Is Hong Kong part of China?

The most common comment I’ve received from the people who supported the Chinese was: an agreement is an agreement, it is an undisputed fact that the land of Hong Kong belongs to China.

Well that is completely true, legally speaking. But, you’re being too simple-minded (but I’ll keep this as simple as possible). And I would say, China has made a bad bargain and the agreement (Treaty of Nanjing, followed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration) shouldn’t be viewed in a similar fashion as a commercial or any other agreement. The reason being is because the people, people who grew up in Hong Kong or the unborn in particular — whether the present, past or the future generation — are at stake, and are the main stakeholders of the agreement. As such, they should be afforded the right to have a say in this matter. And they can’t go unheard, that includes the youngsters. However, their voices were not taken into consideration by Chinese government because, unfortunately, China is a one-party rule State, an oligarchy as oppose to democracy.

Firstly, concerning the land. It is claimed to be a part of China. No doubt, if you were to peruse the history books of China, Hong Kong was a territory of China (duhhh 🙄). But what was Hong Kong then before the existence of the so called China? Logic tells you that it was a land of nobody, but later claimed by humans who called themselves emperors. Emperors who initially lived by the support of the people, and with the people having trust on the emperors that would provide them protection with a proper system in place. Without the people’s support, the Emperors and their dynasties would surely crumble and head down the drain.

So originally, power was derived from the people. (It could be argued that the power, was bestowed by God. But, firstly, history has shown that the name of God had always been exploited by the megalomaniac to gain the support of the people. At the end of the day, through deceit or not, the support of the people from the land in question was required.

This brings me to the second point, where power was derived from the people’s trust). Therefore, if a government/dynasty/emperor weren’t recognised by the people who lived on the land in question, it would crumble, or it should fall.

System shouldn’t hold back the people from rejecting or displacing a particular group of people or a person who make claim to be the chosen one without actually being the choice of the people. Nobody has a stronger claim over the land of Hong Kong than the people who live on it. The law could sanction China to have a claim over Hong Kong, but remember, the Law is and should be accepted by the people of the land, and if the purported law was made without the obvious support of the people, it shouldn’t be the law it meant to be. Such law will have no basis to sanction or empower any person to perform an action. It is like an empty shell. And so, if China were to ever have a claim over Hong Kong, the Chinese government should have to be democratic about it. Otherwise, the people who live on the land should have a stronger claim over it.

Now, even if you still insist that the land of Hong Kong belongs to China, and the land being silent has agreed to it because the treaty say so, I don’t see why the people of Hong Kong should as well be subjected back to the rule of China. That’s why I called it a bad bargain for China. You can’t just evict all the dissenters (which I believe they form a majority part of the population of Hong Kong). The land and the people are a package, and both of them form what is called Hong Kong. By returning the land to China would also mean to return the people of Hong Kong to China, which does not make any sense! Following the logic I’ve propounded in the previous paragraph, the leaders’ authorities are to be derived from the people, and people are to be subject to the leaders only if they had agreed so. If the people weren’t keen of accepting you as a leader, I see no basis of you claiming any sorts of authority to hold the people as your subjects.

As such, China though has a legal claim over the land of Hong Kong, China does not have a political basis to do so, and China has no legal nor political claim over the people of Hong Kong.

In crux, China shouldn’t have any claim over Hong Kong given that their claim isn’t democratically supported nor is it politically adjudicated.

This post is not made against the Chinese people, but is in response to the unacceptable act of the Chinese government who has least respect for the people of Hong Kong.