Edit-might be this one: https://youtu.be/U4bBftiRo2Q
Except when it does, quietly accepting losing Vladivostok to Russia (Chinese [1] Google translate [2]). Vladivostok was lost during the same era Hong Kong was lost.
[1] https://www.rfi.fr/tw/中國/20200703-俄羅斯微博高調慶祝海參崴建城160周年-網民怒批-官...
[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Vladivostok was never part of any inherited territory dispute which CCP inherited from ROC who inherited from Qin. Settling border disputes is not analogous to ceding sovereignty, i.e. CCP has no issues settling 12/14 border disputes, most with more Chinese land concessions. But when it comes to core sovereignty issues like Tibet, XJ, HK, Taiwan, part of the century of humiliation narrative hole CCP has dug itself into, they do not compromise on or at least have sunk too much political legitimacy in the last 50 years to ever renege on. Historic exceptions being Mongolia and 11dash down to 9dash in the 50s, when CCP was an infant. Contemporary loose end is pretty much Arunachal Pradesh which CCP is willing to package swap for Aksai China with India which will also resolve Bhutan border.
Signing the TPP could have helped _a lot_. DT gave China _a lot_ of diplomatic leverage there, for free...
This isn't just a Trump thing (though he has accelerated pulling the US out of leadership positions) but it goes back to the lack of response to the Crimea annexation (and Russia's continual pushing of it's Ukrainian boundary).
China has spent the last several decades smartly becoming more diversified in what countries they depend on, while at the same time making sure the whole world was heavily reliant on themselves. Due to that no one country can do anything to keep China in check, and in normal times that would be OK. However, the world has relied on the US to form global coalitions that would work together to push back against things like this, and now that the US has made it clear it will not work with anyone else (even allies), China knows that no other country has the influence to form such a coalition. That means it doesn't even need to be coy about what it's doing (as we are seeing with Hong Kong).
So yeah, I agree that in 2019 and 2020 the US and Eu/Britain couldn't have done anything meaningful, but what's happening right now is heavily caused by the US' pulling out of the world stage leading up to it.
At least now that CCP is showing its true colors, the world is more aware of its threat.
Also discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23701333
I am absolutely no fan of the current UK admin but on this issue I think they've done the decent thing (which surprised me, tbh).
What? What could the US have done beyond what we did other than all out war? The US response to this was very harsh.
We undid 50 years of diplomacy with China, and have started building a sortof SEA equivalent to NATO.
Chinese/American relations have probably never been as unfriendly as they are right now, and Hong Kong is a major part of that. Seriously I don’t know what the next step would be that wasn’t a de facto, weapons-hot war.