Louisa Lim’s book, ‘Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong,’ tells the heartbreaking tale of the Chinese takeover of what was one of the world’s freest cities. //

Lim’s book is timely because Beijing has been busy rewriting the history of Hong Kong, emphasizing China’s sovereignty claim of the city since time immemorial. Chinese authorities reportedly will introduce a new history book to Hong Kong schools that denies Hong Kong was ever a British colony. //

Lim’s book helps answer some questions many people, including myself, have, including: Why and how did the British government give up Hong Kong so easily?

Great Britain deserved credit for bringing the rule of law, independent judiciary, and laissez-faire capitalism to Hong Kong. These political and economic systems, combined with the Chinese people’s resilience and industriousness, transformed the once-sleepy fishing village into an international financial center and one of the busiest trading ports within a few decades. However, the British made three big mistakes that sealed Hong Kong’s fate today.

First, the British government failed to institute a democratic political system in Hong Kong. //

The second big mistake was that the British government was naive about the nature of the CCP, which was shocking to me because Hong Kong’s fate was sealed when Margret Thatcher was the prime minister of the U.K., and she was known for standing up to communism. Yet Thatcher let her colleagues and herself be played by cunning CCP officials during their negotiations. //

The third big mistake the British government made was to exclude Hong Kongers from its negotiation with Beijing. Thatcher told the British Parliament that the final agreement was “acceptable to the Hong Kong people.” But the Hong Kong people did not get a say in the matter.

Ethnic Chinese who served as advisers to the Hong Kong governor’s office were shut out of the negotiation despite repeated requests. They warned the British government that without an ethnic Chinese on the British negotiating team, the team “might be missing the nuances of spoken Mandarin.” They also feared that the British negotiating team “simply failed to understand the down-and-dirty nature of haggling with the Chinese.” All of their concerns turned out to be spot on. //

The British government didn’t even organize a public referendum or democratic process to let Hong Kongers vote on the agreement. Lim wrote that in retrospect, she could see how accurate the advice Hong Kong advisers gave was and how they “had pinpointed the problems at every step of the way.” Had the British government involved Hong Kongers from the very beginning, Hong Kong’s demise could have been prevented.

As Taiwan becomes the flash point between the United States and China, it’s foreseeable that the two nations may engage in a negotiation about Taiwan’s future someday. Lim’s book offers some timely and valuable lessons for future U.S. negotiators. Let’s hope they don’t repeat the British government’s mistakes regarding Hong Kong.