[wyuenho]

Negotiation: We have been doing that for at least 30 years.

Economy: I in general agree but let's not forget most of China depends on the banks in Hong Kong for lending. There's a lot of capital at stake here.

[crazychrome]

right. how about previous 150 years? woo, I forget, the Queen sent a Governor who suddenly realise HK needed democracy!

[spacehunt]

It's more like the previous 150 years were ruled by benevolent dictators like Linus so relatively few people complained, but now it's turning into something like XFree86 so people instead wanted to become like Debian.

[lotsofmangos]

Only if Linus had initially moved into your house to deal heroin after beating you up.

[lotsofmangos]

The people in Hong Kong demanded the democratic reforms, however they never got universal suffrage while an outpost of the UK, which is something the UK should quite frankly be utterly ashamed of.