See the following articles for the historical context [1][2]:
"Even in the '60s and '70s, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London attempted to introduce democracy and free elections only to be told by Beijing, including by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, that under no circumstances would [China] tolerate a democratically elected Hong Kong because they saw that as the first step toward independence," she said. [1]
"These documents … show that not only were the Brits mulling granting Hong Kong self-governance in the 1950s; it was the Chinese government under Mao Zedong who quashed these plans, threatening invasion." [2]
[1]: https://asiasociety.org/new-york/why-didnt-britain-democrati...
[2]: https://qz.com/279013/the-secret-history-of-hong-kongs-still...
Meaning Hong Kong would technically no longer be part of China, and would revert to British sovereignty.
Meaning, if they pass this law and take over defense/security in HK, they are essentially violating the Hong Kong Basic Law (Constitution) and invading what would then be (through their actions) a foreign country.
Defer to international lawyers on the technicalities, but that's how I've seen this read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
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.
So the issue is: who represents China? The government in Beijing or the government in Taipei?
Later, Britain signed the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984 with Beijing to decide the (then) future of Hong Kong. If the Sino–British Joint Declaration is revoked, things could be different.
Just recently US is asking the Beijing government to repay the debt of Qing dynasty [1], which Beijing said would be the responsibility of Taiwan. Following this logic, receiving Hong Kong from Britain could also be the responsibility of Taiwan.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-29/trump-s-n...
Since 2001! There's a century of this debt getting rolled over to greater fools.
Having said that one must note Taiwan has a law in the pipeline (1st reading) to give up The claim of mainland. You may be surprise Of communist china Actual objection To it But not HKER or Taiwanese. In any case Even if they keep the claim This path is Only valid In theory but frankly not in Practice.
Personally i will continue our fight. Taiwan has enough of their own problems. If they can free from mainland, That is great already.
Sure. In that case, it would revert to British sovereignty, Britain wouldn't lift a finger to defend it, and it would go to China anyhow by right of conquest.
Treaties are nifty and all, but ultimately, no matter what pieces of paper are signed, you can't hold territory you have no intention to defend.
Gives legal pretext for any tariffs or sanctions you want, meaning we are at the beginning of these issues not the end...
If Beijing were able to control the fate of Hong Kong in the 1950s, they would have, and it wouldn't have been "leave it in british hands, sure, as long as there's no democracy".
I pushed back against imperialism dressed up as liberation. Everybody's soooo concerned about Hong Kong civil rights, just like they were about Iraqi civil rights.
Other places, where it's not to our geopolitical advantage? Crickets.
Bringing up "British rule was no panacea" when we're talking about the CCP's efforts to deliberalize a de facto free society reads like you're apologizing for what the CCP wants to do.
Funny how Britain was happy to rule over Hong Kong for centuries without introducing democratic reform and then suddenly 'liberalised' things only when they were on the point of handing HK back to China. Almost as if it was done with precisely the intent of leaving the Chinese with as much of a hot potato as possible.
They don't call it "Perfidious Albion" for nothing!
Britain first raised its flag over Hong Kong island in 1842. The New Territories, without which Hong Kong is not a viable independent entity, were leased to Britain under a 99-year lease in 1898.
This was a consequence of one of the worst aspects of colonial Britain, the Opium wars, but, as hker points out [1], since the 1960s Britain has attempted to democratize Hong Kong, but was constrained by China's realistic threat of invasion.
There's not much credit to any side here, but let's at least get the history right.
I'm not saying you're wrong but China in the 1960s was an unindustrialised, agrarian 3rd-world country which was barely able to feed its own people. I suspect Britain [a rich, industrialised, nuclear-armed member of NATO] would have laughed in their face, if China had issued any threats.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of looking at the might & modernity of China today and thinking t'was ever thus. I'm old enough to remember when news footage from China would show countless thousands of people, clad in denim boiler suits, riding bicycles through Peking, with nary a car to be seen.
[ASIDE: Ironic that moving towards vehicle-free cities with a cycling populace is now seen as aspirational and a sign of progress whereas, back then, it was an indicator of how backward China was]
Furthermore, remember that it was China's intervention in Korea in the early 1950s that almost overran the US forces in Korea, and forced a negotiated settlement with the creation of two Koreas.
NATO is irrelevant, as that was an alliance for the defence of Western Europe, not small remnants of Britain's colonies. NATO was not about to go to war with China then, any more than it involved itself in Korea.
And what would Britain do with its nukes? Nothing more than the US did in Korea and Viet Nam. If Britain were to even threaten their use, it would seriously damage its relationship with the USA, by creating a precedent that the USSR (and, by 1964, a nuclear China) could invoke at any time. Remember what happened over Suez, which did not even go as far as a nuclear threat.
Even if Britain halted an initial invasion, China would still be there, on the border of Hong Kong, for as long as the British could afford to stay (or until 1997, if it came to that, which it would not.)
None of this analysis is dependent on "looking at the might & modernity of China today and thinking t'was ever thus."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_independence#Colonia...
In the 60s/70s China was in bad terms with Soviet, US/UK saw the benefit of having China as "Allies". Thus, HK kind of became the scapegoat.
If we're so much better, maybe we can let up on the propaganda and whitewashing of history?
(Edited to specify that the end result was liberal, not the whole thing)
From my limited knowledge, the government of Hong Kong was quite liberal, which created its large economic inequality, low literacy rate, and high spot in the freedom index today. Many would argue it was too liberal in some senses.
Exactly how were the people not free, in the 1980s?
Do you think its impossible to have freedom without local democracy?
But it doesn't undo other things about their government, it's just a fuller picture. Same applies to UK colonialism.
And given that the UK itself has most of these things, I highly doubt they'd arbitrarily deny them to a dependent territory without good reason (especially when their other territories all have some measure of representative government). Other comments describing Chinese threats provide one possible good reason.
Setting aside HK, we apparently have very different reads on how the British Empire acted everywhere else, as well.
Back in the 1980s, while Thatcher and Reagan were preaching about freedom, british-ruled HK had less freedom than they do now under the bad guy commies.
EDIT: This is not to cheerlead a regression of rights in HK. I'm just saying that being an imperial subject, being brutally put down every few decades when revolting, that's not some liberal utopia.