In order to get the 1 country 2 systems deal the UK had to shelve the idea at the time. It was a massive gamble but it was probably worth trying for a peaceful hand over.
Since the CCP have broken their side of the agreement there's no longer a reason not to offer BNO citizens a route to UK citizenship now.
Yet many seem to be protesting, despite it really looking like they have hardly any chance of their protests getting anything they want.
There must be more to the story that I'm not seeing...
The professional class in Hong Kong is steadily dwindling with families going where they can or methodically planning to. Canada is most desired, then the UK, and Australia.
It takes time to find employment, a place to live, and schooling for your kids.
But the biggest factor is Covid. Politics aside, Hong Kong has been a great place to ride out the pandemic while the UK handled it abysmally. After the Delta variant and Covid as a whole subsides expect emigration to pick up.
Curiously the job market in Hong Kong is booming and I've seen an uptick in western expats arriving, so there's an appeal if you stay apolitical. Which is easy enough when it's not your home getting wiped out.
Hong Kong culture is in no small part traditional Chinese culture, which existed in that area for many years. The other part is the British cultural influence. Unfortunately, HK’s “parent entity” prior to British rule technically no longer exists; there is now a new communist country to the north. Becoming absorbed by it entails giving up valuable parts of HK’s unique culture (which includes freedom of speech); assimilating in the UK would mean giving up other parts of it. It is only natural to want neither of these outcomes.
Also there’s the no-small-matter of how they get to the UK in the middle of a pandemic with restricted flights and transit visas.
Britain was once considered a backward periphery of Europe. Japan is so geographically peripheral that it could successfully close itself off the rest of the world for 250 years.
On the other hand, there is no Yemeni/Somali equivalent of Singapore even though a lot of the world traffic must pass around them. Gibraltar is rich, but Spanish Andalusia all around it has pretty stagnant economy oriented on tourism. Panama kinda works, but nowhere near as well as, say, California or Florida.
But you still need something to leverage. Distance from population centers matters, trading routes matter, topography matters immensely as well.
Britain rose in conjunction with Trans-Atlantic trade. And so did Japan with Trans-Pacific trade and the development of the American West coast.
HK is an I/O hub for one of the largest economies in the world, it doesn't get much better.
An hypothetical Neo-HK somewhere would have to forcefully re-route the world's economy to have a chance at getting the same standing.
Admittedly, Hong Kong benefitted a lot from being the convenient middle ground where major deals between entities in mainland China and other countries could happen. However, it can also be argued that meeting in person to shake hands might not remain a given going forward.
What about the people who are already living on that island, what if they dont want foreigners?
Of course, HK's population is 11% of UK, not a small deal, likely such a bill won't pass anyway. But I also see it as a missed opportunity to bring in some world-class human capital.