[thinkpad20]

“as much as I love China and can understand their politics due to the size of their country”

The size of China is not the source of their politics; the source is a totalitarian state that ruthlessly suppresses any dissent and maintains constant surveillance of its people. Not to imply that you meant otherwise, but the citizens of mainland China are no less deserving of political rights than those of Hong Kong; rather, they have simply been denied them by those in power. The 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre was only last week —- it could have ended similarly in Hong Kong. Also, unsurprisingly, Chinese media has been almost completely silent about these protests and many on the mainland are completely unaware that anything is happening at all.

[agent00f]

I'm curious where all these concerned westerners were when hk was undemocratically ruled by the Brits as a colony.

Were they ignorant of what they meant at the time or did they not care so long as others were ruled by their own?

[atr_gz]

I'm curious why you're all over this thread pretending that China didn't block the UK from making Hong Kong democratic for over 60 years.

Which is something I learned about in the Western media, by the way, and that it would be nearly impossible to learn in Chinese media.

Also the claim that these protests were caused by foreign influence is wrong and insulting. It also echos what the higher-level CCP members have been saying.

[confusedhnguy]

> block the UK from making Hong Kong democratic for over 60 years

Citation needed. Also, the UK is extremely famous for intentionally or unintentionally leaving a mess when it leaves, any sane government will not just let the British do whatever they want.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/india-pakistan-pa...

> nearly impossible to learn in Chinese media

It is also nearly impossible to learn anything about the opium wars in Western media, or how the governors of HK are all appointed by the British monarch directly. So I guess we are even here.

> Also the claim that these protests were caused by foreign influence is wrong and insulting.

Then what is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra...

BTW he/she said "largely encouraged".

[atr_gz]

>Citation needed.

Here ya go (he has further citations at the bottom if you're really interested):

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/...

Regardless of whose fault it is, it doesn't have any bearing on whether or not the people of HK should have self-determination.

>It is also nearly impossible to learn anything about the opium wars in Western media, or how the governors of HK are all appointed by the British monarch directly.

I don't know about that, I learned about it in high school. Here's a more recent book and review about it:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/book...

>Then what is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra....

>BTW he/she said "largely encouraged".

So the existence of the NED proves to you that a large portion of the protestors in Hong Kong are foreign-influenced? Okay. Personally, I think it's more likely that they're concerned about their rights and it's insulting to say otherwise.

[petre]

The foreign-infueced theme and "anarchists" are obvious responses from central power using force when a large protest happens. They will never admit that they are the ones who created the problem in the first place.

[throwaway44327]

Throwaway because I don’t want to be brigaded.

It appears Britain only tried to give them democracy when they knew the writing was on the wall. That seems disingenuous to suggest it was China that blocked them.

While technically true, if Britain truly wanted to help the Hong King people, they would have offered citizenship and let them immigrate, like Portugal did for Macau.

Instead, the British tried to stop Portugal from doing so, because they didn’t want to offer the people of Hong Kong citizenship.

[atr_gz]

Interesting. I can promise you I'm not being disingenuous, even if I'm wrong. And I think "brigading" is more of a Reddit thing - it usually means when people from an opposing subreddit mass downvote a post.

I definitely think Britain should have offered citizenship. I'm surprised they didn't want to.

[johncolanduoni]

Well we were all over 20 years younger, so I’m not sure you can act like we’re talking about the exact same people.

[frequentnapper]

we weren't born yet.