Perhaps it's luck that the British carved out Hong Kong, because if they didn't, the Cantonese would have probably been assimilated in to Mandarin by now.
Your comment really worries me though, because it seems to me you're conflating the subculture of Guangdong with the culture of Honk Kong, perhaps in an attempt to make a tenuous argument that it is in fact Guangdong, like Taiwan, of which HK is but a tiny part, that desires independence. I think that's dangerously disingenuous to suggest that HK's current political consensus is but a facet of the wider Guangdong region's political sensibilities. I don't see any evidence whatsoever to suggest that what has happened in HK would not have also happened to any other port on the cost of China. HK wants independence because it took on the subculture of Britain not Guangdong.
A sample of some recent articles
"China Is Forcing Its Biggest Cantonese-Speaking Region To Speak Mandarin" https://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-forcing-its-biggest...
"Hong Kong education chief forced to clarify controversial comments about teaching Chinese language in Cantonese" https://amp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/216738...
"Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou_Television_Cantonese...
And there's also evidence of the CCP re-writing history https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/opinion/ching-cheong-hong...
You've also ignored the point about how HK did not succumb to the Cultural Revolution. I think that this is an important point on the timeline where the culture of HK diverged from the remaining Guangdong region, which is one of the things that give Hongkongese their unique Chinese identity. For example, Hongkongese retained their religious freedom, as well as freedom of the arts, and language.
So are you indeed saying HK identifies more with the plight of Guangdong than the principles of British democracy? To me it still would seem that Guangdong's resistance to Beijing is fundamentally different from HK's, so that it's merely coincidence that both Guangdong and HK have reason to feel tension with Beijing.
I completely appreciate that HK further differentiated itself from the mainland, in the same way Taiwan did, during the Cultural Revolution. And I see how that must fuel HK's desire for autonomy. But I don't see how that gives any more insight into Beijing's view, which is what I'm trying to bring more awareness to. How do we get beyond the black and white perspective that "China Bad, Honk Kong Good"? Or are you just saying that Beijing is indeed acting completely without reason, as if in a deranged authoritarian vacuum? What doesn't anybody want to understand the nuances of the CCP's motives, no matter how much we might disagree with them?
The language seems like a confirmation bias. If you turned the corporate press standard around, you could also have a headline saying the English deepens their imperial domination of Scotland brainwashing the youth with the Queen's English rather than Gaelic. Also, if what China does makes you uncomfortable, you should be out on the street burning police cars for what the Canadians do in the 'Indian' residency schools.
Linguistically, Southern China has many different groups. In Guangdong alone there are plenty of Hakka and Teochew speakers, both of which are languages quite different to Cantonese. Even within the Cantonese topolect there are a significant number of different groups, for example Taishanese, whose speech is not mutually intelligible with Guangzhou Cantonese. Add Guangxi and Hainan and there are even more different languages and ethnic groups.
I think what the original poster was trying to point out is that due to British rule, Hong Kong did not take part in the advancements (and catastrophes) that happened on the mainland over the past century. That is undeniable fact. The implication was that this was a good thing, but i disagree.
Nowadays in the mainland people who grew up in villages hundreds or thousands of miles apart can communicate using their second language - the lingua franca of Mandarin... meanwhile many Hongkongers are stuck only knowing the language of their local town. Perhaps they preserved their local language better than people in Jiangmen (Taishanese) or Huizhou (Hakka) or Chaozhou and Shantou (Teochew), but a downside is they also can't really talk to people from those cities the way the younger generations of mainlanders can.
You gave an argument that is factually wrong.
Cantonese is not a seperate ethnic group. They are still Han Chinese.
Also, the Cantonese and Mandarin speakers can still understand eachother without study (although their speech may sound funny to eachother).
The language differences are enough to give both groups their own identity, but certainly not a new ethnicity.
I think you give Hong Kongers too little credit here. In fact, by 1997 many of those who hated China already voted with their feet and emigrated elsewhere; most of those who remained had high hopes that China will uphold its end of the bargain and become a well-behaved superpower.
The real irony is that the much more frequent interactions with mainland China since the handover have shown HKers the true colours of the CCP -- a thuggish regime, with zero regard to anything other than their hold to power. You can look up the number of HK people who identify as "Chinese" over the years for some hints.
Taiwan is anti-CCP because the anti-CCP forces (or rather I should say "government forces") fled there during the Chinese civil war...
This is somewhat also the case for Hongkong although I think many in Hongkong migrated there for simple economic reasons.
It's 2019, not 1949. Taiwan is anti-CCP because the PRC claims its territory and Taiwan overwhelmingly rejects the notion of being ruled by them. Which is fairly natural, I can't think of many people in developed, democratic countries who want to be ruled by a neighbouring, developing dictatorship.
Taiwan is thus still formally a province of China in the general sense of 'China' and is claimed by the PRC because of the civil war and because the PRC claimed to have superseded the ROC (which obviously the ROC/Taiwan does not agree with)
This is unfinished business since 1949.
Of course HK would be a haven for anti-CCP refugees and in in the last few decades that has come to be an important part of HK's identity. But that doesn't change the facts surrounding the inception of HK as merely a British-held asset to ensure the continued extraction of financial wealth from an Opium-addicted mainland China.
Of course I'm not trying to justify the Chinese aggression, I'm just trying to understand why so few people seem interested in going beyond the "China Bad" stereotype and really actually try to understand the context of China's motivations.
Not sure whether I personally have any insights to give you, but I've found that Quora has many posters that provide information about China's POV, i.e. POVs that are different from what you will typically find on HN. I cannot vouch for how accurate those posts are, but I've found that many of such posts seem to contain quite some detail. Also feel free to contact me for discussions.
Of course you can never justify oppression, but I think such a thought experiment can give some very useful context.
If things are black and white then we miss the fact that HK's legitimacy is of a different kind to Taiwan's. Which in turn reinforces global opinion that HK's fight is equivalent to say Ukraine's. Why exactly aren't the UK rushing to HK's aid? It's precisely because of the nuances of the history that too few people are aware of or interested in. At the very least if such knowledge doesn't help HK now, then it will help all those in the future involved in similar acts of aggressions that the West, let alone China, still haven't grown out of.
> Why exactly aren't the UK rushing to HK's aid?
For numerous reasons, none of which have to do with a nuanced view of history: Brexit, internal domestic politics, fear of upsetting China, fear of impacting the British economy, etc. Britain in particular and the West in general have zero qualms about intervening in other countries' affairs when it suits them.
Hongkong is Chinese territory and this is no longer colonial time: China is no longer so weak that it may be slapped into compliance. China, though still not that strong, will do whatever it wants at home.
Of course, Britain is no longer a world power and is not in a position to dictate policy to other countries apart from the puniest ones.
Let me put it like this. Imagine I'm an alcoholic, but I can't afford rehab, so I steal the money to check myself in. I get better and everyone in the world agrees that my new state of sobriety is the best possible outcome for me. However the police find out, I go to court, get a big fine, get depressed and start drinking again. I ask for help from my friends, but I neglect to tell them about actually what happened, I allow them to entertain the idea that I am a total victim.
My point is that we need to know that context of a situation, or we can't truly help.
So I have to strongly disagree with you that history has nothing to do with Britain's current stance on HK. Britain is a sad, humiliated, crumbling nation. Brexit is in fact Britain's chickens coming home to roost from the very events of which HK is but one in a myriad of aggressive wounds on the world. Those rich, Eaton-educated families that got their wealth and arrogance through the authoritarian, totalitarian, anti-democratic practices of colonialism are finally beginning to find their true place in the world. Either Brexit happens and Britain suffers Northern Irish violence and Scottish independence, or Brexit is cancelled leading to the collapse of the Conservatives. Either way the core source of British "pride" has a very sobering journey ahead of it.
Hate to break it to you, but the rich elite in the UK will not suffer because of Brexit. The poor will suffer, as they have always done. The elite will be just fine, and probably be in a position to strengthen their standings from the chaos.
And finally, what is your conclusion on China then? You are not arguing they're in the right, so what? What's your suggestion? What's your take? What should the CCP be doing right now? Should they be implementing democratic reform on the mainland to converge with the HK culture more?
I think part of the problem is that while "attempting to understand" you're leaving out some important things. How did this "Chinese perspective" form? Was it natural, or deliberately formed or amplified with propaganda? What are the political motivations behind it? How much value should be put on irredentist nationalism, especially when wielded by an anti-liberal authoritarian ruling class against smaller more-liberal communities?
> If things are black and white then we miss the fact that HK's legitimacy is of a different kind to Taiwan's.
That really is a matter of perspective, isn't it? One could very validly argue that these "nuances of the history" that you're emphasizing are actually irrelevant to the posture that one should take to toward the current situation, and kind of a distraction. To put it another way, if you are considering slavery and have a slave in front of you, does it really matter if he's a slave because his parents were captured in a raid or if they were sold into slavery by his grandparents? Or should you focus on the slave's thoughts and his experiences? Maybe the his owner is adamant that his grandparents bought his slave's family fair-and-square, but how much effort should you make to empathize with that position?
The reason this thought experiment doesn't really work is that it disregards a crucial piece of information that the CCP is an authoritarian regime, while the people of Hong Kong are liberal and democratic. People generally prefer to move from the former to the latter, and not from the latter to the former.
I think history is useful, but it doesn't really change the fact that the people of Hong Kong do not want authoritarianism. It should be irrelevant what some king in the Qing dynasty or British empire did. As common folk ourselves, we should be giving more value to the will of the people, than the will of people who buy and sell countries and its people as if it was private property. So, no, Hong Kong does not "belong" to CCP just because at some point it "belonged" to Qing dynasty.
Talking about people as if they are property of kings and rulers is just slavery at the level of groups.
In fact the US fought their bloodiest war over such issue...
I can't see how you imply UK and the US have any link on the topic.
I'm not sure what would happen if say 75% of a city wanted to leave the US because that has never happened and isn't very likely to.
The point is that the government is obviously finding ways to avoid a referendum because they obviously don't want Scottish independence.
Let's not be naive here.
The hard truth is that governments of any country on Earth favour self-determination in two cases: (1) when it does not apply to them, and (2) when they expect that they result will favour their interests. That's how geopolitics works. "People's interests" is just for PR.
How often does a country need to have a referendum on independence of regions that are so inclined to be said to support self determination? Also the polls leading up to 2014 were close enough that the result wasn't certain, yet the government went ahead.
I never said the UK would be happy with Scottish Independence. But if Independence was the clear preference of the people, the UK would let them go. The same can be said for the US and Puerto Rico, but not for China.
>never
You said their position was "not to allow", which makes it sound like the Scottish people clearly want one but the UK won't allow it. That is not the case.
It feels to me that HK is exploiting the fact that most of the world automatically assumes big superpowers, especially little understood foreign ones, are the bad guys, such that HK the underdog MUST fight for recognition. I think such framing of the conflict misrepresents the situation preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution. By which I mean most of the world unhelpfully sees the black and white of HK good, China bad. When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods. If we're genuinely interested in finding a way forward don't we need to reflect on these nuances? I know that's a big ask, but big problems usually require a big effort.
What is this help, and how is it being prevented?
> When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods.
How is that relevant?
This idea that we cannot say one part in the conflict is clearly in the Wrong (or even evil) unless we reject the country as a whole is just silly beyond belief. I'd even say that's been the default position of much of the Europeans regarding the US for decades now.
> If the citizen's of the world actually understood the situation then they would have more opportunity to exercise their economic and diplomatic powers.
That's rather ambiguous. What specific actions are you thinking about?
How many people actually know how HK came into being? That the supposedly democratic state of Britain who had already violently colonised India, used Indian land and serfs to grow 1000s of tons of Opium to keep Chinese people addicted and thus in sustainable trade. Queen Victoria ignored a letter from China exhorting her to stop. When Britain didn't stop, China took it into their own hands, destroying all the imported Opium they could find. Britain took this as destroying their "property" and thus went to war with them, easily winning and requiring the handing over of the port of Hong Kong so the trade would not be impeded again.
I know that was over 150 years ago now, but surely that has to be taken into account? If you don't think that's relevant to today's innocent HK'ers, then at least we have to realise that the handing over of HK was a defining factor in the ultimate end of the Qing dynasty, the closing of over 2000 years of China's political tradition and precipitating the radical changes that thrust China onto the world stage as we see it today.
I support the rights of all people to self determination. But HK is not Taiwan, it didn't naturally come to its anti-CCP ideology through an organic, internal and independent process. In fact, somewhat ironically, it came to it precisely because of an unaccountable, authoritarian regime, with no other agenda but self interest.