
The U.S. Should Defend Hong Kong - ISL
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/former-u-s-envoy-says-america-should-defend-hong-kong
======
hker
(Quoting a comment I made on another thread)

Some critics _speculated_ that one way out for Hong Kong is for her to be
integrated into Taiwan, and then get transitive protection by the United
States.

The handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997 in based on the 1984
Sino-British Joint Declaration, which China declares is merely historical and
no longer holds any “practical significance.” [1]

Note that Hong Kong was given to the Britain by three treaties in the 19th
century (1842 Treaty of Nanking, 1860 Convention of Peking, 1898 The Second
Convention of Peking), and the true copies of all treaties are in the hand of
Taiwan, which were brought to Taiwan by the KMT government during its retreat
to Taiwan before 1950.

So if the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the declaration behind the
handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, is revoked (partly because CCP
declares it invalid), Britain _might_ declare that Hong Kong should return to
the holder of the three treaties–Taiwan.

Extremely unlikely, but arguably has legal justification.

As a side note, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the two main places sharing the use
of traditional Chinese characters (besides Macau), and Taiwan has a good track
record of respecting sub-languages of spoken Chinese (not just use Mandarin),
so culturally they share a lot. And they also value democracy, freedom, and
rule of law as core values, so _ignoring geopolitics_ their integration is
plausible.

[1]:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/br...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/britains-
responsibility-to-hong-kong/594142/)

~~~
pmdulaney
Very interesting. My heart says "Let Hong Kong become part of Taiwan." But as
unreasonable as mainland China is, I think they would be justified in
objecting to US meddling in Hong Kong.

