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Originally Posted by adarian_too
No. If Hong Kong wasn't worth fighting for, neither is Taiwan.
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A little different. Whilst HK island was Britain's in perpetuity, the dubious prize of an effective little opium war, the New Territories were only leased for a 100 years.
As most of HK's water came from the N.T (as well as virtually everything else), the UK government, after briefly flirting with the idea of huge desalination plants, came to the conclusion that it all had to go back.
Just not practicable to keep it.
Taiwan's status, if we believe in national self determination, is one of an independent nation state. China's claim to Taiwan is centered on the ethnicity of its people (Han chinese, the indigenous people being in the minority) and the fact that it was
once part of
Imperial China. The Taiwanese themselves have never subscribed to this, but China has threatened Taiwan with war if it ever dared to carry out a national referendum on the subject. China you see, likes to know the answers in advance.
This is immensely important in Chinese eyes, not least because it relates to the national 'face' of China. The Chinese pursued their invasion of Tibet on the flimsy notion that Tibet (which actually conquered large swathes of China in the past), had once assumed the title of a protectorate of China.
Interestingly, because Genghis Khan, a mongolian, once conquered China and set up court at Beijing, the Chinese count him as a
chinese emperor and there have been noises about subsuming Mongolia. They've already started to do it economically.
There are also parts of Russia that were once Chinese, so where does it end?
The Chinese make great play about being a responsible trading partner and member of the international community.
Watch what happens when they don't get their own way.............................
Incidentally, if I wasn't in HK and lived instead in southern China, I couldn't write this.