Hong Kong and China

[Felix]

hks said: I made a short list

A short list of what? All of the countries you listed have been conquered or ruled by a foreign power within the last 3000 years.

[Mark1955]

Your doubt does not change the fact that only a few countries in the world have never been conquered or ruled by another one at some time in the last 3000 years - and China is not one of them.

I made a short list:

Argentina

Australia

Brazil

Russia

Switzerland

USA

Venezuela

Assuming you are claiming these countries have never been the subject of imperialist conquest this is generally a very racist white supremacist list.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil the USA and Venezuela are all colonial creations, as is most of modern Russia, which was nevertheless walked over by the Mongols in the 13th Century.
Switzerland was founded in 1291 having been previously part of the Holy Roman Emipire and overrun by the French in 1798 who imposed Napoleonic rule on the Helvetic Republic, as they renamed it.

[Steve3007]

Do the people of Hong Kong have the right to independence, or to certain rights and freedoms? In a broader sense, do all people have the right to things like freedom of speech, religion, assembly, jury trial and such?

Inline with some subsequent comments on this topic, I would say that it's meaningless to ask whether any given group in the world has rights to various things unless one also proposes some way in which those rights could realistically be conferred on them and then upheld. It's a little bit like my situation, in my line of work, whereby I need to write an unambiguous set of requirements to define an engineering task to the satisfaction of my customer, but those requirements are deemed to be meaningless unless, for each one, I also state the method by which it will be verified. A little bit like that.

[h_k_s]

I made a short list:

Argentina

Australia

Brazil

Russia

Switzerland

USA

Venezuela

Assuming you are claiming these countries have never been the subject of imperialist conquest this is generally a very racist white supremacist list.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil the USA and Venezuela are all colonial creations, as is most of modern Russia, which was nevertheless walked over by the Mongols in the 13th Century.
Switzerland was founded in 1291 having been previously part of the Holy Roman Emipire and overrun by the French in 1798 who imposed Napoleonic rule on the Helvetic Republic, as they renamed it.

Doesn't matter where they came from. What matters is they each declared their independence and were never reconquered again thereafter.

So its a good list.

[Mark1955]

Assuming you are claiming these countries have never been the subject of imperialist conquest this is generally a very racist white supremacist list.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil the USA and Venezuela are all colonial creations, as is most of modern Russia, which was nevertheless walked over by the Mongols in the 13th Century.
Switzerland was founded in 1291 having been previously part of the Holy Roman Empire and overrun by the French in 1798 who imposed Napoleonic rule on the Helvetic Republic, as they renamed it.

Doesn't matter where they came from. What matters is they each declared their independence and were never reconquered again thereafter.

So its a good list.

Oh dear, if you really don't see my point I think we have to be done here but I'll try one more time. Most of the places you name had other humans living in them before the colonial white man turned up and decided that after wiping out the locals to a greater or lesser degree, this was his land and that he would then declare himself independent from his colonial homeland. The indigenous population undoubtedly saw this as the colonial invasion it was, but it would appear they don't count to you.

[h_k_s]

Doesn't matter where they came from. What matters is they each declared their independence and were never reconquered again thereafter.

So its a good list.

Oh dear, if you really don't see my point I think we have to be done here but I'll try one more time. Most of the places you name had other humans living in them before the colonial white man turned up and decided that after wiping out the locals to a greater or lesser degree, this was his land and that he would then declare himself independent from his colonial homeland. The indigenous population undoubtedly saw this as the colonial invasion it was, but it would appear they don't count to you.

And? We were talking about current nations that have never been conquered.

If you want to go all the way back to all indigenous peoples in all nations, then you need to go back to ancient antiquity, in which case due to mass migrations, there are none that meet the criterion of never having been conquered by anyone ever. Compres vous?

[Sy Borg]

There is a fifty year deal that China is not honouring. Brexit Britain is divided, alone and weak, and thus powerless to stop them.

Meanwhile the US has lost its capacity to be a trusted actor on the world stage (or anywhere, seemingly) and Russia is biding its time. India and Pakistan are mostly interested in each other. The Middle East is a ruin. Europe is divided and faltering. Brazil is burning off "the lungs of the Earth" for fun and profit. Australia is committed to coal above all else and Murdoch media increasingly rules the Anglosphere.

And now there are increased indicators of a looming recession. The games are just beginning.

[h_k_s]

I think there is a fifty year deal that China is not honouring. Brexit Britain is divided, alone and weak, and thus powerless to stop them.

China is a local land and air superpower. Nobody can tell them what to do and survive.

They will do whatever they want.

[Sy Borg]

That is increasingly how things are looking. International relations have some tempering effect due to trade links, although that potential trump card is currently being reduced.

[h_k_s]

They (in HK) are back to teargas, rocks, and fire bombs again today. Premier Xi won't put up with this much longer.

[Sy Borg]

Indeed. It's hard to imagine one who demands that schoolchildren sing songs of praise about them coping with any challenges to their power.

The trade war makes violence all the more likely since the US has just thrown away their best bargaining chip.

[Sculptor1]

There is a fifty year deal that China is not honouring. Brexit Britain is divided, alone and weak, and thus powerless to stop them.

Meanwhile the US has lost its capacity to be a trusted actor on the world stage (or anywhere, seemingly) and Russia is biding its time. India and Pakistan are mostly interested in each other. The Middle East is a ruin. Europe is divided and faltering. Brazil is burning off "the lungs of the Earth" for fun and profit. Australia is committed to coal above all else and Murdoch media increasingly rules the Anglosphere.

And now there are increased indicators of a looming recession. The games are just beginning.

So, exactly what parts of the "deal" are not being honoured?

[Jklint]

With everything happening now and all at once - the most deadly for the overall future of the planet being the Amazon firestorm compared to which Hong Kong and China are footnotes - I'm feeling extremely anti-social toward humans who can't ever seem to manage the catastrophes they are so prolific in creating.

What kind of low-life species throws its garbage and plastics into the oceans, its micro particles polluting even the Arctic waters catching researchers by surprise who didn't expect this to happen so suddenly? And on it goes.

Homo Sapiens have turned themselves in Homo Horribilis; an unstoppable virus toxifying and sucking the life out of the planet. This generation, more than any other in history, is doomed to be cursed by those who follow. One has to be blind and stupid to imagine technology is going to make up for what is irrevocably lost and took a billion years to create. What an honor for the human race! Any other intelligent species near or far would consider the likes of us as the mother of all F-U's.

[Sculptor1]

Your doubt does not change the fact that only a few countries in the world have never been conquered or ruled by another one at some time in the last 3000 years - and China is not one of them.

I made a short list:

Argentina

Australia

Brazil

Venezuela

Venezuela

Russia

Switzerland

USA

How silly.
The top 5 are countries founded on genocide. much like the USA itself.
Russia is an empire that has grown by eastward conquest for the last thousand years.

As for Switzerland. It has thrived by banking the spoils of various empires, and managing to play them off against each other. During WW2 it funded the Allies and the Axis quite happily whilst the rich of the world supported its so-called "neutrality".

[Sculptor1]

China should honor the "one country, two systems" treaty they made with Hong Kong in 1997, which grants Hong Kong 50 years of autonomous rights, including the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly, and Western Democracies should hold them to that pact - end of story.

I think you will find that the treaty does not say what the HongKongalese think it says.
They seem to think it grants what the British never granted to them in the entire 150 years of rule, namely universal sufferage.
No such provision was granted, not implied by any agreement.
Since the handover very little has changed.
One superpower gave it over to another. "Same Same" as they say in the east.
What is different is that the moves to democracy which was fully and comprehensively suppressed by the British for 150 years has become more vocal due to the advent of social media, which makes it more easy to manipulate from the west.