[freeflight]

The only reason HK wasn't Chinese for 150 years, was that the British very much did use offensive military action to take it from China.

That would be the actual example of using offensive military action to take over other countries territories, but it was Colonial Britain doing it, taking away territories from China.

To get that territory back China did not invade HK with an military offensive, so you using HK as an example for such a thing happening is just weird and completely opposite to what actually happened with HK.

Adding some pointless fluff about "enslavement, torture, human rights" and all the usual memes does not detract from that point, it's just moving the goalpost, it's trying to evoke emotions over a situation that international law wise is quite unspectacular.

It's also historically revisionist, as it implies British HK didn't start out as a colony very much based on enslavement and exploitation, not out of some grander ambition to "bring human rights and democracy!" to the people of HK.

[seanmcdirmid]

The communists kept HK around to facilitate some trade with the west as it closed off from the world (otherwise they could have easily “liberated” it in the late 60s). With the opening of China by the 80s, a UK ruled HK didn’t make sense to the PRC anymore.

HK never had a legitimate claim to independence being a colony. Taiwan is a completely different case since it is ruled by locals (Chinese) rather than some colonial overlords.