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© Thomson Reuters 2023.China says Britain's plans to disrupt Hong Kong 'doomed to fail'
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© Thomson Reuters 2023.
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quercetum
I would think the UK has its plate full. Why not take care of things at home, like in Birmingham, the second largest city that declared itself bankrupt, instead of things in Hong Kong?
PTownsend
China just doing what totalitarian states have done throughout history, keeping boots on citizen's necks, and imprisoning opposition.
isabelle
No, Britain is not trying "disrupt" anything: quite the opposite, in fact. Britain is attempting to restore to Hong Kongers the rights they were legally guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration: rights which Beijing stole from them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
Despite Beijing's lies to the contrary, the declaration is still legally in force until 2047.
Peter14
Typical misinformation coming out of China, as always you cant believe a word they say.
China abandoned the "one country two systems" years ago. It is one country , one system. A strong reason Taiwan has no interest in sharing this sham. China broke its signed treaty with the UK on Hong Kong and doesnt even have the stones to admit it.
China has removed the right of Hong Kong citizens to speak against the Chinese government calling it a security issue. Every other nation calls it freedom of speech.
China is so proud of its treachery, and keeping a foot on the neck of all of its citizens. What a horrible and repressive place to be forced to live. Those with the means to leave, do so to find freedom for themselves and their families and a much better life.
Another thing that China objects to is UK comments on the status of Hong Kong from their perspective. As a party to the treaty, the UK has every right to comment on Hong Kong for the duration of that treaty. China's CCP seeks total and uncompromising control of all people of Chinese ancestry, including those outside of Chinese territory.
China is a failed state that has no understanding of freedom and no desire to allow it for its people.
darknuts
Europeans ended slavery as an institution and decolonized almost all overseas possessions.
Mr Kipling
The UK is all for democracy in Hong Kong. Strange considering it had zero interest in democracy during the 155 years it controlled HK.
isabelle.....
The "one country two systems" agreement also says that pushing for independence is a no-no.... Something the UK and its proxies seem to have forgotten.
Mark
I don't see China putting out a report about the state of the British economy !?? which is a DISASTER , so why is Britain doing that? May be these efforts should be focused domestically and helping the PM pull the nation out of the current situation!?.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Yes those happy Hong Kongers just move speedily to their jobs now and only stop to read the People's Daily if they need something to read on their commute. Can't you see the harmony, Britain?
Mark
"The UK will always defend universal human rights, including freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly and we will stand up for those who are targeted," it said.
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, let's just leave it at that.
Ah_so
This report is prepared by the Foreign Office, and is prepared by the Hong Kong desk every six months. It's routine stuff that the FCO does.
Do you really think that a country should shut down its foreign ministry because a local government has run out of money?
Understanding what is happening in a place like HK is vital, say for a company that is wondering where to locate it's Asian headquarters.
Peter14
While the Chinese governments are just outright liars.
Lord Dartmouth
Randy, study some history, please. We literally built Hong Hong. After the war, we welcomed vast numbers of Chinese refugees from communism and Hong Hong became a symbol of excellent and clean government. True, it wasn't democratic, but when you have free speech, clean and limited government, the rule of law and excellent administrators, you've got the ingredients of a free and happy society. Red China could only look on in jealousy and despair.
quercetum
The slaves in the plantations of also had free meals.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Yeah free speech sucks and all. What would have limited the pushing for indepedence is if China weren't such a joyous 1984 state,
isabelle
The UK isn't pushing for Hong Kong's independence. Hong Kongers were legally guaranteed certain rights by the declaration: Beijing has stolen many of these rights, and is in contravention of the declaration.
Some Hong Kongers advocated for independence during the protests, but many didn't. Whatever their stance, it doesn't change the fact that their rights have been stolen from them by Beijing.
Britain is putting out a report because it's a party to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. China is free to put out a report on the British economy if it so wishes.
Mark
Can't keep 56 million fed and happy and yet criticizing a nation like China which is governing and feeding 1.4 billion
EFD
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of the UK post-Brexit.
This isn't one of them.
Thunderbird2
So while the report details that China is imposing draconian rule on Hong Kong some posters (the same people all the time) decide to bash the UK on historical activity from well over a century ago.
Slavery - we abolished slavery in 1833, long before a raft of other countries - such as the good ol' US of A, so stop bringing that up time and time again... boring!
Colonisation... everyone did it... and it's still happening - Russia anyone? Our British Empire is gone. America has it's enclaves too - Guam for example, and to a lesser extent Okinawa.
What China is doing in HK is sort of what UK bashers accuse my country of doing in the past. We have a duty of care to Hong Kong... there is an agreement, which the Chinese have decided to disregard
kurisupisu
Yet, the police will come a knocking at the door if personal pronouns are muddled up.
Quite bonkers!
TaiwanIsNotChina
32 years is not that long in historical terms. Especially since we were working on it for over a hundred years prior.
Guam was obtained in 1898. Maybe that doesn't seem that long ago to you, but for us it is positively ancient history. Japan can ask the US military to leave Japan anytime.
Lord Dartmouth
Yawn. Get over it.
EFD
Doesn’t bother me, buddy. It’s your lot suffering the consequences.
And your boredom doesn’t stop it from being an objectively stupid policy decision.
albaleo
Except in areas held by the East India Company, the island of Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) and Saint Helena).
Keepyer Internetpoints
Meanwhile PRC China's plans to disrupt Hong Kong are going pretty well.
elephant200
Jimmy Lai & Marin Lee were in jail, Britian has betrayed them. But China is very happy about that!
GBR48
quote: The UK will always defend ... freedom of expression
... except on social media and the net in general, upon which the British government are in the process of implementing censorship and surveillance, whilst attacking encryption in much the same way as China do.
I'm not sure why the Chinese are complaining about the report. It basically says that China have been successful in assimilating HK, Borg-style, into the Chinese dictatorship, as they intended to.
theFu
The CCP doesn't like any news that they didn't manufacture, good or bad.
This is just another attempt by the CCP to redirect the world away from their other, nasty, behaviors both inside and outside China. Seems that most CCP-approved "news" says how bad everything is elsewhere and scrubs how bad it is inside China. If you want a Xi cheering section, https://www.cgtn.com/ . 75% of the stories there are about Xi doing/saying something .... 1 will be about China and the remaining will be negative about some outside country, usually the US, but the UK too.
We have their playbook. Best to just ignore any "news" from China, since it will be partially true, at best. On social media, the CCP playbook has been cracked too. They trick some foreign "journalist" to say/write something, then get their cheap, pro-Chinese teams to create new social media accounts and cross post that story with bogus images/videos (usually taken from completely different stories, years earlier), and then ask Russian social media people to post negative stories using their bots as well. These stories are often, word-for-word the first few sentences approved by the CCP, so they are easy to find and remove. Except on X, where they've decided that removing negative lies isn't their business model.
HonestDictator
Yes, Hong Kong is doing so well that Taiwan has far less trust in the CCP's version of "peaceful" re-unification measures. The CCP still can't understand that if they were so great and amazing, more countries would cozy up to them HAPPILY! As there is no happiness to be found under CCP control, many leave and try to keep away from them.
chotto_2
One regime criticising another.
starpunk
And the CCP is in violation of that act, just like many figured it would. Is it any surprise that HKers have been leaving there since at least 1987? Now there are ethnic HK refugee/Chinese communities in the UK, Australia and some fled to the US and Canada. They knew the CCP couldn't be trusted and they fled. Can't blame 'em.
'Plans to disrupt HK'. What a crock. If China truly fulfilled the freedoms and promises that Communism claims (but doesn't) deliver, they wouldn't be wailing with such paranoid deluded LIES like this. And that's what it is, propaganda and lies. All totalitarian regimes and dictators lie, saying 'somebody/everybody's against me/us! Waaaaa-aaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!' and then they go do some hateful, oppressive and even genocidal crap.
Milosevic, the Rwandan Hutu Power dictatorship, tRump, the modern CCP. Totalitarian trash, all.
2020hindsights
Mr Kipling
*Britain is attempting to restore to Hong Kongers the rights they were legally guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration: rights which Beijing stole from them.*
They aren't pushing for independence. They are pushing for "one country two systems" that was agreed to.
Hiro S Nobumasa
GB still hurtin pretty bad after losing their Pearl Colony HK.