Hong Kong residents were eligible for a British issued passport, through the British National (overseas) designation, following the Hong Kong Act passed in the mid-80s, just not full British citizenship. So if possession of a foreign passport (and resulting rights in the UK as being Commonwealth citizens) is all that is needed, then that’s already covered.
Not really once HM Govt (under the inspired leadership of Satan’s Spawn) has shown themselves willing to turn their backs on the people of HK. Granting citizenship would have been a symbolic and public recognition of a debt of honour to the people of Hong Kong and a vocal warning to the PRC that Britain was not abandoning its moral responsibilities.
With Empire comes responsibilities. If 20% of the residents of Hong Kong had chosen to move to the UK (a massive over-estimate of the likely possibilities, especially after the British press had made such welcoming noises about a flood of aliens) then the British economy would have benefited from such an entrepreneurial influx.
Villa, that’s one of the most illogical and absurd arguments I’ve ever seen anyone make. It’s patently obvious you’ve started from a certain position and are reaching desperately for any reason to keep it.
First, there was ample opportunity for decades and decades for Hong Koing residents to emigrate, and not just to Britain. Second, have any proof at all that there were numerous people desperate to do so. Third, Britiain did not simply drop Hong Kong and run - numerous western governments were keeping a close eye on China, and for ocne the Chinese did not significantly abuse their power. I could pretty much go on all day, but the point is clear.
Given that I said it is unlikley that significant numbers wanted to emigrate, I don’t quite see what you are saying. It was Thatcher who feared the Eastern Hordes overrunning her lillywhite vision of England.
People didn’t want to leave. making them citizens would have granted them the opportunity to leave later had China decided to go all Tianamen Square on their asses. Giving people that citizenship would also have made China less likely to do it. China wanted HK for multiple reasons, none of which entailed losing the best and brightest of its residents to emigration.
“Cynical”? I think a better word is “cautious.” The collapse of Communism in the Soviet Bloc might seem a Completely Good Thing in hindsight, but on the eve of it, nobody could be sure such a thing could happen without massive violence. It might even trigger a nuclear war. Better the Devil you know, you know.
And in the event it didn’t happen without massive violence, in what in 1989 was Yugoslavia.
There are ongoing problems in Chechnya and in areas of former USSR countries which have Russian diasporas, and it’s questionable whether people in places such as Belarus have attained ‘freedom’.
I’m no supporter of Thatcher and she was no supporter of communism, but in 1989 no one could be sure that things wouldn’t turn out even worse than they did.
Probably.
What?
Pure conjecture on your part. Here’s a better reason why giving all HK residents British citizenry wouldn’t have been a good idea: it would have pissed China off big time.
They have that opportunity anyway, through established asylum laws in the UK and other countries.
Any event that would have led to wide scale emigration would have been extremely damaging to HK anyway. If China were as invested in HK’s success as you believe, there wasn’t any possible possibility of oppression occurring.
But, why is this even an issue, other than yet more predictable Thatcher bashing from the extreme, and post-Thatcher, thankfully permanently irrelevant, left? Jesus Christ, is it not enough to be constantly and mindlessly outraged at things Thatcher actually did, instead of being pissed that China didn’t wade into HK and crush any and all freedoms enjoyed there, just so you can point to Thatcher’s unwillingness to give every citizen of HK British citizenry as the greatest failing by any British government ever?
In the end, there wasn’t any sort of widespread oppression post handover, and we managed a smooth transition without wasting money needlessly giving 6.5 million people British citizenship, potentially pissing China off. Win all round.
Why should China feel any concern about Britain doing anything? Britain willingly turned over millions of its subjects to China in 1997 when it had no legal obligation to do so because as someone here pointed out it would have been difficult to have defended them. I’d say that after that China had Britain’s measure. If Britain wasn’t willing to protect its subjects in 1997 why would should China have any concern that Britain might do something for its former subjects at any point in the future?
Chamberlain was castigated after Munich for far less. The Czechs he sold out weren’t British subjects or British allies.
This, more or less, except tearing down the wall. By '89 we had moved from not really caring if Bonn were announced as the capital of a united Germany to thinking that a unified Germany was a pretty cool idea. One might think it was, but unlike France and Great Britain, we didn’t have quite the same baggage entering into the negotiations. Maybe it was because we, as a nation, are a bit OCD, but Cuba and Vietnam would argue.
That’s charmingly reflexive of you, but why not take two minutes and put some thought-effort into it?
It had a legal obligation to turn over the New Territories which had become intertwined with Hong Kong proper. There was no hope of separating the two. It’s wrong to state that there was no legal obligation to hand over HK: by the mid-1980s, China was refusing to recognise British sovereignty in HK, as it viewed the treaty which handed the territory to Britain in perpetuity as being one of a series of unequal treaties signed in the nineteenth century, and the New Territories were going to have to be handed back anyway.
Britain had sought to continue the administration of Hong Kong, with a handover of sovereignty to China, similar to the situation in Macau, but China refused. What were we to do?
Just say no.
You can say that the New Territories were “intertwined” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) but the facts are still the facts - Britain had no legal obligation to turn over Hong Kong itself. Britain could have turned over the New Territories and kept Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula, which it had perpetual ownership of.
Would it have been costly? Yes, probably. But it would have worked. China would not have been willing to openly invade the city in defiance of British refusal to abandon its treaty right.
Once Thatcher had shown herself willing to turn her back on the people of HK, the
British National (overseas) status was pretty much exposed as worthless, in that it was clear Britain would do nothing to back it up.
Not pure conjecture. Try looking at Thatcher’s 1978 interview for World in Action where she exposed herself as the racist bitch she was, and deftly undercut support for the National Front, bringing much of it back into the Tory fold.
An oddly enough, I consider a principled stance on the protection of the HK people to be significantly more important than pissing China off. I’m not a huge fan of appeasement, generally.
Have you ever worked on asylum? Do you have any idea how tough getting it is and how countries fight against offering it to people?
Wasting money? What money would have been wasted? And yes, of course, anyone who bashes Thatcher must be ‘extreme.’ As for your comments about being pissed that China didn’t oppress people more… well, that’s the most fucking ridiculous thing I have ever heard, and one of the more offensive ones.
Sitting back and saying that because China didn’t roll the tanks through HK, we must have known everything was going to be OK is completely idiotic. The people of HK weren’t particularly stoked by the possibility. The FO wasn’t very sure what was going to happen. Which leads me to think Thatcher wasn’t either, but then again it wasn’t her (or white people’s) lives and freedoms she was gambling with.
That there wasn’t bloodshed or greater oppression after isn’t a sign that they knew what they were doing. Your attitude is like a man who walks into a casino, places his entire 401(k) on one spin of the roulette wheel, and then claims to be a gifted financial planner if it comes up.
Maybe at this point I should accuse you personally of not caring about the welfare of the HK people. But I don’t know that about you, and I doubt it is true. Perhaps you could extend the same courtesy the other way.
Not quite as simple as that. While they were on a lease that was expiring, questions existed as to whether there was a treaty requirement for that lease to be extended, or, more importantly, whether the communist government’s act of repudiating foreign treaties left any obligation to return the New Territories.
On different topics I’ll give my two pennorth.
Many nations both Western and Warsaw Pact genuinlly feared German reunification.
I knew the Warpact as totally immoral liars who would say anything at all to further their cause,but in this case I honestly believe that they were, from their point of view,telling the absaloute truth as they (wrongly)perceived it.
It was widely believed that German nationalism was so strong that E & W Germany united would start another world war probably in not too long a time.
Attention all loonies,I did not at that time,or at any time since believe this to be the case myself.
And I made my views known to near unanimous scepitism.
I DID NOT AT ANY TIME BELIEVE THIS MYSELF.
When E Germans started wandering over the border in their Trabants the W Germans,now that it looked like the threat was over started getting very anti about the E Germans who they NOW regarded much as Americans often view illegal Mexican immigrant fruit pickers.
And quite often still do.
On a second point,and this is total guesswork on my part,with totally NO foundation in fact.
I would not be stunned with amazement if the present very liberal regime in HK as opposed to some other areas of China,the total lack of a witchhunt after the handover of “Western Collaborationists”,might have been as a result of secret talks by HMG very concerned about former subjects coming under the Chinese government,with financial and other incentives for the National government to not mistreat former British Subjects,with the counterpoise if they didn’t things might well become "awkward"in future relations of a deniable nature.
But of course we’ll never know ,I certainly wont.
China may be pissed off and may start making noises, but all it can do is to refuse to recognise those people as British. This was basically what happened when British granted full citizenship to 50000 families in Hong Kong (mostly professionals and civil servants) under the British nationality selection scheme after the Tiananmen Square fiasco. It’s shameful that this was not extended to all British nationals in HK. It’s the least they could do. I’ll note that Portugal granted full citizenship to all its nationals in Macau.
No, the Chinese haven’t ‘significantly’ abused their power (I haven’t seen any tanks rolling into the city yet), but they haven’t exactly kept all of their words either. For example, I’m still waiting for my universal sufferage, which, according to the Basic Law, may begin in 2007/2008. It has now been pushed back to 2017 at the earliest. There are also multiple instances in the last decade where decisions of the HK Court of Final Appeal and even the Basic Law itself have been overturned by the Chinese through blatantly bogus ‘interpretation’ of the Law. You really don’t hear about these issues very much in the west. I haven’t seen the western governments applying much, if any, pressure on China over them.
OTOH, the Commies have not nationalized/socialized all those fat, rich HK business enterprises, AFAIK. (Chinese Commies now seem to be Commie-in-name-only in that respect anyway.) That’s what both HK and Western business interests mainly feared, as I understand it – that they would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. If it hasn’t happened, and if HK still doesn’t have democracy but never had much of it under the Brits anyway – where’s the news hook?
What was Labor’s position on the handover agreement? Was the UK sharply divided at the time? Would there have been time after Labor took power in 1997 to issue UK passports to HK’s citizens?
I don’t know. I had left the Labour Party by then. My guess is they would not have done a lot different.