The Batlord

I've never really been up on Chinese history, past or current, but I've been watching a lot of Hong Kong movies recently and it's made me interested in Hong Kong itself, which has made Hong Kong one of the most interesting cities in the world to me right now. I don't know much about the history of Hong Kong under the British, but it sounds like they had something approaching freedom under them during their latter period of not really having the power to be true imperialist thugs, then in 1997 Hong Kong was given back to the Chinese with a stipulation that they'd have some kind of independent government for a further 50 years. And China has been encroaching, sometimes violently, on that agreement ever since.

It's just the craziest situation to be in. I live in a country that has a leader who may or may not be a generic brand fascist but who knows what the next election will bring, and the election after that will at least mean that that guy will be gone for good, so my brush with authoritarianism is confusing and possibly overblown, whereas Hong Kong has a date set on when they will fall under a completely repressive regime with no respect for freedom or human rights. I just can't imagine that ****. That's pure ****ing cyberpunk in a not funny at all way. There's a legit part of me that wants my country to protect their freedoms, not because I believe in American imperialism as a good thing, but I just feel awful when I think of the existential horror that Hong Kong citizens must feel when they think of the future.

What do other people have to say?

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