Kids in Hong Kong public schools are taught Mandarin, rather than the Cantonese that is spoken in Hong Kong. The 50,000 mainland Chinese immigrants who move to Hong Kong every year is a stealth takeover- by-demographics. (Worse, some of them jump the queue in front of Hongkongers for government-supported apartments.) China’s plan to develop a massive Greater Bay Area megacity to integrate Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong into a big, urban, technology giant will dilute Hong Kong’s regional influence. And China’s role in dictating what happens in Hong Kong has steadily increased.
system and its way of life for 50 years – at which point Hong Kong would lose its special-ness to become just another part of China. At the time, 2047 must have seemed like an unfathomably long time in the future (much like how 2070 – 50 years from now – feels to us today). The apparent attitude of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who orchestrated the deal on the British side, had something in common with those of today’s U.S. congressional budget busters and climate- change deniers: Screw it, I won’t be around to deal with the fallout of this mess . Handing Hong Kong over to China in 2047 was like kicking the can down the road... elevated to an art form. But China thinks in terms of centuries… not terms in office. So over the past few decades, China has been setting the table for 2047, by steadily turning the heat up on the frog in the pot that’s Hong Kong.
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American Consequences
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