> People have this idea that an enormous unified China is somehow natural. The linguistic variation of Chinese is larger than the romance languages today. China being some unified country speaking Mandarin is about as natural as Rome coming back today and enforcing Italian on all its previous empire.

More drivel by someone who likely can't speak or read any dialect of Chinese and has no idea of history. Rome has been dead for millennia. The last emperor of the Qing dynasty died in 1967.

The Romance "languages" are only considered languages because the Latin alphabet has no way of dealing with natural drifts in pronounciation. Most differences between them are superficial at best. The language spoken in Northern Italy is functionally identical to that spoken in Southern France. It is only because every province sized country in Europe insists on creating their own orthography that they seem different. If you don't believe me just look at Catalan or Cantonese Wikipedia. Despite best efforts by the people writing the articles, they still appear almost identical to standard Spanish and Chinese.

Even if we take your claims about language for granted, The city that Cantonese is named after is on the Mainland, and mainlander Cantonese far outnumber those in Hong Kong. By your logic an independent Hong Kong is as natural as Brooklyn being independent from the rest of New York.

EDIT: You don't have a point and the claims you've made are egregiously wrong. Here's a hint, 1967 >>>>> 395.

EDIT In Response because of comment limits:

> My first point is that Hong Kongers of course should have had the right to vote on the handover back to China. They were not offered that and we can't go back.

In the 60s the Hong Kongese held mass riots against the British in support of reunification.[0] Linguistically and culturally the Hong Kongese they are no different from their fellow Cantonese in the mainland. Most of its residents are only a couple generations removed from the Mainland. This tactic of constantly trying to make some arbitrary strategic region of China seem like it's some cultural enclave is as ridiculous as claiming that maybe "San Francisco isn't preordained to be American". If you think there's some drastic cultural difference the burden of proof lies on you.

> You literally didn't contradict anything I said linguistically or culturally (i.e. that China is _not_ some singular linguistical/cultural area), which was my point. So no I _do_ have a point and you yourself agreed with it.

I am making the point that the linguistic differences between Romance language speakers are exaggerated and nonexistent in practice, not agreeing with you that the linguistic differences in China are significant.

> You made another point that the fact that China was unified more recently as an empire than Rome means they are somehow more legitimate.

You acted as if China was some newly formed entity, and used it to imply that it isn't natural for it to be unified. The amount of times China has been unified far outstrips the amount of times when a single city that's not even self sufficient infrastructurally has been independent.

> I’ve never heard someone claim otherwise.

How many Hong Kongese and Cantonese have you met? I doubt the number is more than a dozen. You keep doing this unbacked argument that "maybe X isn't shouldn't be a part of China because maybe they have a different culture" without any evidence they have a different culture, likely because you've never encountered their culture in person. The burden of proof lies on you when X has been a part of China for millennial longer than it's ever been indepedent.

You then act as if the Hong Kongese had no say during the handover when they were clearly much more violently in favor of reunification at the time. The scale of the present protests are not nearly as great as the ones in '67.

> So you agree that there is no natural cultural-linguestic reason for China to be unified in its current form

Jesus Christ how many times do I have to point out that China is linguistically unified and that the Hong Kongese have no significant cultural differences to justify independence. The burden of proof lies on you to disprove me. Countries don't stay unified for centuries without a linguistic and cultural common ground.

> I can't follow this anymore. Post replies like a normal person and I'll respond. If not, okay that's fine too. I think we've mostly explained our respective beliefs

And I can't reply to your comments because of rate limiting on HackerNews. No need to be extremely passive aggressive about it. I don't think you've understood my beliefs and I don't think you intend to. This entire time you've been putting words in ny mouth.

> Anyway I'll stop this discussion here so that you can focus on all the other posts you're apparently making. Maybe the extra bandwidth will allow you to post normally in the other conversations at least.

There's no way you don't have enough self awareness to notice how passive aggressive this sounds. Besides, you've posted 6 comments in the past hour. I posted 7 in the past day.

Pointing out that the Hong Kongese speak the second most common dialect in China, are only a couple generations removed from the mainland, spent most of their history not seeking independece from the rest of China, and obviously felt enough kinship to the rest of China to violently attempt reunification is enough justification that they are reasonably culturally unified with the rest of the country. You, on the other hand have provided no evidence to the contrary, and seem outraged that I even ask you for proof.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Hong_Kong_riots