PC: US buys Hong Kong from UK?

Did the US hold and then claim foreign land as its own post-war? yes

Did they then settle US personal their afterward? Yes

Please provide examples

that's colonization, is it not?

so if anticolonialism was not enough of a deterent to prevent the above, why would it be enough to prevent a Hong Kong lease transfer?

That will depend on the examples you have. I believe you have a flawed view of 'hold and claim' but will keep an open mind until I see the cases you have.
 
Did the US hold and then claim foreign land as its own post-war? yes

Did they then settle US personal their afterward? Yes

that's colonization, is it not?

so if anticolonialism was not enough of a deterent to prevent the above, why would it be enough to prevent a Hong Kong lease transfer?

Well, first of all, the Okinawans, so far as most Americans were concerned were "Japs," and self-determination didn't apply to them to the same extent it did to, say, the Chinese.

Second, and more important: Okinawa with its bases was part of the US Pacific insular defense network. Hong Kong could not fulfill that function because it was just too close to China. US possession of it would be unnecessary if the US was dealing with a friendly China and--as 1941 showed--it would be extremely difficult to defend if dealing with a hostile one. When the Communists were rapidly gaining control of China in 1949, the US refused to make a firm commitment to the UK to defend Hong Kong because doing that would require the establishment of a "military position well inland" which in turn would require "a movement of large-scale forces into China." Thus, "unless we are willing to risk major military involvement in China and possibly global war" it would be "unwise" for the US to contribute to the defense of Hong Kong. https://books.google.com/books?id=BGITDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45

So if the US doesn't want Hong Kong for military reasons, why would it want it? Economic reasons? Hardly anyone in the mid-1940's could foresee the boom in late twentieth century Hong Kong. America would just see Perfidious Albion as dumping hundreds of thousands of impoverished Chinese into Uncle Sam's lap--and then using the transfer to get out of its debts!

The whole idea just doesn't make sense for the US. Some Americans (like FDR) wanted the British to return Hong Kong to China. Others, like Cordell Hull, believed it would be unwise to pressure the UK on this issue; Hull remarked that Hong Kong had been British longer than Texas had been part of the US, and that the US was not likely to give Texas back to Mexico. https://books.google.com/books?id=x8b4an0T0twC&pg=PA138 But *nobody* wanted Hong Kong for the United States.
 
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How so? Countries did it pretty frequently.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yes. By the 1940's, it was almost unthinkable except for sparsely settled areas (see Byrnes's suggestion that the US purchase Greenland, which had about 21,000 people at the time--in any event, the offer was never made public and the idea was opposed by all Danish political parties). To transfer the sovereignty over several hundreds of thousands of people just for cash would by the 1940's be seen as a crass thing for a democracy to do.
 
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What about "buying" HK just to give it back to ROC ?

Say in a surviving early post 49 ROC the US buys HK from UK with cash (instead of one more loan or MDA funds) and then gives it to ROC to give Chiang Kai-shek an easy popular "win" and cover the building of USAF bases to hit USSR from?
 
What about "buying" HK just to give it back to ROC ?

Say in a surviving early post 49 ROC the US buys HK from UK with cash (instead of one more loan or MDA funds) and then gives it to ROC to give Chiang Kai-shek an easy popular "win" and cover the building of USAF bases to hit USSR from?

Classic Kissinger move.
 
What about "buying" HK just to give it back to ROC ?

Say in a surviving early post 49 ROC the US buys HK from UK with cash (instead of one more loan or MDA funds) and then gives it to ROC to give Chiang Kai-shek an easy popular "win" and cover the building of USAF bases to hit USSR from?
The PLA overruns it before the ink is dry on the paper?
 

Cook

Banned
In 1949-51, the principal cities of Hong Kong were Victoria, on HK Island, and Kowloon, on the Kowloon peninsula; both within the territory permanently ceded to the British following the Opium Wars. The New Territories, although providing some depth to the colony, were at the time of little financial value.

A US purchase or lease (more likely) of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula would be extremely valuable, as a conduit for trade into China, particularly in the expectation that the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War would be only temporary, and the US would be providing aid to a resurgent KMT. It would also be an outstanding location for a signals intelligence post covering China and the Asiatic Soviet Union (GCHQ used it for this exact purpose).
 
The idea of the US *pressuring* the British to give Hong Kong to the ROC would have at least some popularity in the US (though I think more people would say it is simply none of our business). The idea of the US (in effect) *paying* the British to do so would have virtually no support at all.
 
It is worth pointing out that this is only a few years before the British started thinking seriously about making HK a Dominion like Singapore was to become. OTL it came to nothing, because the PRC got wind of it and threatened violence, but at some point in the 1950s the plan had the support of both the UK and HK governments.

My point is - given that the ideas that led into this almost-Dominion status will be there in 1945-9 it seems illogical that the UK would be interested in parting ways with a Crown Colony they were mulling with making a more official self-governing part of the Commonwealth/Empire.
 
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