History does matter. You cannot just invade a country, steal territory and then later say "it doesn't matter if this was once your territory, what matter is NOW and now I own it so get off my lawn".
That's just not how it works. In terms of history Hong Kong belongs to China and only in super recent history it was "taken" by the British always with the arrangement that it still belongs to China and would get handed back to China. So now that China does what is rightfully their right people act surprised, because the West hoped that if a little bit of time passes that China will stop caring but they were wrong. China took care of what was rightfully theirs and kept a tight grip over it because it saw what the West wanted to do and honestly fair play to them.
History does matter. You cannot just invade a country, steal territory and then later say "it doesn't matter if this was once your territory, what matter is NOW and now I own it so get off my lawn".
That's just not how it works. In terms of history Hong Kong belongs to China and only in super recent history it was "taken" by the British always with the arrangement that it still belongs to China and would get handed back to China. So now that China does what is rightfully their right people act surprised, because the West hoped that if a little bit of time passes that China will stop caring but they were wrong. China took care of what was rightfully theirs and kept a tight grip over it because it saw what the West wanted to do and honestly fair play to them.