Britain to allow up to 3 million Hongkongers to move to UK and become citizens

[Cuellar]

this is NOT why I voted to leave the EU

close are borders

[Fambo Number Mive]

All governments should be held to the same basic standard, and people should be allowed to condemn any government regardless of what their own government is like. If western reporting on the new law in Hong Kong is incorrect, fair enough, but it does feel that some, especially on the Left, hold the Chinese government to a different standard from the UK government. Yes, the UK has its own human rights problems, but that doesn't make what the Chinese government does any better.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Not really. Where have I declared the Chinese government to be righteous? All I've done is point out that a viewpoint based entirely on Western exceptionalism is not only baseless but actively harmful given the belligerent foreign policy stance of the United States and its allies.

China has a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, and I would wager (just my conjecture) that a substantial majority of them support this latest security measure and view it as reasonable. Who conferred on the West the right to dictate global morality?

So if a majority of people support something, even if it causes a minority to be oppressed, that makes it ok? A majority of people in the UK would probably support the death penalty. That doesn't make it right.

[Paul Calf]

When the law was changed in India to outlaw sati - the practice of burning alive the wife of a dead man on his funeral bonfire - there was huge opposition in India. I'd like to see a majoritarian defence of this.

"I'd wager...that a substantial majority..." Weasel words, especially when dealing with a political regime that doesn't even meet the minimum standards of representative democracy.

[Crisps?]

Yeah, Britain is just Great isn't it. Bringing the oppressed millionaires of Hong Kong to Freedom. Jolly good show, Boris. And British imperialist crimes and atrocities that are the root cause of this? Not relevant. Bobby Sands? No surrender! What fucking arselicking shitshow of a thread this is.

You can be arrested for waving flags deemed ideologically unsound by the British regime (flags I doubt China has any problem with); as of last year you can also get 15 years inside just for watching the wrong kind of "propaganda".

Look over there though, that country you don't live in, whose regime impacts you in no way, that's what you should be worried about.

This isn't about HK freedom, which obviously never existed when we were in charge, or about some ancient 1980s treaty, unless we're just telling China to wait 27 more years before opening the gulags, and we knew exactly what China was like 8 years before the hand back.

This is simply about exploiting another situation to undermine the major threat to centuries of White (and especially American) domination of the world.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I don't think anyone on here thinks Britain is great, supports Johnson or is prouD of our imperialist crimes. Most people on here are very critical of human rights in Britain and the actions of the British government. Shouldn't progressives be critical of any government no matter how much their regime impacts them?

[Gregory Torso]

I never thought I'd see a thread like this on CaB. Pearly Dewdrops, do you live in China? Ever been there? Ever lived under the rule of the CCP? Ever wondered why foreign media find it difficult to report an unbiased view of what goes on in China? (clue: journalists don't tend to have a good time inside the old PRC)

As others have pointed out, this offer of citizenship is just bullshit, meaningless gesture, HK is not part of the UK, it has nothing to do with it. If the UK and US wanted to really go after China they should be starting with the camps in Xinjiang, but of course they won't. It's all about money, never about people.

[Armin Meiwes]

Yeah that argument makes little sense - I'm sure the majority in Israel are in favour of the "security measures" taken in the occupied territories but it doesn't make it ok and I don't think anyone here would argue it did so why is it ok for China?

[steveh]

You may have missed the months and months of increasingly aggressive protests that the Hong Kong police permitted with far more restraint than we are at this very moment seeing in the US and the UK.

Because people in HK tried lobbying and peaceful protests - with over a million people on the streets - and it had no effect. They tried getting pro-democracy politicians elected and everything was done to try and prevent them or they were thrown out of office. Prior to '97 the British never bothered to consult with HK people about the future they wanted and they have continued to be ignored. They have swapped one set of colonial masters for another.

[Urinal Cake]

China has a long, long way to go before it approaches the clusterfuck territory of the USA and UK when it comes to foreign relations/colonisation etc.

China has a draconian domestic political policy but where personal freedoms were largely fine. The majority of Chinese people seemed fine with this. But more importantly foreign corporations and governments were practically fine with this. So I can understand why the CCP would be so cynical.

[RenegadeScrew]

Yeah, Britain is just Great isn't it. Bringing the oppressed millionaires of Hong Kong to Freedom. Jolly good show, Boris. And British imperialist crimes and atrocities that are the root cause of this? Not relevant. Bobby Sands? No surrender! What fucking arselicking shitshow of a thread this is.

You can be arrested for waving flags deemed ideologically unsound by the British regime (flags I doubt China has any problem with); as of last year you can also get 15 years inside just for watching the wrong kind of "propaganda".

You don't need to poorly equate the UK and China in order to simply say that a Tory government cares about capital flows over freedom.

And if you want to be so cynical - the US dominated world is bad enough. Let's keep it that way, especially if the main threat to it is China.

[Armin Meiwes]

The Tories know as well as anyone that this country needs immigrants to keep the economy growing so I wouldn't be surprised if they angle to boost immigration from countries that they know their racist voters won't get so angry about, eg HK, Australia, Canada, etc now. If you can paint it as some kind of munificent act, all the better.

[marquis_de_sad]

The Tories know as well as anyone that this country needs immigrants to keep the economy growing so I wouldn't be surprised if they angle to boost immigration from countries that they know their racist voters won't get so angry about, eg HK, Australia, Canada, etc now. If you can paint it as some kind of munificent act, all the better.

Yeah, agreed.

China has a long, long way to go before it approaches the clusterfuck territory of the USA and UK when it comes to foreign relations/colonisation etc.

It isn't a competition, and criticism of one thing doesn't mean endorsement of the other.

[honeychile]

The Tories know as well as anyone that this country needs immigrants to keep the economy growing so I wouldn't be surprised if they angle to boost immigration from countries that they know their racist voters won't get so angry about, eg HK, Australia, Canada, etc now. If you can paint it as some kind of munificent act, all the better.

I think this is it, they're hoping racists might be more inclined to think of Hong Kongers as well-educated and anglicised and therefore as deserving migrants.

I'm happy to accept a lot more of the world's refugees, but if the motivations were for the concern of the people in former british colonies having increasingly autocratic rule enforced upon them then we might have heard something about Kashmir, Tanzania etc.

[bgmnts]

Honestly dont think any nation can look down on others, especially us considering our past.

But I AM a China stooge being paid by Xi Jinping to post here.

[Bernice]

Arguably there's a strange sort of racism on display when imperialism is framed as exclusively white and western with reference to fucking China of all places.


Looking down on other nations has nothing to do with it. It's the apologists for the CCP that have decided to turn this into some weird-ass world rankings of imperialist shithousery, as if that was the necessary basis on which any criticism of human rights violations must begin. As marquis_de_sad says, it isn't a competition, but a bunch of Tibetans and Uighur just rang me to say this is the dumbest fucking take they've ever seen.

It goes without saying that this is a deeply cynical move on the part of the UK Government. But then, I'm not sure many of the three million who've just gained rights will be particularly arsed about that fact.

[Paul Calf]

Honestly dont think any nation can look down on others, especially us considering our past.

But I AM a China stooge being paid by Xi Jinping to post here.

Do you think the same of Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and Austria?

[bgmnts]

Do you think the same of Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and Austria?

Do I think that they shouldn't really look down on other nations? Yes of course.

[Paul Calf]

Do you think they should avoid criticising governments of other nations because of their histories of imperialism?

[honeychile]

Honestly dont think any nation can look down on others, especially us considering our past.

I'd hope "we" (presumably meaning the british government) can look down on other governments especially because of our past. The hypocrisy isn't in the british government's past, it's in its present - the refusal to take responsibility for the past and make serious moves towards reconciliation.

[Bernice]

I presume it also follows that the UK government can't speak out on Israel's proposed annexation of the West Bank until there's a united Ireland.

[Urinal Cake]

The UK Government can talk about whatever it likes but China, Russia, Turkey etc are always going to talk about history and the impact of that history on the fortunes of the UK today. I mean Cecil Rhodes ffs. Also China's imperialism has so far gone to territories near or on it's borders. They didn't sail all around the world looking for loot, slaves/servants and land.

[bgmnts]

I presume it also follows that the UK government can't speak out on Israel's proposed annexation of the West Bank until there's a united Ireland.

Didn't Churchill literally create the middle east as we know it?

Not saying we shouldn't be against these things, just that we aren't really better.

[greenman]

To be far to P- DDD, they're hardly the only poster on here with a hard-on for China.

Seems he's gone full Biggie "enemy of my enemy" but really the recent history of China and the western capitalist establishment isn't generally one of conflict is it? the HK agreement itself is viewed by many as selling the local population down the river for a more favourable trade climate with CHina, the same way support for Tibetian independence has been in decline. The idea that capitalism would somehow shift China towards liberal democracy has clearly failed but really was only ever a façade for a relationship that was beneficial to certain wealthy people.

[Bernice]

Didn't Churchill literally create the middle east as we know it?

Not really but kinda. Certainly European powers, Britain chief among them, carved up the region in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Not saying we shouldn't be against these things, just that we aren't really better.

Again though, Britain "being better" is a total distraction. If we claim collective responsibility for a nation's destructive foreign policy and also deny the "guilty" the moral authority to speak out against injustices elsewhere, there are scant few people left on earth to make the case for human rights.

[marquis_de_sad]

There's definitely a criticism to be made of abstract "Western liberal values" that are often evoked when people criticise the PRC government, as those people also tend to ignore the historical relationship of those values to imperialism, racism, etc, as well as the historical relationships between China and foreign imperial powers (which are obviously not only "Western"). But that's different from actively defending PRC policy in HK, and the use of the imperialist past of other countries to wave away criticism of that policy.

[Sin Agog]

Not really but kinda. Certainly European powers, Britain chief among them, carved up the region in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Iraq was initially intended to be a Charles Atlas-esque experiment in which we created a desert nation of musclemen.

[Cloud]

this is NOT why I voted to leave the EU

close are borders

It'll be interesting to see how many who were saying "it's not about immigration, it's about are sovrinty" will be the same ones kicking off now that we've offered to let in a bunch of people who were unable to maintain their sovereignty...

[Bernice]

Iraq was initially intended to be a Charles Atlas-esque experiment in which we created a desert nation of musclemen.

Explains Saddam's tache.

[TheBrownBottle]

Christ, moral relativism is a right load of pish.

I'm an internationalist & a human being.  The Tories are a shower of cunts, but they're cuddly compared with the Chinese govt.  Citing historical crimes of the British empire does nothing to help those in peril today.  The idea that the UK govt is as oppressive as that of the Chinese govt isn't just wanky middle-class self-flagellation; it's ludicrous and utterly offensive.  The British employed concentration camps in the Second Boer War - but you'd need to be 140 years old to have taken part in that act of brutality.  The Chinese govt currently has thousands of Uighurs in concentration camps right now.  The British strapped rebellious sepoys to cannons following the Indian Mutiny.  You'd need to be 180 years old to have taken part in that.  The Chinese govt today announces death sentences in fucking sports stadiums to braying mobs.  The Factory Act (1847) introduced reforms which meant women & children were restricted to a ten-hour-working day, beginning on the same day as the beginning of the 150-year-long British rule in HK.  Children in China today work in factories for more than ten hours a day (making products that many of buy, of course.  Probably most of us to read / write on here).

If you want to tell me that the British govt are a bunch of nasty cunts who arm oppressive regimes for profit, conduct unnecessary wars or have yet to apologise / pay reparations for past crimes, I'm in complete agreement.  But don't conflate racism & western exceptionalism with reasonable criticism of the lack of basic human rights in the world's second biggest economy. The notion that we cannot criticise other govts due to the inequities of our own is nonsense - particularly given that I didn't vote for the cunt in No. 10.