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Hong Kong: what next?

co-op said:
Beijing pays people to lurk around on forums and do this kind of shit.
Click to expand...

Yep, they are on overdrive these days, this guy is a typical example.

There's a few words he has used like "bottom line" which is a translation of typical CCP speak 底线, which is a bit of a giveaway.

Surprised they made it into Urban, I thought it was too obscure here.
 
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Tsai Ying-Wen, Taiwan's President has just tweeted that they are working on taking in refugees from Hong Kong:



I could see this ending with mass emigration from Hong Kong and the city basically losing its status as a financial centre.

Pretty short sighted for the Chinese government to force this through, I think they believe that Shenzhen will replace it, but it is more likely that Shenzhen's economy will also be dragged down with Hong Kong.
 
Rimbaud said:
Tsai Ying-Wen, Taiwan's President has just tweeted that they are working on taking in refugees from Hong Kong:



I could see this ending with mass emigration from Hong Kong and the city basically losing its status as a financial centre.

Pretty short sighted for the Chinese government to force this through, I think they believe that Shenzhen will replace it, but it is more likely that Shenzhen's economy will also be dragged down with Hong Kong.
Click to expand...

More likely to have been taken in by the PR machine than be part of it.
 
Rimbaud said:
Tsai Ying-Wen, Taiwan's President has just tweeted that they are working on taking in refugees from Hong Kong:



I could see this ending with mass emigration from Hong Kong and the city basically losing its status as a financial centre.

Pretty short sighted for the Chinese government to force this through, I think they believe that Shenzhen will replace it, but it is more likely that Shenzhen's economy will also be dragged down with Hong Kong.
Click to expand...


As long as the Chinese government keep HK as a window shopping opportunity for foreign capital to invest in Chinese businesses, the city will still be awash with money. Yes, there'll be capital flight, but the Chinese government is capable of buoying it. Seems mad but the foreign investment that HK brings to China is obviously much less important than it was in 1997.

Shenzhen and shanghai cannot replace HK unless there is the same ease of access and transparency for international trade - there isn't. And there can't be, either, not while the yuan is artificially devalued. The HK dollar is one of the main reasons it's attractive.

My head is spinning at the tory offer to give UK visas to 3 million hk citizens in the context of brexit and "taking back control of the borders" and I highly doubt it will be a vote winner with the tory base.
 
Flavour said:
My head is spinning at the tory offer to give UK visas to 3 million hk citizens in the context of brexit and "taking back control of the borders" and I highly doubt it will be a vote winner with the tory base.
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It's in the spirit of what we agreed in 1997. Plus they know the ones who will take it up will be the money-men (plus their families) and that if capital is going to flee HK then a smooth entry to the UK will snare most of the lucre for London. We could send them back our smack dealers.
 
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Britain should have offered British passports to every Hong Kong back in 1984, when Margaret Thatcher decided to return the territory to China without having consulted the people of Hong Kong about it. I'm not sure how many people would move to Britain under Johnson's offer now, or exactly who they'd be - I think most of the money-men would either already have foreign passports, be able to qualify for them easily, or not be too bothered about Beijing tightening its grip. Canada and Australia seem to be the preferred destinations these days anyway.
 
Yossarian said:
Britain should have offered British passports to every Hong Kong back in 1984, when Margaret Thatcher decided to return the territory to China without having consulted the people of Hong Kong about it. I'm not sure how many people would move to Britain under Johnson's offer now, or exactly who they'd be - I think most of the money-men would either already have foreign passports, be able to qualify for them easily, or not be too bothered about Beijing tightening its grip. Canada and Australia seem to be the preferred destinations these days anyway.
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Singapore, according to the money men I have to deal with.

The deciding to return the territory bit is a tad disingenuous though, whilst it is true that most of the territory did not legally ever have to go back to China, Beijing could've taken it by force* any time it wanted from the 70's onwards.

*Force = One phone call.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Singapore, according to the money men I have to deal with.

The deciding to return the territory bit is a tad disingenuous though, whilst it is true that most of the territory did not legally ever have to go back to China, Beijing could've taken it by force* any time it wanted from the 70's onwards.

*Force = One phone call.
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They could also have shut off the water at any time - return to Chinese rule was probably inevitable, given China's rising strength and nationalism over the last few decades, although there have been suggestions that Deng might have agreed to continued British administration of the territory if Britain acknowledged Chinese sovereignty, and Thatcher was just a shit negotiator.

Either way, after more than 140 years of undemocratic British rule in Hong Kong, Britain signed over the futures of 7 million people without consulting them, making them party to the negotiations, or offering them a vote on the final agreement - and without giving them the right to move to Britain that had been taken away from them in stages over the previous decades.

The whole thing stinks very highly of shit, giving HK people passports now would just be correcting a historical wrong.
 
Yossarian said:
Britain should have offered British passports to every Hong Kong back in 1984, when Margaret Thatcher decided to return the territory to China without having consulted the people of Hong Kong about it. I'm not sure how many people would move to Britain under Johnson's offer now, or exactly who they'd be - I think most of the money-men would either already have foreign passports, be able to qualify for them easily, or not be too bothered about Beijing tightening its grip. Canada and Australia seem to be the preferred destinations these days anyway.
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she had no choice
 
Jay Park said:
she had no choice
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The only Hong Konger on the negotiating committee pushed for a referendum on the joint agreement but was overruled by spineless British officials who were focused entirely on British interests and not the interests of Hong Kong's people.

www.thestandard.com.hk

Brits rejected proposal of China-return referendum

Chung Sze-yuen had suggested a referendum to decide whether Hong Kong should be returned to China. He also proposed that children of British National (Overseas) passport holders should inherit the rig...
www.thestandard.com.hk www.thestandard.com.hk
 
Yossarian said:
The only Hong Konger on the negotiating committee pushed for a referendum on the joint agreement but was overruled by spineless British officials who were focused entirely on British interests and not the interests of Hong Kong's people.

www.thestandard.com.hk

Brits rejected proposal of China-return referendum

Chung Sze-yuen had suggested a referendum to decide whether Hong Kong should be returned to China. He also proposed that children of British National (Overseas) passport holders should inherit the rig...
www.thestandard.com.hk www.thestandard.com.hk
Click to expand...

She was pretty confident about securing another lease, coming off the stuff in the Falklands. The Chinese we doubly insistent on making both a declaration and regaining sovereignty, It’s amazing you (retrospectively) seem shocked that the people of Hong Kong weren’t asked how they felt about it. When were they ever given any thought by the British?
 
Jay Park said:
She was pretty confident about securing another lease, coming off the stuff in the Falklands. The Chinese we doubly insistent on making both a declaration and regaining sovereignty, It’s amazing you (retrospectively) seem shocked that the people of Hong Kong weren’t asked how they felt about it. When were they ever given any thought by the British?
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I'm not remotely shocked - I was living there for several years either side of the handover - but it's worth highlighting how shamelessly the people of HK were abandoned by the British. Also, portraying the negotiations as "China said it would take Hong Kong by force so Margaret Thatcher had no choice but to agree to the Joint Declaration after taking steps to protect Hong Kong's future" is painting things in very broad strokes that overly flatter Thatcher.
 
It's been kind of forgotten that Thatcher - apparently,more concerned about the state of financial markets than anything else - was the one who decided to open negotiations about Hong Kong's future in 1982. Some argue that Britain might have been in a stronger negotiating position if it hadn't stripped Hong Kongers of the right of abode in Britain in the Nationality Act the previous year.
 
I doubt it, the Chinese state at the time didn’t seem remotely worried about capital flight at that stage, and i’m not sure that the ability of more people to leave would have concerned them.

Thatcher was looking to relinquish sovereignty in exchange for continuing British administration. But that idea was a non-starter with the Chinese.
 
we are not standing up to the Chinese, we have not even said boo to them. The passport offer was made years ago. It's a totally empty gesture and it's to the older people of Hong Kong. The people who are making all the noise and protesting are predominately younger and don't qualify for them. If I read it correctly, it could split families.
 
Flavour said:
Shenzhen and shanghai cannot replace HK unless there is the same ease of access and transparency for international trade - there isn't. And there can't be, either, not while the yuan is artificially devalued. The HK dollar is one of the main reasons it's attractive.
Click to expand...

It's not the actual money, Shenzen and Shanghai have had more money than Hong Kong for more than a decade. It's the fact that the Chinese government can't just do what they want there that has kept it as a powerful city
 
Hard to express how much it saddens me that protesters who were standing up for the basic rights that people in Western countries enjoy are now refugees.

hongkongfp.com

Hong Kong protesters seek sanctuary overseas as noose tightens | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

By Jerome Taylor and Yan Zhao, with Sean Chang in Taipei Hong Kong protester Crystal has yet to tell her parents she has fled overseas to seek asylum in Canada, one of a growing number of residents choosing self-exile as Beijing tightens control. The 21-year-old student spent months on the front...
hongkongfp.com hongkongfp.com
 
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