Thatcher later said that Deng told her bluntly that China could easily take Hong Kong by force, stating that "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon", to which she replied that "there is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like".
Consequently, because ceding Hong Kong came at the end of half a century of decolonisation, and because the handover meant that the United Kingdom became without significant overseas territories, dominions, or colonies for the first time in its history (Great Britain, having been bequeathed the incipient domains of its later empire by inheriting the colonial possessions of the Kingdom of England upon the passing of the Acts of Union 1707, always having been an imperial power, ab initio) the handover of Hong Kong to China is regarded by some as marking the conclusion of the British Empire, with 1 July 1997 being its end date and the handover ceremony being its last diplomatic act.
The Chinese have been, are, and will be, about as grateful to the US as they have been to Britain, even though it was the US which foolishly required the West to decolonize:
Sir Michael Howard, Lessons Of History, "1945--End of an Era?":"Only one thing could have prolonged the existence of the European Empires---the continuing approval and support of the United States. It was the denial of that support that spelled the end of the old European Empires. The citizens of the United States had not joined in the Second World War to prop up a system of imperial domination against which they had been the first people to revolt. And it has been with genuine bewilderment that they find themselves today so generally reviled as its inheritor....."
The US has been The Doomsday Democracy for the West.
Terms search: grateful
Consequently, because ceding Hong Kong came at the end of half a century of decolonisation, and because the handover meant that the United Kingdom became without significant overseas territories, dominions, or colonies for the first time in its history (Great Britain, having been bequeathed the incipient domains of its later empire by inheriting the colonial possessions of the Kingdom of England upon the passing of the Acts of Union 1707, always having been an imperial power, ab initio) the handover of Hong Kong to China is regarded by some as marking the conclusion of the British Empire, with 1 July 1997 being its end date and the handover ceremony being its last diplomatic act.
The Chinese have been, are, and will be, about as grateful to the US as they have been to Britain, even though it was the US which foolishly required the West to decolonize:
Sir Michael Howard, Lessons Of History, "1945--End of an Era?":"Only one thing could have prolonged the existence of the European Empires---the continuing approval and support of the United States. It was the denial of that support that spelled the end of the old European Empires. The citizens of the United States had not joined in the Second World War to prop up a system of imperial domination against which they had been the first people to revolt. And it has been with genuine bewilderment that they find themselves today so generally reviled as its inheritor....."
The US has been The Doomsday Democracy for the West.
Terms search: grateful
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