hong Kongers were determined to keep the freedom they had enjoyed. The CCP has won, at least for now.

Fundamentally, I just don't see this frame as being a path to long term success for HK. If it is them v. the CCP: the CCP is alert to the political risk of HK, outnumbers them, controls the local military, has better propaganda and has more of a claim to success given that the British Empire has failed, the US Not-An-Empire seems to be struggling and morally bankrupt. At least the CCP has been delivering visible improvements in prosperity over the last few decades.

It is a tragedy to lose the jewel of Asia that was old school Hong Kong. But they really need a frame that acknowledges a bit of the present political realities - there'll need to be cooperation with major factions in mainland China. Probably within the CCP. I assume there is a liberalising faction of some sort.

I found that (like many things) it's impossible to talk about the HK protest (and somewhat HK future) on the internet. Aside from the obvious trolls, the misinformed and those with a vested interest in pushing a narrative, the protest in themselves regrouped a lot of people, had a lot of things going on, and make you able to push whatever narrative you want.

They were some prodemocratic demonstrators. Laudable but sadly they had no chance of winning that fight. There were some genuinely weird people with weird demands too (like some far-right ultranationalist HKer). The attacks on some politician, journalist and medias, and extradition law passed at all cost, was a clear authoritarian push. But from a chinese perspective, it is just putting HK in line with the rest of the country. There was some weird disappearance of some protestor, the clear usage of the triad to inflict violence on some protestor, and some protestors turn violent too. One could say, every country would react the same to a part of a country trying to secede. But if we look at, for example, Spain and Catalonia, will independence is firmly denied, there was way less violence and authoritarianism (Catalonia still have some special status).

All in all, the sad part is that some well-meaning idealistic kids might never be able to go back to HK. And with the integration with china, HK will slowly lose its identify and distinct culture. Now that it's no different than most other chinese territory, there is no real interest for foreign investor to invest there specifically, which was a part of what made HK rich. Its landscape will probably change a lot as the land value is not as prized anymore (which, tbf, might be a win for a lot of HKer). A lot of HKer now move to the bigger and richer Shenzhen for work, as more mandarin-speaking chinese move to HK. There are too many speakers for Cantonese to disappear overnight, but it might become a secondary language for most over time. The one you use to talk with you grandparent and feel slightly unique.

> We should not let Hong Kong fade away. We should not let Joshua Wong fade away. Or Jimmy Lai, or others

Who are we? is it the people living in HK? then it make sense. Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.

> Otherwise why would anyone else (someone else living on the other side of the world) care? People have their own countries to fix let alone worry about other peoples problems.

Do you care about your neighbours? How about people in the next town over? Why should that concern stop at the border of your particular nation state?

I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo.

Also it’s their town, neighbours or country. Let them fix it however the way they want, why should I care or mingle on strangers business. A lot of problems in the world would have been solved if people actually minded their own business

> I care about my neighbours because I know them. I don’t care about the next town because they might as well be same as people living in Tokyo.

Fair enough, but many have the ability to empathise with people even if they don’t know them personally.

True, but empathy and calling for actions is two different things

At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.

Taiwan should take note and always remember what happened to Hong Kong because everyone knows they are next on the list.

As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.

So, America good, China bad?

>"So, America good, China bad?"

No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.

A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it.

In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.

> In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.

This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.

Lol I don't think I've ever been thanked for a post before. Don't thank me, join me and the handful of others here who don't just retroactively justify every decision our tech billionaire overlords make.

>but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it.

Yeah. Words matter. I do indeed wish we were back to a time where that was the case. America has always been flawed and contradictory, but our greatness came from a shared sense of some higher ideals that we strived for, regardless of the messy reality. That's been lost, and it's sad.

America? It was the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

1967. Come now, this is not the subject at hand now.

What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? In the last thirty years, lots of countries have gotten more democratic.

>What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe?

As bad as the Soviet Union was, what came next for Russia was far far worse. The Soviets at least had party rule; Russia is now an absolute autocracy ruled with an iron grip of one man who is now liquidating 30,000 people a month in a pointless war. Orders of magnitude more people have died in the last four years of Ukraine than in every direct Soviet military action combined post-WW2. Remember that Afghanistan was their most infamous blunder, leading directly to the dissolution, and only killed half of what they are losing monthly now.

> Taiwan should take note

It always had. The problem for them is that Trump is a bad ally. Their strategy is/was provide economic benefits to USA in return for a looming presence.

the implication being, don't try it china, its not possible, you'll lose too many people.

However thats not so much of a threat, partly because china has better anti-aircraft carrier weapons and partly because the US military has forgotten (well more accurately has fired the people who know) how to do logistics.

This is a Western view of things.

Hongkong was built by the British and a symbol of foreign aggression and imperialism for all Chinese (including in Taiwan actually, at least if you are more on the KMT side). It was never "free" under the British, and in fact the LegCo was only created when the British knew that they would hand HK over to China.

Why should "Hong Kong of old" remain? Why should Chinese territory not under full Chinese control? (And by territory I don't mean some far away outpost, but really the heart of the country).

There has been a lot of noise about "decolonising the curriculum" in recent years, which some have criticised as "woke", but it is striking that the narrative on HK is still fully colonial-centric with little opposing voices.

In the West we are also oblivious to Chinese politics at historic scale. I.e., the conflict between communists and nationalists, and now also democrats. When there are conflicts about freedoms in HK it does not necessarily means against China, as the people are Chinese and in China, but against the communists. Likewise in Taiwan, although there is also an "independentist" "faction" there.

What happened in HK? Stupid nativist kids got disciplined for being pieces of shit, the treasonous ones jailed, and now post spanking they're partying it up on the mainland. TW should take note they're so so lucky to have that option, the alternative is Gaza.

  At this point there is really no Hong Kong of old. China now fully controls that area, breaking a treaty with the UK.

For much of Hong Kong's history under British rule, there was no freedom. It was whatever a single British man said. Let's take off the rose tinted glasses.

A lot of Hong Kong people have fond memories of the "old HK" because their living standards and socioeconomics were well above Mainland Chinese. Today, this gap is much closer which doesn't sit right in many HKers minds. They were suppose to be the higher class, westernized Chinese. How dare any Mainlanders become wealthier, more capable, more cultured than we are. It wasn't because they had "freedom" under British rule.

What makes you characterise Hong Kong independence movements as naive economic nostalgia and not a desire for political freedom or independent legal systems?

Do you think individuals experienced more freedom under the British monarch and Parliament or under communist rule?

Because I’ve lived there for a long time and understand the locals more than whatever the western media tells.

HK topics seems to active disproportionate amount of almonds in western discourse. 10-15 years from now, new HK gen under decolonized patrioitc education going to be thoroughly Sinicized and wonder why west still can't take the L.

I don't like almonds and AI word-salads very much. Walnuts are yummy.

Here's how it started

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Poon_Hiu-wing

A guy commited homicide and walks free after 19 months in jail.

And those "Free Hong Kong" protesters were for him, not against him.

This is bad American propaganda. I’m sorry but what Hong Kong are we talking about? And what advantages of democracy are we talking about? Unbridled inequalities fostered by a crooked ruling class with absolutely zero respect for international laws and diplomatic order? This narrative could work when the US were still disguising their true nature. Nowadays… not so much

Democracy ≠ US.

...and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

They really fucked up when they started wearing Maga hats and making signs asking Donald Trump to save them. Personal feelings aside, it was a strategic mistake and completely turned China and probably a majority of HK itself against them. And obviously they did not get the intervention they were looking for.

If you ask a foreign power to intervene in your protest movement, then fail, you should probably consider fleeing if you don't want to go to prison. Just calling balls and strikes here.

Storming the LegCo and install a British HK flag [1] has to be one of the most idiotic and self-harmful thing one could do. That really made me wonder what those guys were thinking.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48832910

This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.

> This one time, turns out the colonialism was 100% on the side of moral right.

No, it wasn't.

It was just coincidental that the UK still held a 99 year lease (from 1898) when the communists took over mainland China. How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.

It was right every day after the communists took over China. That's quite a few years. And it was wrong of the UK to give back Hong Kong, as can be clearly seen today as China can't be trusted to honor the treaty, and certainly not be trusted to treat its citizens with a minimum of dignity.

Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK and the fact they were treated differently from other Chinese citizens in the first place is a historic injustice rooted in the UK's desire to force Chinese citizens into opium addiction for their own profit?

Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things? Who made us the ultimate arbiters of justice?

Why should one party to an agreement hold the other party accountable to the terms of the agreement?

Why should anyone honor an agreement with the drug dealer that attacked you so they could keep selling drugs and stole some of your property in the process?

If you were mugged and then the perp finally left you alone if you swore to do his bidding for another fifty years, you'd also tell them what they want to hear I assume. But I doubt you would honor your agreement once they no longer had power over you.

Because China’s no different, and geopolitics don’t map well onto personal relationships, except that trust matters. Even in your example, it would be that the drug dealer attacked and stole from my great-great-great-grandfather, and now the drug dealer’s great-great-great-granddaughter is returning the property. It’s a bit foolish to treat her with the same level of distrust, and it would be even more foolish to be the one to break the agreement if I know that I will have to keep doing business with her in the future.

Why should the UK have any agreement with France, who for so long agitated and sponsored terorism in the UK?

Or germany that tried to invade not so long ago?

Or russia that killed parts of our royal family?

Times change, and the point about the treaty was guaranteeing the rights of the people that lived in the place now. In the same way that signing an extradition treaty with germany is about allowing citizens to enforce rights. (rather than an exploitative regime using it to punish political dissidents had it been in place in 1936)

the treaty meant that instead of having to evacuate all the hongkongers (only a small amount were "truly native") leading to a huge economic collapse and negating the entire point of getting the land back (and the island that was annexed through good old fashioned cannon)

> Maybe how China treats its citizens is no business of the UK

Humane treatment of humans is the business of all humans everywhere.

> Why should the UK or you or I tell the Chinese how to do things?

Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P

Who are you to define what is humane? Is the treatment of the homeless and the drug addicts in the capitalist US humane? Why don't you prioritize the humane treatment in your own backyard before lecturing a country on the other end of the world about your ideas? The universalism rings real shallow when the particular isn't even dealt with yet.

> Well, most people understand sanity. Now, YOU personally seem not to, so you shouldn't tell anyone how to behave :P

I would recommend refamiliarizing yourself with the HN guidelines.

Note that the lease was on the mainland part of Hong Kong. The island was conquered outright and Britain formally owned it in perpetuity.

> How they got the lease in the first place is another matter.

Are you suggesting that flooding a country with opium so that the ruling classes would sell them tea, causing huge addiction, is somehow immoral?

Its not the british empires finest moment. mind you, france, portugal and the USA were very happy to collude with us to get decent trading terms.

(hence why there are some really well preserved portugese style neighbourhoods in Macau )

Well no. This series of events happened exactly because the laws set up by colonial British would let loose a murderer.

Joshua Wong went to the streets for the murderer, not against him, by the way.

nice rephrase of the story; the extradition bill was written in a very convenient way that somehow included completely unrelated to the case PRC that normal people would have rightful doubts about

sounds like the whole op was a setup from the very beginning, very convenient indeed and i wouldn't put it past them to even plan a murder

USA propaganda. They try to weaken any democracy so they seems the least worst option. (Of course there is other "worst option" countries, who wants to live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Rwanda, Uganda, Etc.? [allies of usa]).

Propaganda of what?

If you have read news you should have seen the HK courts now jail people left right and center for against CCP.

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