
Britain Failed Hong Kong - notlukesky
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/12/britain-failed-hong-kong/
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jopsen
Handing over a territory and it's citizens without a referendum seems like a
mistake.

The whole Hong Kong scenario always seemed weird, utterly reminiscent of
backroom negotiations and colonialism.

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NotPaidToPost
Forced opium trade, war, forcibly seizing foreign territory do seem like
mistakes.

HK's retrocession to China was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately it seems that it is very hard for Britain to get over its lost
Empire. They should really move on.

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jopsen
Yeah, the past is riddled with bad things, but you'll be judged for how you
move forward, not for what you inherited..

Maybe, it should go to China, but why not have a referendum, it's cheaper than
war -- and it makes a stronger argument too :)

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NotPaidToPost
It is a rethoric and disingenuous argument to call for a referendum. See
Crimea.

The problem is states competing against each other and they know that HK is a
way to create trouble for China.

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jopsen
A referendum today is too late..

But if the UK had called one, it might have been different.

We've successful solved territorial disputed with referendums in Europe. We
just rarely talk about it, because there was no war to talk about :)

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jshaqaw
At the time of the handover the world was in a unipolar moment. People though
that we were converging on an “end of history” where every state was inevably
moving towards democracy. The relative importance of the Chinese economy in
world was a tiny fraction of where it is today. It was a mainstream opinion in
Western circles that Hong Kong would “take over” Beijing rather than vice
versa.

How things change.

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Quequau
Why should Hong Kong be any different?

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seszett
Different from what?

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ubercow13
Our other ex-colonies, I presume

