solarz
Brigadier
To become a British or American citizen, you also need to pledge allegiance to the Queen/Republic.
If Beijing really wants to play hardball, after 47, they can inverse the special status of HK residents and make them second class citizens, much like how the British treated them. If they want to become full Chinese citizens, they need to swear allegiance to China, and their citizenship can be revoked if they subsequently go back on that pledge and/or commit serious crimes against Chinese interests.
Since these idiot rioters don’t want to be Chinese, they can choose not to be; but will have no freedom to travel to other parts of China, never mind abroad; will get zero public funding; will be ineligible for any government or public jobs...the list is endless.
There is no right for anyone to damage China’s interests on the one hand while expecting to make money off China on the other. If they cannot figure out which side their toast is buttered, they don’t deserve toast.
Swearing allegiance is rather meaningless.
The real reason HK and Mainland has this ideological divide is because of online segregation. HKers consume Western ideology, either directly through Facebook and Twitter, or indirectly by consuming media that consumes Western ideology. The only way to bridge this divide is to subject HK telecoms to the same rules and regulations that Mainland telecoms are subjected to, and the only way to do that is to end 1C2S.
This is an ideological war, and those "wasted youths" are just physical manifestations of that war.
I think Deng Xiaoping made a mistake when he set the term of 1C2S to 50 years. He likely underestimated China's growth and thought it would take 50 years for China to reach a point where HK was no longer necessary. Had he set the term to 20 years, we wouldn't be having this conversation.