I'm not seeing any experiment. China was to take HK regardless and do as it pleased. The Falklands option was no option. A Tibet-style occupation would have been disastrous. Its orderly handover was in everyone's best interests if only for a time. I think its unlikely HK will ever be fully integrated into China's provincial system. I believe there would be strong opposition by other provinces, and fear in the central party about long-term HK influence on communist party policy.

>> China was to take HK regardless and do as it pleased.

No. The HK handover was part of a treaty, the Sino–British Joint Declaration, in which the Chinese government agreed to let HK remain mostly autonomous for 50 years after the retrocession.

The current status of HK is the result of, and guaranted by, a treaty between two sovereign nations. China is not meant to do 'as it pleased' here.

Treaties are worthless pieces of paper unless their signatories are willing and able to confront violations with military force. Britain is not, and China knows it; hence the unopposed erosion of Hong Kong's automomy

> The current status of HK is the result of, and guaranteed by, a treaty between two sovereign nations.

One of which is in no position to exercise its guarantee.

You are correct, and the current (mostly non-)responses from the British government are embarrassing.

However this remains a public treaty, and if China does not respect it, it will erode their standing on other matters (e.g. why would Malaysia/Vietnam/Philippines sign any treaty regarding the China sea dispute, if Beijing ignored the one on HK?). So yes, HK is in a bad situation, but not all is lost yet.

Your reply ignores the realities of power in the South China Sea, just as it ignores the realities of power in Hong Kong (what sort of response would you like to see from the British government?)

Failure for whom? For the HK people that enjoy a democratic system? Probably. For China? Seems like it has gone pretty well. Power transferred peacefully (albeit with some demonstrations) and they are slowly but surely gaining influence in the politics without any sort of resistance/rebellion or need for military intervention. To the rest of the world HK is still HK. I suspect they're trying to run the same program in TW.

The way Hong Kong has turned out has surely made "one country two systems" a lot harder to sell to the Taiwanese.

Taiwan was universally opposed to "one country, two systems" even before China starting cracking down on Hong Kong though: hating it has always been the one thing the Blue and Green coalitions can seem to agree on. So in that sense China's position hasn't actually been made any worse.