Comment by twelve40

One thing i could never understand. And I don't really have a horse in this race, and I feel sorry for everyone who suffers or is unhappy. But why was Hong Kong happily gifted to China (instead of say giving it independence), but Taiwan is so sacred that it's worth risking ww3 to protect it, instead of perhaps negotiating some kind of a special status for it as well? The people who want to be left alone, sure, but were the people of Hong Kong somehow ecstatic about their transfer? or did anyone even bothered asking them at the time? The trends in '97 were already exactly the same as today, the same regime, China was already bulking up.