Granted, someone saying the latter should never be met with death threats, just like the former!
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.
If the declaration behind Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China (the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984) is revoked, arguably it could be contested if Hong Kong should belong to the holder of the bearer shares of the three treaties, Taiwan. (See previous discussion [1]).
And in the most recent six-monthly report on Hong Kong published on 14 December 2021 [2], the UK government stated that China is not complying with the Sino-British Joint Declaration:
With China now in a state of ongoing non-compliance with its international obligations under the UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration, the UK will continue to work with international partners to hold China to its legally binding obligations on Hong Kong. Upholding the promises it entered into freely is in the best interests of Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23260934
[2]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/six-monthly-repor... " Six-monthly report on Hong Kong: 1 January to 30 June 2021"
I agree that the mainland government acted rashly. The forced implementation of the national security law definitely violates the spirit, if not the law here, and understandably a lot of people were alienated by this move. That said, the Basic Law does provide a provision for the implementation of such a law (Article 23), and there's ample wiggle room for the governments involved to argue that they haven't yet demolished the "one country, two systems" approach as yet.
Same for Catalonia, Hong Kong or any other.
Not saying it is a thing that should be done lightly, but also not impossible.
Countries exists for the people, not the other way round like China likes to think.
China's priority is national security, and given the track record of western liberal democracies it is not unreasonable. As I recall we had a civil war the last time states tried seceding.
I’m not American, I don’t agree with the Vietnam war and I think the civil war was an ethical difficult decision. That was 150 years ago so not really sure why it is relevant.
Six flags theme parks are quite literally named after the six different flags that have flown over Texas as a nod to it being an independent entity regardless of which larger nation currently lays claim to it.
Saying you are from Hong Kong gives you a ton of information that would be lost versus China
I don't think so. Just look at what Americans buy. Money talks. Lip service doesn't count.
>on an individual level, I don't think it's that's dramatic.
the frog just doesn't notice the boiling. For example how discussing Chinese origin of covid got branded as racist in the public mentality - i think that branding is a great PR success pulled by China which as a result turned public attention away from and severely eroded public support for covid origin investigation especially in the earlier days of pandemic when evidence/witnesses may have still been available.
Yes, if you accuse the waitress at a Chinese restaurant of being responsible for COVID, you are racist.
The firm association in the public mind between the attacks and origins, as your comment for example demonstrates, is the part of that great PR success by China.
Yet even just bringing up the leading consensus in science as to the origins of Covid and its transmission to humans is all but taboo in "educated" circles. Same goes for discussing the role the WHO played and all evidence we have as to why it played that role. Any discussion of why this pandemic happened and that the nation where it originated has blocked all independent investigation to investigate this; bringing it up is not done.
Yet this conspiracy theory is discussed ad nauseam in the American press, contrary to what you're saying.
The reason why this theory has become so popular in the US is that it distracts from the disastrous response to the pandemic in the US.
China essentially beat the virus by April 2020, and has had almost no cases or deaths since. Yet nearly two years later, the US is still struggling. As it says in Matthew, "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Please point to any major media discussing the Wuhan coronavirus GoF research involving human subjects (the EcoAliance's approved by NIH grant application is pretty clear about it).
China has paid a huge economic cost for its zero COVID policy, not many other countries could or would afford such a solution. They aren’t the envy of the world (let alone America) in this regard.
The Chinese economy did well because of the zero-CoVID policy. The policy allowed China to reopen businesses in March-April 2020, and to avoid widespread lockdowns since.
Much of that GDP growth was still tearing down and building apartment blocks. It isn't real. Again, they are completely closed up now. They are "locked down" even if they aren't stuck in their houses anymore. I wouldn't want to be living in Beijing right now (where I was from 2007-2016), it isn't a very fun life these days.
> They are "locked down" even if they aren't stuck in their houses anymore.
Beijing is not under lockdown. Pretty much everything is open, and has been for more than a year. There are testing requirements to enter Beijing (which is something that's particular to Beijing), but that's it.
China admits that a large part of their GDP is building and tearing things down. There is no "fakeness" about it, it just is what it is.
> Beijing is not under lockdown. Pretty much everything is open, and has been for more than a year. There are testing requirements to enter Beijing (which is something that's particular to Beijing), but that's it.
Beijing is not under lockdown, it just isn't an open city right now.
The British also have excellent game, but they work a lot with film and news. The Chinese have managed comparable results without.
Given the latter half, I think that's *wary (cautious) rather than 'weary' (fatigued, fed up)?
I'm not American, but something I've noticed on YouTube is that 'import' is a euphemism for 'Chinese crap' - probably more prevalent because there's more of a US manufacturing base to begin with, but the funny thing is when it's imported from somewhere else that's respected it's a German tool, or Japanese for example, but 'import' seems to mean 'imported from China', heh.
(I'm not claiming I'm above it nor offended by it, just caught my attention because 'import' isn't an adjective to me and the usage amused me. It wouldn't really catch on in the UK I don't think, because so much is 'import' to begin with, whether Chinese or not.)
I remember when Vizio made garbage tvs. This is more of a delayed and earned reputation thing. Also product market fit.
Sure, I'm absolutely not saying nothing good's made in China nor especially that that couldn't change. Just noticing others' usage/implication.