Britain had the chance to liberalize Hong Kong before the handover negotiations even began. You can thank Murray MacLehose for the mess they're in now.
UK offered a rather simple pathway to immigrating to the UK for most Hong Kong residents [1]. But the choice between the stagnant UK and the booming mainland China was not obvious for everyone in late the 1990s, when China seemed to be democratizing more and more (despite the Tiananmen massacre), and growing richer by the day.
They had multiple pathways. The top three destinations were Canada, the USA, and Australia. These locations offered a major benefit over the UK - they were on trade routes along which people from Hong Kong were already doing business.
Canada was particularly affected. It absorbed the most immigrants, they were a larger share of the population, and this was a major increase in ethnic diversity. The resulting cultural clashes were sometimes an issue. Here is one that literally doubled car insurance rates in British Columbia around the time I left.
Three cars, 2 in front with the left-hand car being driven by a Canadian, and the back car driven by a recent immigrant. The immigrant sees the opportunity to pass, swings out into oncoming traffic, and guns it. Leaving just a few inches of room. Normal Hong Kong driving.
The Canadian has no idea that this is happening until OMG I'M ABOUT TO BE HIT! The Canadian then swerves right to avoid the emergency, and hits the car on the right.
The immigrant drives off. Presumably wondering about these crazy Canadians who don't know how to drive.
Everyone involved behaved reasonably for how they were used to driving. But the combination worked out very poorly...
I would argue that the immigrant behaving reasonably "for how they were used to driving" is itself unreasonable. When you move to foreign country you have to adjust some things about your behavior. Driving behaviors and anything else with such a strong public safety component should be the most obvious thing to adjust for an adult, without needing to be told.
Question, have you been an immigrant? Do you know any immigrants?
When you immigrate into a country, all of a sudden all of your reflexes are wrong. Some are obviously wrong. Some are more subtle. It is overwhelming, and too much.
While in retrospect it is easy to say that they should prioritize some things over others, in practice they tend to learn from experience after people respond badly, and those who are a little more used to the culture explain why they are wrong. And the experience of being told that they are wrong all of the time will make many hold on to some of their old habits extremely strongly.
Don't criticize how slowly immigrants adapt to a new country, until you've been an immigrant in a foreign culture.
As an immigrant (I immigrated to Hong Kong)，I disagree when It comes to road safety. I believe that it's the responsibility of every driver to learn the differences when driving and until then practice safe defensive driving.
I agree with you that it takes a while to adapt to new sociale mores and it's worth cutting immigrants some slack but that's different from driving a multi-ton heap of metal where safety is important.
Sidenote: Of the different cities I've lived in Asia, HK drivers are some of the worst. Combination of aggressive driving with refusal to signal their attention (by using their turn signal) makes for very poor driving. Not everyone but a significant percentage.
How many of those aggressive drivers do you think would agree with your reasoning? The standard reasoning is something like, "I'm fine as long as I don't hit anything." If you have that attitude, you will feel that you are safe in another country. Shifting this attitude takes time.
I haven't been a permanent immigrant, but I have lived for over a year each in India, China and South Korea, driving in India and South Korea (I'm from the US). I made a lot of social faux pas, but you can bet I did my best to adapt to the rules of the road before I even got behind the wheel.
> Don't criticize how slowly immigrants adapt to a new country, until you've been an immigrant in a foreign culture.
I am an immigrant and find this line of thinking to be a cheap rhetorical trick, a thought-terminating cliché. Yes, people who are not immigrants can share their opinion on the behaviors of immigrants. Maybe we can all learn a little from each other instead of gatekeeping anybody who has had a different lived experience.
I lost both a classmate and an uncle due to car accidents. I nearly lost my brother.
The problem here is not what you know that you don't know. It is what you don't know that you don't know. You can believe yourself safe, when you aren't.
It sounds like they got freaked out on the road, swerved and hit a car next to them, and now have concocted a story where it’s actually the fault of immigrants.
The theory "Canadians made this up to explain their own bad driving" requires an explanation of why there was also a large enough rise in accidents that car insurance rates needed to double.
The theory "it happened like they said it" explains why the rise in accidents happened, and fits with normal driving habits in Hong Kong.
I'm talking specifically about this ridiculous story. Sure, it might connect to this broader phenomenon, but it sounds like you don't even know for sure if an immigrant was involved!
It was a far cry from the full Portuguese citizenship offered for Macau, both in the latter's lack of conditions on acquisition (beyond being over age 15 at the handover), and in passing it on to descendants.
BN(O) is/was not a simple pathway to UK residence. As the wikipedia article says
> BN(O)s are British nationals and Commonwealth citizens, but not British citizens. They are subject to immigration controls when entering the United Kingdom and do not have automatic right of abode there
Things were different before the 1981 British Nationality Act but it's not too relevant for HK as the 1981 act is before the Sino British Declaration.
I know that attributing to western countries the responsability for any bad thing happening in this world is a common reflex, but we are 30 years after the handover, 40 years after the negotiation, so surely China bears some if not pretty much all the responsibility here.
And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first place. China threatened to invade and there is very little the UK could have done to prevent a full control.
Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
> I know that attributing to western countries the responsability for any bad thing happening in this world is a common reflex
You can’t gloat that the sun never sets on your empire and then absolve yourself from responsibility for events that you had a heavy hand in influencing. Regardless, if you think the article is wrong, your point would he better served by providing examples of where it’s wrong and stating why.
nitpick:
I would argue that it is more accurate to attribute cause and effect to certain groups of citizens within the country rather than the entire country.
The Holocaust, for example, is, in my opinion, more accurately described as being the fault of the Nazi party of Germany, which is a subset of the German population that was politically active in the early-mid 20th century, rather than just being "Germany's" fault.
The war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan during WWII are similarly the fault of a subset of the politically active population during that time, not "Japan".
I believe this method of attribution has the added advantage of noting that certain citizens, or groups of citizens can make mistakes, and using them as an example of what NOT to do, for other citizens to learn from, rather than tarring everyone with the same bad brush, which I think can have negative psychological consequences - people should be held accountable for their actions, rather than stigmatized for belonging to a specific group by no fault of their own (it's not your fault you were born with citizenship in X country, but it is your fault if you start killing people).
> I know that attributing to western countries the responsability [sic] for any bad thing happening in this world is a common reflex
I don't think I'm being superficial here. There are a few distinct events during the 20th century which can be attributed to the British. The handover of Hong Kong, Suez Crisis and the Balfour Declaration stand out the most.
> And it's not like the UK had much of a choice in the first place. China threatened to invade and there is very little the UK could have done to prevent a full control.
The leased territories are Chinese territory. Full stop. Hong Kong island and the ceded land could not survive alone. All of the water processing happens in the New Territories. It would have been impossible to either break up HK or defend it.
China has not rolled back any reforms that happened before negotiations began [0]. They did rollback the last-ditch efforts of Chris Patten [1] because at that point it was seen a malicious attempt to undermine the handover.
The mechanisms for China to take control were largely left in place by the British so they bare some responsibility, but it is the PRC asserting this control and there's an argument to be made that most of HK supports the PRC and it's their right to do what they wish with their own territory.
> Worth also remembering that "one country, two systems" came with an expiration date that is rapidly approaching anyway.
It'll be interesting to see what is kept. China's experimenting already in Hainan. They could structure Hong Kong in a similar fashion.
[0] The PRC did introduce PR with the idea that it would reduce the risk of majorities forming but the system is arguably more democratic than FPTP.
The Chinese absolutely bear responsibility for how they've governed the last 30 years, just as the British bear responsibility for how they governed the prior 150.
The fact that British HK liberalized a little at the very last second before handover is better than nothing, and the National Security Law is definitely bad, but right now the scoreboard is 7/150 years of free speech under the UK, compared to 23/28 years of free speech under PRC. It'll take another 100 years for the PRC to have a worse record than the UK.
I think it’s somewhat disingenuous to ignore the trend direction.
The Netherlands has a longer history of monarchy under their current government (present monarchy founded 1813) than North Korea (current government established 1948). Does that mean you’d rather live in North Korea than the Netherlands?
The plain and obvious fact remains that Hong Kongers would have more political liberties today if the UK retained control of the territory, regardless of the complete colonial insanity of the original arrangement.
Can you name one present existing British overseas territory that has less of a right to criticize the government than Hong Kong? There are still a bunch of them to choose from from.
Wasn't meaning to ignore the trend, the PRC bears full responsibility for their actions. Just saying that complaints from the British in particular are a little rich.
Also they appear to be arresting more people for speech in total and per-capita than HK:
That is not even remote comparable. There is a huge difference between arrest and conviction, and whether people are given a proper hearing or not, between legal process and things like disappearances, and between laws that punish criticism of the authorities and hate speech laws.
I do not like the UK's hate speech laws at all, but the fact is that I can criticise them, from the UK, without fear, and I can criticise the government. Could I do that in China? Of course not.
I'm not disagreeing too hard with you, we probably feel similarly about both cases. I just don't like how western media takes a "we're the good guys and they're a dystopia" approach to reporting it.
They've charged like 250 people in 5 years under this law[1], I don't like any one of those cases, I'm also against it, but it gets characterized like nobody ever catches a bullshit charge in the West.
Or surely PRC should get all the praise for diffusing geopolitical traps UK like to leave whenever they lose a colony. Patton threw a curve ball right before handover to last minute liberalize HK a little to hold onto influence, something they didn't do under UK rule. Of course it was geopolitical trap to make PRC look bad if they ever decide take away from HK what UK never provided, but PRC managed to do it anyway and most of world, i.e. global south got example that it is possible to excise legacy colonial tumors from declining empires who choose not to pass gracefully.
I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that liberalization (giving ever so slightly more freedom) would increase foreign UK influence post handover.
Yes, it shows. 11th hour liberalization was the spiked punch that subverted/prevented PRC from doing useful reforms, like (patriotic) education (MNE / moral national education in 2010s), getting rid of colonial british textbooks that koolaid generations of minds and tethered them to muh anglo liberal values, libtards that would later collude with foreign powers to sanction their own gov. Instead PRC had to waste 20 years unwinding the shitshow because they didn't want to rock the boat too hard during period of heightened end of history wank, i.e. didn't want to risk unrolling last minute landmine reforms which could lead to sanctions / capital flight.
Then there's liberalization bullshit like court of final appeal (staffed with overseas anglo "judges", read compradors, friendly to UK values and interests) that replaced UK privy council to enshrine liberal, UK aligned, rulings vs Beijing. Under colonial UK rule, privy council, decision makers in London, got to overrule HK local moves that countered UK interest. Or Legco reforms that enabled direct elections / local veto that didn't exist prior, which stalled art 23 / NSL implementation for 20 years, something Beijing would have otherwise been able to ram through using old colonial system where governor or Beijing equivalent get to rubber stamp whatever the fuck they wanted... like NSL. Or retooling societies ordinance, public order ordinance, bill of rights ordinance, that was previously used by UK crush dissenting groups with absolute power/prejudice into liberal instruments that now allow retooled ordinance to proliferate with greater judicial power over PRC appointed executive vs pre 90s when these were all tools UK executives used to crush dissent. Liberalization took away all the fancy authoritarian killswitch UK used to rule HK as colony with iron fist.
Post NSL, PRC gave all the compromised none-Chinese judges the boot and get to designate PRC aligned judges that rule on PRC interests. Nature is healing etc.
TBH UK never had the chance because PRC saw through their games. TLDR UK wanted to maintain influence post handover for their investments, but like most other colonies on the fading empire they had no leverage, i.e. negotiate to turn HK into self administered territory (like Singapore)... along with UN decolonization rules meant engineering pathway for HK independence. PRC keked and said fuck off and promptly removed HK from UN list of non-self governing territories. There's a reason UK/Patton had to jam in HK liberalisation efforts last minute to increase UK influence post handover and not before... because if they did it before, i.e. pre 90s there would be so much anti colonial and pro CCP sympathies that political freedom in HK could be contrary to British interests. HK was just another Suez, symptom of UK weakness, not any one man.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...