Responses to Notice: Guildford HongKongers Aims to Help

1. Jules Cranwell Reply

   July 13, 2024 at 2:28 pm

   I’d like to extend a personal welcome to those HongKongers who have been fortunate enough to escape the oppressive regime now in control of HK. I’m sure they will all receive the warmest of welcomes.
2. David Roberts Reply

   July 15, 2024 at 6:19 pm

   From 1995-97 I helped negotiate the handover of Hong Kong to China. The deal we struck was for a 50-year transition, and it wasn’t bad when you consider how weak the UK position was; at any moment, Beijing could just have sent in the People’s Liberation Army – or indeed simply turned off the water supply.

   I’m proud that the traps we laid to protect a free and open society have lasted so long. These included a Court of Final Appeal staffed by impartial Commonwealth judges, for instance, and the invention of “British National (Overseas)” status which the Hong Kongers now arriving in the UK could use as a last resort to escape.

   The Chinese needn’t have agreed to any of this, but in the 1990s Hong Kong still controlled most of China’s contacts with the West. China saw maintaining business stability there as paramount. As China’s economic ties have multiplied, that unique role has declined, allowing Beijing systematically to undermine Hong Kong’s special status.

   Sad, but authoritarian regimes usually look stronger than they are. A reverse takeover of the mainland could still happen.