As a citizen of a country that was invaded and taken apart multiple times in the last 200 years(Poland) - no, that's a very noble idea, but in practice that doesn't always work. Poland has survived in the shape that it is mostly because people were able to move and cultivate the Polish language, culture and heritage elsewhere temporarily. We even had a government-in-exile for a while in London, at the time when Poland was literally wiped off the map of Europe and just didn't exist any more, except in peoples' minds. I can't imagine my country would exist at all if other countries had your approach - just piss off and if you want to exist then go and fight. Sometimes this requires time, not grabbing swords and fighting.

I don't think it's useful to generalize about whether people 'should' 'stay and fight' or not - it depends so much on the individuals and on the circumstances, but anyway:

Ultra was able to successfully decrypt Enigma messages because the British evacuated Polish code breakers, so I suppose it's a good thing those people didn't stay and fight.

The Polish resistance saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust and gave a ton of information to the Allies, so I suppose it's a good thing those people did stay and fight.

Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers (under the direction of the Polish government in exile) fought with the Allies throughout the war, so I suppose it's a good those people left and fought.

Just some random thoughts, everything is complicated.

The Poles also fought a two-front war better than the French fought their one-front war thereafter.

Absolutely, those are some very good points, thanks!

The point that your argument misses is that it was fighting the invariably resolved the issues and paved the way for the exiled governments and people to return.

Yes, I guess it does. I guess the overall point is that the time was still needed though - Poland couldn't have fought for its independence at the time(there were 3 uprisings and the all failed) so maybe the situation is similar - Hong Kong citizens have no chance against China right now - but in 20 years the situation may be different. Of course it's impossible to predict.

Sure am glad the people who fought the revolutionary war against England didn’t think like you.

I feel like you're trying to be inflammatory just for the sake of it. There are good reasons why Poland and Polish people couldn't fight like Americans did against the British, it would turn into an essay if I wanted to list them all. But I think most importantly, that approach worked - we have harboured Polish culture wherever we could and now we're a major country of 50 million people.

Not to offend anyone, but Americans haven't really demonstrated any ability or will to fight for their rights as a nation in the past 100 years, this posturing I see all the time from Americans about freedom is like a peacock displaying its feathers, not having done anything to earn them - you were just born with them.

That is an overly simplistic analysis. The American colonies had strategic resources and positioning available to fight. Poland at the time did not.

Examine Hong Kong’s strategic resources at the moment and tell us how you would deploy them in a fight.

Also, distances were vastly bigger (maybe that's included in positioning?). England had to ferry troops and material over the Atlantic at a time when a ship voyage was long and could very well end in disaster. China could move troops over in a matter of days without any real risk.

America also had the financial and military support of France.

You act like the American revolution is the only instance of this. The French Revolution is another example of people fighting for change.

The French Revolution was largely fought internally. Hong Kong’s situation is more like occupation than civil strife.

Well, having the ability to emigrate would probably help the citizens negotiate, especially when their autonomy was just stripped through Chinese imperialism (against the 1984 Sino British Joint Declaration no less).

Plus there's really no evidence that the best & brightest in Hong Kong can do anything to scratch the surface of changing China. They were largely free - acting as a demonstration of a working system for the mainland - the past two decades and it made no difference. So now they're going to make a difference once their rights are revoked and they're entirely silenced? Of course not, they're going to vanish into the crowd of the other 1.4 billion silenced persons with no ability to speak out.

The best thing the US (Europe and others) can do, is bleed off Hong Kong's talent, those that want to escape before the door closes. It's not going to severely harm China, however every Elon Musk or Jensen Huang that the US can get to its shores is a win.

The US should immediately set up a special, aggressive immigration program just for Hong Kong and Taiwan. After China is done consolidating the situation in Hong Kong in the near future, they will turn more of their attention and aggression to Taiwan (Taiwan is aware they're up next after HK, you can tell by their recent behavior and statements; Taiwan is sweating bullets, properly so).

> citizens of Hong Kong need to stay and fight for the rights they desire, not run away to another country

I’ve never understood the place-over-people mentality. The rights Hong Kong is fighting for exist overseas. The people can keep their culture and spend their lives thriving in America, or stay put and fight what looks to be a losing battle against Beijing for the rest of their lives.

Nobody would force anyone to emigrate. All that’s proposed is a choice. If you can’t convince your countrymen to stay and fight, you don’t have a legitimate fight.

Having just a handful of countries that are worthwhile places to live while the rest of the planet is littered with corrupt dictatorships is hardly a solution.

Even America was created by people fleeing England and then breaking it off from the British empire (using a violent uprising). They didnt fix England.

> They didnt fix England.

Eventually they did, in a roundabout way. The rise of the US, causing Britain to lose its lucrative colonies (and the future potential value of their North American holdings), helped break the British Empire. They could not sustain their empire with its shrinking assets. Empires bloat, ossify and become more expensive to maintain over time. To counter that, you need an outsized injection of new value coming in, which the North American colonies could have potentially provided. At best it might have bought the British Empire some more time.

In this case fixing means returning Britain to being a normally functioning nation state, instead of an overseas, overstretched empire.

I think you have your history mixed up. The British Empire reached its height after losing the US.

What eventually broke it was the World Wars.

Well, to the point that country is the UK, not the US. I argue the UK has a moral responsibility here: they handed (largely) free British subjects over to a tyrannical regime.

Note that I am not arguing that their responsibility is derived from their colonial past; but rather, from the handover itself. (arguably this whole mess really started with the New Territories lease. "99 years". Foolish.)

The ones that have the resources to run away already gave no problem doh g that, and many of them have already. The ones that can’t are mostly the ones that are protesting right now. They don’t really have a choice.

It's easy to say that when you're afforded the comforts of a Western democracy.

Comforts I have because my American ancestors stayed and fought a war for, instead of running away.

Which makes your line of argument all the more obnoxious considering you contributed nothing to those comforts.

It doesn't have to be for altruistic reasons, I'm betting the USA would benefit from having an influx of immigrants from a developed nation that shares our values.

Possibly, but Americans might also be amazed at the level of inequality and hyper-capitalism HK represents, with the elite rich beyond belief and the lower class living in cage homes on a few sqft.

The difference isn't quite as large as the one between the US and European countries, but it's significant.

> At what point are the citizens of a country responsible for changing it for the better?

And how would they do that?

The HK citizens by themselves will not win this fight, the writing is on the wall. They either get help from abroad or flee.

It's naive to think that a region with a population of less than 10mi will make China backdown, considering China's history.

At what point are the people having heart attacks responsible for stopping them? The people having heart attacks need to treat them themselves, not run away to a hospital.

Nice straw man.

If anything, my comment was a false analogy, not a straw man.

Your comment was arguably a straw man, however, as it attacked a point which the article did not make (i.e., Hong Kong should not be responsible for itself) instead of any of the actual arguments (which focused on the benefits to the United States: strategic, economic, and political).

Do you feel similarly about the citizens of North Korea?

That’s a poor comparison, Hong Kong and North Korea are vastly different circumstances.

If we’re looking at human rights violations (North Korea), then the world stage should be involved, not a singular country.

The Hong Kong circumstance isn’t a human rights violation, more of a diplomacy incident.

What about mass surveillance, isn’t that a human rights violation? I would like it to be, but if that were the case, there are few places in the world to go to. Sure China is most explicit and egregious, but we have to have international court rulings before we begin to condemn and sanction based off surveillance (with many participating countries being hypocritical to an anti-surveillance ruling)

"Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,"

This is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imposing a dictatorship on free people is a violation of human rights.

https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Not really the same situation in NK. But also the U.S. became what it is through standing up to the Brits. This goes for people too, at some point we all need to stand on our own. The U.S. isn't the worlds parent to run home to.

The Brits were also on the other side of the ocean, and we had substantial military support from the French. Things probably would have turned out differently if the UK could literally drive down the road to the colonies.

Ireland provides a good example. There were many Irish rebellions in the period from 1676 to 1876 (+- 100 years of American Revolution) some even with French support. However, Ireland was in England’s back yard and the English were determined to hold onto it and all the rebellions were brutally suppressed.

You act like the American revolution is the only instance of this. The French Revolution is another example of people fighting for change.