[speedplane]

> ”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover.

That agreement was predicated on a belief that over time, China would open up and become more democratic and Hong Kong would smoothly merge cultures.

Unfortunately, that assumption was entirely false. It's been 20 years since the handover, and China has not at all moved towards freedoms generally considered a pre-requisite to social society in the west.

Hong Kong has completely different values than mainland China. Even if the current events fade away, they are on an unavoidable collision course.

[pimmen]

Absolutely, I would say they’ve already collided, and I’m arguing it’s time for the West to acknowledge that fact and act, such as making Tiananmen Square 2.0 more costly in order to protect our core values such as rule of the people and fair trials. I think that would be well within our interests.

I’m Swedish, a person with the same passport as me was kidnapped from Thailand and imprisoned in China probably after hours of torture because of something he published and his democracy activism in Hong Kong. The sentiment in Sweden is that it would’ve been nice for China to not say that Hong Kong would be under ”one China, two systems” if that’s not how things would turn out. Kidnapping Swedish citizens in Thailand for something they are legally allowed to do in Hong Kong doesn’t look like a domestic issue to me.