> Look at the language used "return" - people still think HK was leased. It wasn't - the New Territories were.

And most of Kowloon. As opposed to HK Island, which was obtained by legitimate conquest, I suppose?

> Of all the colonies from which British rule was removed, only HK got handed over to the thugs, thieves and torturers its population had previously escaped.

What realistic alternative would you have suggested to Thatcher at the time?

> What realistic alternative would you have suggested to Thatcher at the time?

Oh that's easy. Give every HKer a full British passport instead of creating an entirely new category of nationality, where they were still British Nationals, but not British Citizens. Then let in a token few thousand. Unforgivable.

Would have given HKers a free choice, and done wonders for the UK economy.

Not easy at all, good luck getting it accepted by both the UK parliament and by Deng Xiaoping. People have this notion that the UK could do whatever they wanted in HK before 1997 (or at least before the negotiations with the PRC in the 1980s). But recently declassified documents revealed that the PRC was already pressuring the UK about HK affairs back in the 1950s.

They weakened status well before the joint agreement. Yet right after Tiananmen Square, and after the joint agreement, they managed to rapidly dream up a selection of 50k families, so they were also far from powerless to act without Deng Xiaoping's approval. Thousands of HKers were leaving after Tiananmen, to anywhere that would take them, so it's not like it would have deprived China of those citizens after 97 handover.

There's a big difference between accepting 50k and 5million people, on both the British and the Chinese side.

50k families is more like 200k–300k people.