The UK was happy to ignore the violation of the handover agreements and offer BNO passports to steal all the young brains of HK, unfortunately.

Because “international law” is a farce, recent U.S. actions against Venezuela is but the latest example of that fact.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

How many people should've died for Hong Kong? Should we have invaded China? Should we have drafted millions of men from across the west and put boots on the ground?

It's wild to see these comments from the same accounts that within the same 24-hours are (justifiably) hand-wringing over the corrupt and illegal actions of the US government, related to ICE, Epstein, etc.

The US government lies and does a lot of bad stuff, but we must believe everything they say about big bad chyna, the one entity big enough to hold the USG accountable.

Welcome to the real world. The UK is obviously in no position to challenge China. And with the US invading and threatening to take over other sovereign nations solely because "it's in our national interest", we're certainly not one to talk.

Sad that international community doesn't do more to intervene in US. Seriously, please help.

Because ccp has spread woke mind virus to the west. Like u see here in hackernews, ppl with TDS and MDS and yet proclaims to fight for freedom

Are you saying the rest of the world should have stood up for what ultimately is colonialism? And colonialism of the British out of all the people? And also in a territory, that is directly on or neighboring the Chinese landmass? The Chinese people have a long history of others trying to conquer them or colonize them. They are probably pretty allergic to such notions, and will reject them. Realistically speaking, no one would have had the resources to force HK staying the same enclave it has been. This all sounds rather unrealistic.

We can agree on the treatment of HK being far from ideal, and I would go as far as saying, that even economically for China itself, it was not good to handle the matter as they did. That is where their ideology shows. HK was an economical hub. In recent times though many businesses left and more are unwilling to invest. This is the economical downside, that could simply have been avoided by not doing what they did. The question should be asked "Why not just leave it as it is, since it is working well, economically?" But they had to mess with it. Another downside is international reputation damage of course. China has achieved many great things in the past decades and now has cities more modern and convenient than most of what you find in Europe. Their one problem remains ideology. That they sometimes feel the need to do things, that are not economically sound, for the sake of ideology.

However, I can't agree with anyone arguing, that HK should not be part of China, like some people do in the comments here. It's a separate matter from policies implemented. Of course I wish for HKers to keep their freedoms. Who doesn't. Of course I wish China would not implement policies, that endanger the freedom of its people. But territorial? Nope, HK always was bound to become a part of China.

What I can say more from visiting HK twice is, that they still got Internet (uncensored), in contrast to other parts of China. Every week I am speaking with someone from HK, using Signal, which is not practical for anyone from (most?) other parts of China. When traveling in China, I used a HK eSIM, to have reliable and uncensored Internet. I hope that these aspects still remain intact for a long time, or that the rest of China will open up. At some point they should have the confidence in their own economy to compete on global scale.

Given what US companies did to ICC, it’s not hard to imagine, if UN intervine, their officials’ Chinese EV will be taking over remotely and driven off the bridge.

UK “taking back” HK is also very imaginative , like white people dreaming of recolonizing Asia in 21st century? Good luck.

There are plenty of nuance to be had on the situation in China but I wonder what you mean here.

Are you arguing that it's legitimate to put a 78 years old from a former democratic city forcefully reintegrated to another state in jail for 20 years because he is saying that the will of the people should be heard?

The smugness and superiority about how the rest of the world are immoral barbarians and the global status quo of white/western hegemony is amazing and very moral is pretty funny. It’s pretty obvious these same people in the past would’ve said the US’s chattel slavery is not that bad because other countries do slavery too. The equivocations westerners will do.

FYI, you're shadowbanned. Your comments by default show up as hidden for most users.