Kel Abeg Shed Light on this Hong Kong matter Who owns Hong kong sef ? whats the beef really ?
Started in the mid-19th century. Britain was tge world power then. They found out that their trade balance with China was in China’s favor. They were like: “How can”? So they started exporting opium from India and Bangladesh to China through the black market. China fought this tried and seized shipments to try and stop it. The Chinese said it was a dangerous, addictive drug that was killing its people.
The British were claiming “free trade”. When the Chinese started seizing opium, the British East India Company which was running the drug trade went back to the English parliament to seek for help.
The parliamentarians, many of whom had shares in the company got Britain to declare war on China. This was the first of two opium wars, and it started in 1839 and lasted about 3 years. Imagine Pablo Escobar asking a powerful Colombian govt to intervene because the US was seizing his cocaine shipments to the US. Then Colombia, which in this hypothetical case was stronger than the US, agreed with Pablo and declared war on the US and forcing the US to cede Texas as a port from which Colombia could import cocaine into the US.
This is what happened. Massive victory in the opium wars forced China to cede Hong Kong to the British as a centre to import opium into China. The British also got China to remove all tariffs on British and western trade and got China to agree that westerners in China were not amenable to Chinese law. They later forced the legalisation of the opium trade which devastated China.
William Gladstone who was a British MP at the time (and later prime minister) declared that the opium wars were absolutely brutal and mean to China in the way his British compatriots used their superior force to subdue China and force the legalisation of opium trade and forcibly open the Chinese market to other trade in western goods.
When people look at China becoming belligerent and assertive these days, they dunno why, but the Chinese know their history and they know it’s ALL about power.
Anyway the British went on to rule Hong Kong for something like 155 years before they “gave” Hong Kong back to China in July of 1997. Then they told China to make sure that Hong Kong was allowed to remain “democratic and independent”. For 155-plus years, the Brits who did not allow substantial democracy in a Hong Kong that they took to sell opium into China were now asking China to allow Hong Kong to be independent under Chinese rule. Imagine the insult!!
That’s where the wahala comes from. China doesn’t feel it has to listen to the hypocritical westerners on how it deals with Hong Kong. It’s their territory and they’ve got it back, and nobody will dare try to take any territory back from them again, so they will do what they want with their territory and their subjects. Full stop!!
The west on the other hand are trying to use the people of Hong Kong in a divide and conquer strategy against China. Na there all the wahala dey come from.
Dr Kelechi Ogbuehi An Optometryst has Lived in Saudi Arabia Nigeria & New Zealand .He is An Authority on International Politics & Economies .