British-Hong Kong flags were seen waving in spite of the cold pouring rain, as hundreds of Hong Kong citizens marched the streets of Central proclaiming loudly and blatantly "We are Hongkongers, not Chinese!" This is the second consecutive year when obsolete blue-and-red colonial flags were observed at the annual 1 July March. Yes, this caucus of protesters only takes up a small minority of the Hong Kong society. But their existence is already alarming. Why would anyone even propose such a jejune suggestion, and reject being a Hong Kong-Chinese?.
Some claim that this was because Hong Kong's special historic background. Doubtlessly Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has a very unique situation, as most states turn into independent countries after being liberated from their colonial administrators. However, a boat trip of a mere hour would take us to a city that has experienced nearly exactly the same events as us – Macao Special Administrative Region. Since the return of Hong Kong from Britain to China on 1st July 1997, 'one country, two systems', a policy stipulated in the Sino-British Joint Declaration that grants Hong Kong high autonomy, was implemented, and was promised to be valid until at least 50 years later. In other words, it would be expired by 1st July 1947. While for Macao, everything was basically the same, except all to do with British was to do with Portuguese instead, and their handover date was 20th December 1999; thus the expiration of Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration would be on the 20th December 2049. So we ask next: why do some citizens of Hong Kong voice out their wishes for independence, while this seems to have never been heard in Macao? Some say that Hong Kong has a much larger population than Macao (7 million compared to 600 thousand), so it is definitely logical to find people with opposition only in Hong Kong. But this is clearly a fallacy: even the Falklanders, who account to less than thirty thousand people, have their viewpoints on what identity to keep.
