I don’t know if anyone cares to read this but:

Hong Kong was not a great place during the British era. That doesn’t mean the last few decades weren’t better than now (or even the last decade), although a lot of the reasons don’t have anything to do with governance or politics.

Indeed, most of Hong Kong’s past glory was a product of being in the right place at the right time, and the description of Hong Kong as a borrowed place on borrowed time is accurate then and now.

What does it mean for Hong Kong to no longer be a borrowed place? Is being a HKer..

an identity that is in some part built on being different, and dare I say superior, than other surrounding peoples, whoever they may be?

I don’t have the answer to either of these questions, but if anyone ever wanted to think a lot about what they want to fight for with no...

apparent return, those are good topics to think about. (I haven’t mentioned what “borrowed time” means because that’s even more subject to the whims of geopolitics and/or luck/fate/whatever.)

All of Hong Kong - economy, identity, myth, culture - is built on being a world city.

Regardless of how true that is on a micro scale, it’s thus preposterous to suggest Hong Kong’s politics work completely separately from the rest of the world, which links back to what Hong Kong and hongkonger mean.

However, the hard questions extend to our allies outside of HK:

What exactly is the largest threat to Hong Kong and the world? The two answers aren’t necessarily the same, but if the international left wants to know why Hong Kong is so resistant to anything that seems left (whether or not the thing is left doesn’t matter), this is important.

A hint is that Hong Kong is (or was) the world’s conduit to China, not the other way round (i.e. Hong Kong’s relationship with China matters a lot more than most other things here). (This also relates to “which colonizer was worse”.)

I guess this is the “hard questions” thread?

Apologies if this rambling thread doesn’t make any sense, and ask me any questions you might have. (I literally typed this without organizing it after thinking about how many times Hong Kong can decline/die/be finished, so a distraction from that would be most welcome!)