You're right, it's completely irrelevant to them. But can you honestly say that the mainland Chinese great, great children have also forgotten about it? Why not? It's because it's convenient for HK to forget whilst it was a fundamentally defining moment for China that influenced the end of the Qing dynasty, the end of over 2000 years of imperial rule and the creation of the communist-based political ideologies we see today. But by your logic everyone forgets about everything given enough time? That just strikes me as naive and a form of denial.

I still don't think you understand my point. I'm not saying that HK doesn't have a right to fight. I'm saying that they're not like Taiwan or all the other peoples that naturally came to their differentiated political stance - HK simply doesn't have history and destiny on its side, so it's always going to be that much more of a struggle.

Maybe another example will make it clearer. I have the right to protest against the bear that's attacking me, but I don't have a right to ask the world to change the fundamental nature of bears as if its a matter of geopolitics. Bears will always be bears. Bear violence has nothing to do with communism or democracy. And so it's a waste of energy to entertain that idea.

I don't like what China is doing to HK, but Britain walked into bear territory. Let's not argue about how wrong bears are, let's be sober and treat bears as bears, not as symbols of anti-democracy that might somehow appeal to diplomacy.