| > Politically? Physically? Culturally? Morally? Currently Hong Kong is ruled by China. Many in Hong Kong might prefer something different. If the government in Beijing allowed them to, they might choose complete independence. This ignorance and arrogance actually makes strong action by the central (Chinese) government even more popular and supported by the Chinese public. Western opinion has somehow been made to believe that HK was somehow not China. This is ridiculous. HK is physically, historically, culturally, ethnically, morally a part of China that was seized by a foreign country in the 19th century (hence political separation). In fact, it was not the only piece of China to suffer that fate. That has always been an humiliation and an emotional issue in China (and I include Taiwan in that because this predates the split between PRC and ROC) and it was a very big event when it was "retroceded" back to China by the UK. China and the Chinese people will not tolerate any interference whatever we might think of their political system (and even whatever they might think of their own political system). It is pure propaganda in order to destabilise China to claim otherwise and it has certainly worked with a significant portion of the Western public opinion. The hypocrisy is sometimes laid bare, like during the G7 when it was reported that President Macron said that Northern Ireland was not really part of the UK. This caused an uproar in the UK. Well, HK is arguably more Chinese than Northern Ireland is British. |
That doesn't mean that the UK was right in its actions, but let's not play games here. These were wars waged between two empires. China wasn't some sort of blameless victim. They are not some victim now.