China: a great power we can't trust
Pieces of paper have a poor reputation among political realists, and history is littered with the torn-up fragments of solemn treaties. Seventeen years after a tearful Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, sailed away on the royal yacht Britannia in July 1997, two pieces of paper are in contention, and they're sparking an increasingly bitter confrontation over the right of Hong Kong's people to choose their own government.
More than 700,000 people voted for that right last week in an unofficial referendum organised by Occupy Central, a pro-democracy movement founded in 2013. And on 1 July tens of thousands took to the streets in Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy rally in more than a decade.… Seguir leyendo »