My Take | Hong Kong has crossed a red line of no return
- The city will never be like Macau, and that’s why it will reach the end of the line come 2047 and will not be anything like the one we have loved and treasured
When the 50-year guarantees of “one country, two systems” expire for Macau and Hong Kong, it should not surprise anyone that the former will be allowed to continue as it always has while the latter as we know it will cease to be.
Most legal experts agree that the constitutional guarantee of half a century of no change is not an expiry date; the central government could allow both places to continue their way of life indefinitely. But the peoples in both places have already demonstrated their political preferences.
Now that so many Hong Kong people have shown their readiness to work with American and British politicians against their own governments, the city has crossed a red line to which there is no return.
But at a fateful moment when the United States was ready to start cold war 2.0 against China, large swathes of the local population have declared they are siding with a rival state. Certainly, they are free to do so under one country, two systems and the Basic Law. But they are undermining their home city in the grandiose name of freedom and democracy, for an imaginary future they have no idea how to achieve.