Hong Kong is today one of the great financial centers of China and the world, but there was a time when it did not belong to the Asian giant: the United Kingdom occupied the territory from 1842 to 1997. At the beginning of the 20th century it served as a refuge for thousands of Chinese displaced by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the civil war, so even as a British colony it maintained strong ties with mainland China. That is why the United Kingdom, a few years after the lease of the territory expired, undertook in 1984 to return it, so that it has been part of China since 1997. With a special administrative status, Hong Kong that year became a capitalist enclave in a communist China.
Hong Kong: more than a century of British occupation
The British conquest of Hong Kong dates back to 1842, when the United Kingdom occupied the island as war booty. China had lost the first Opium War and, with it, several territories and control of its ports. Eighteen years later, the British took advantage of another Chinese defeat to add the neighboring Kowloon Peninsula to Hong Kong. The territory was completed in 1898, when the United Kingdom annexed the New Territories to Hong Kong, although this time it did so by leasing a 99-year lease, which for the then British representative in China, Claude MacDonald, was equivalent to perpetuity.
The 99 years, however, were running out, until at the end of the 20th century, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had to face the question of Hong Kong. Although the United Kingdom only had the obligation to return the New Territories, the entire region was integrated into mainland China, so the British decided to hand it over in its entirety when the lease expired. Furthermore, the United Kingdom was in economic crisis in the early 1980s and Beijing was pressing for devolution, so Thatcher agreed to talk.
Negotiations began in 1982 and took more than two years until the parties approved the Sino-British Joint Declaration. That December 19, 1984, the British agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997, in exchange for China allowing the territory to remain a capitalist economy and have political freedoms. It was then that Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping devised the “one country, two systems” model and committed to respecting Hong Kong’s autonomy until 2047.
China: one country, two systems
Under Deng’s model, Hong Kong became a special administrative region (SAR) of China. Unlike the rest of the provinces, it has its own Constitution, the Basic Law, an autonomous judicial system and some democratic rights, such as freedom of expression and association, that are not recognized in mainland China. However, since Hong Kong became a SAR in 1997, the Chinese central government has attempted to control the election of the regional “chief executive”, who replaced the colonial-era governor, and limit the sovereignty and democratic rights of the Hong Kong people.
For this reason, the main conflict between Beijing and Hong Kong is the election of the regional leader. According to the Basic Law, the chief executive must be elected by the people and accepted by the Chinese central government, which has led to a system of universal suffrage. However, in practice the Hong Kong Electoral Committee is made up mostly of members close to the Chinese Communist Party, as was seen in 2014, when the Government approved a reform that required the candidate chosen for chief executive to first have the approval of the unique training.
The reaction of the Hong Kong people was immediate and in September of that year the Umbrella Revolution broke out, a wave of demonstrations that denounced Chinese control over the Hong Kong Executive and demanded the implementation of universal suffrage. However, although protests paralyzed Hong Kong for almost three months, the Chinese central government has only strengthened its control over the former British colony.
In the summer of 2019, for example, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a law to extradite criminal offenders accused of serious crimes to mainland China, but Hong Kongers spoke out against it because they understood it gave carte blanche to Beijing to carry out arbitrary detentions. . The legislation was ultimately not approved.
However, China implemented the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020, which sparked new protests by curtailing the freedoms of its population. In March 2021, the Chinese Government approved another reform that allows it to elect 300 new members – out of a total of 1,500 – of the Hong Kong Electoral Committee and measure their degree of patriotism, also as part of progressive control with a view to 2047.