Has it really been 10 years?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Show me some indication that Beijing is actively involved in the day-to-day affairs of Hong Kong.

Show me one situation where Beijing stepped in on its own and forced Hong Kong to do something it didn't want to do.

The commies in Beijing get the final word on who becomes the head of Hong Kong and their man always wins because anyone who doesn't vote the way Beijing likes...

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Ruled 800 hand picked shoe licking lackeys of the communist party you mean. Have you forgotten that the UK had passed several laws making Hong Kong democratic but that the communists had repealed those laws saying they preferred only to have their running dog lackeys allowed to vote.

To be fair, the Brits' democratization of HK was a last minute ploy to annoy the commies.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Have you forgotten that the UK had passed several laws making Hong Kong democratic but that the communists had repealed those laws ...

The colonial governor and his cabinet, the executive council, were always appointed by London. They were never elected.

The Brits created a legislative council, or Legco, that was little more than a rubber stamp. Until 1993, the president of the Legco was the colonial governor.

In the last Legco election under the Brits, only 20 of 60 seats were elected by geographic district. Half were "functional constituencies" representing special business groups like doctors, travel agents and accountants. 10 seats were by special committee.

In 1998, the first post-handover election was held using the same formula for allocation of seats. There was no repeal of democratic rights because the Brits never gave the people of Hong Kong those rights.

The Brits refusal to grant Hong Kong people full democratic rights is one of the most shameful legacies of the colonial period.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The Brits refusal to grant Hong Kong people full democratic rights is one of the most shameful legacies of the colonial period.

I can think of plenty far more shameful. The Congo Free State and the Germans in Namibia come immediately to mind.

[DaShi]

Some interesting info about the transfer:

China plotted Hong Kong invasion
Michael Sheridan, Hong Kong
June 25, 2007

CHINA seriously considered invading Hong Kong in the middle of talks with Margaret Thatcher in 1982, a former top Chinese official has disclosed.
The Chinese were ready to resort to "requisition by force" if the negotiations had set off unrest in the colony, said Lu Ping, who later headed negotiations with Chris Patten, the last governor.

Baroness Thatcher said later that Deng Xiaoping, then China's leader, told her directly: "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon."

She replied that China would lose everything if it did. "There is nothing I could do to stop you," she said, "but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like."

Only now has Lu confirmed that the Chinese were not bluffing.

He said Deng feared that announcing the date for the 1997 handover would provoke serious unrest in Hong Kong and China would have to invade.

The Thatcher-Deng talks in Beijing came shortly after Britain's reconquest of the Falklands.

The harsh tenor of the negotiations left British officials such as Sir Percy Cradock, Baroness Thatcher's principal adviser, badly shaken.

Baroness Thatcher flew on to Hong Kong, she recalled, with a sense of foreboding.

Britain and China eventually agreed to a joint declaration that Hong Kong would return to China but could enjoy its own freedoms for 50 years.

The compromise led Cradock and Patten to exchange barbed remarks in the 1990s over how to handle the Chinese.

The governor thought the mandarin feeble and the mandarin thought the governor reckless.

Throughout the last years of British rule Patten continued to push for greater democracy before Britain handed its last Asian possession back to China on June 30, 1997 - 10 years ago this Saturday.

Lu, who had an espionage network in Hong Kong, was well informed about the divisions on the British side.

Patten called him "infinitely courteous" in their private exchanges but Lu memorably told the Chinese media that Patten would be seen as "a sinner for a thousand years".

Since the handover, Hong Kong has kept its freedom of speech and commerce but China has stifled any efforts to bring one-man, one-vote democracy to the seven million people who live there.

Lu's disclosures will be taken by Cradock and veteran Foreign Office sinologists as proving the wisdom of their heavily criticised policy to appease China before the peaceful transfer of power.

In 1989, Deng proved that he would use force when he ordered tanks to crush democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

To show that the Chinese were deadly serious long before that, Lu also revealed that a radical faction of the People's Liberation Army was poised to invade the British colony during pro-communist riots in 1967.

The invasion was called off only by a late-night order from Premier Zhou Enlai to the local army commander, Lu said.

Lu's remarks were made in an interview with Dragon TV, a Chinese broadcaster. His claims have been backed by Zhou Nan, another former senior Chinese official in Hong Kong, who says in a forthcoming memoir that Beijing considered "non-peaceful means" to achieve reunification.

The Lu disclosures mark the first time a senior Chinese figure has commented on the 1967 convulsions, when British authorities almost lost control of the colony to rioters inspired by Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution.

Lu said Huang Yongsheng, PLA commander in the province across the border, suggested an invasion to stop the chaos.

British naval and military forces were far too small to put up more than token resistance. Their officers knew that in 1941 a garrison of 14,000 had not been enough to prevent the fall of Hong Kong to the Japanese.

Things came within a hair's breadth of disaster for the British.

Unknown to them, Huang was a leading member of a group headed by Lin Piao, Mao's designated successor.

"A well-known womaniser, he soon became Mrs Lin's lover," say the authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, in their recent biography of Mao.

Lin's cabal believed in the violent export of Maoism and were ready to seize any opportunity for a military strike that would delight patriots and confound moderate rivals.

But on this occasion their chief foe, Premier Zhou, retained enough authority to order the PLA to stand down, saving Britain from almost certain defeat and the loss of Hong Kong.

Huang rose to become army chief of staff. He was purged after the fall and death of Lin Piao in 1971.

The man who wanted to invade Hong Kong was given a show trial and sent to prison. He died in April 1983.

The Sunday Times

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The Brits refusal to grant Hong Kong people full democratic rights is one of the most shameful legacies of the colonial period.

Then what do you think of Beijing's refusal to give full democratic rights to the Hong Kong people?

[lord of the mark]

A. I bet plenty any democrat on the mainland is quite jealous of the abundant democratic rights in Hong Kong


B. I bet most folks on Taiwan, are not.

[Straybow]

Goodbye foreign aggressor, hello Chinese aggressor! It's always better to be oppressed by one's own kind rather than some stinky furriner.

[PLATO]

Hong Kong will always be a part of the Republic of Taiwan! Give it back now!!