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The Hong Kong handover ceremony commenced on the rain-soaked evening of 30 June 1997, right after a banquet for 4,000 dignitaries.Chris Patten, the 28th and ultimate British governor of Hong Kong, resolved the crowd. “No dependent territory has been still left far more affluent,” Patten declared, “none with such a wealthy texture and material of civil modern society – professions, churches, newspapers, charities.”
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He finished his speech by stating: “Now Hong Kong persons are to operate Hong Kong. That is the guarantee and that is the unshakeable future.” Prince Charles go through a farewell speech. Just prior to midnight, God Preserve the Queen performed out a remaining time. The Union Jack was decreased the Chinese flag and the new Hong Kong banner have been lifted.
Less than an hour afterwards, the royal yacht Britannia slipped its moorings, carrying Prince Charles and Patten out of Victoria Harbour. Patten cried.
Why had Hong Kong develop into so prosperous?
When the British first occupied it in the 1840s, Hong Kong was a barren, nearly uninhabited rock with an fantastic pure harbour. (Hong Kong means “fragrant harbour”.) Throughout 156 yrs as a British colony (interrupted by Japanese wartime occupation) it turned a mercantile hub, hosting the excellent British buying and selling properties.
Communist victory in 1949 meant that it shed the Chinese trade, but attained nearly two million refugees and exploited other buying and selling and money alternatives in southeast Asia’s expanding overall economy. It turned “Asia’s world city”, flourishing since it made available secure govt, the rule of regulation, low taxes, and minimal pink tape.
It also had a no cost push but it was in no way a democracy. It was dominated by the governor, suggested by a Legislative Council manufactured up of United kingdom officers, merchants and well known citizens. By 1997, it had a populace of 6.5 million, a for each-capita cash flow better than the UK’s, and accounted for the equal of 18% of China’s GDP.
Why did Britain return it?
Due to the fact a lease expired. China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842 at the Treaty of Nanking, after defeat in the Initial Opium War and Kowloon, the peninsula reverse Hong Kong, just after the Second Opium War, 18 yrs later on.
In 1898, Britain also leased the New Territories – the mainland area past Kowloon – for 99 a long time. Britain pressured the ailing Qing dynasty into the offer, and compensated almost nothing.
Claude MacDonald, the British negotiator, selected 99 decades for the reason that he thought it “as superior as forever”. As the conclude approached, Britain proposed retaining Hong Kong and renewing the New Territories lease or making ready it for independence. But China’s leaders weren’t possessing it. They disavowed the “unequal treaties” created throughout the “century of humiliation”.
In 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, under which Britain would withdraw from all Hong Kong in 1997, was signed.
What were the phrases of the deal?
China agreed to govern Hong Kong less than the basic principle of “one place, two systems”, pledging a “high degree of autonomy” and civic freedoms for at the very least 50 several years. Hong Kong became a “Special Administrative Region” of China, with its personal authorized technique, political events, and rights which includes liberty of assembly and totally free speech.
These legal rights have been enshrined in a mini-structure, the city’s “Basic Law”. Beijing’s part was to be constrained to defence and international affairs. Inhabitants would be allowed to elect about half the Legislative Council, and the “ultimate aim” was to elect the territory’s chief “by common suffrage” (although no deadline was presented). It was a one of a kind political experiment: could a metropolis with political freedoms endure inside of the world’s most highly effective authoritarian condition?
How did the experiment perform out?
In quite a few methods, Hong Kong ongoing to prosper. Its inhabitants climbed to 7.4 million assets price ranges boomed it remained a centre of world trade and finance. But it modified profoundly, if bit by bit.
Lots of Hongkongers emigrated more than a million mainland Chinese arrived. Communist Occasion members had been set up in positions of influence in the course of the metropolis.
Political electrical power was bit by bit monopolised by Beijing loyalists. Commencing shortly right after the millennium, but accelerating following Xi Jinping became president in 2013, Chinese handle was tightened. In 2014, China’s Countrywide People’s Congress ruled that candidates for the election of Hong Kong’s main govt (who qualified prospects its Legislative Council) had to come from a Beijing-authorised shortlist.
How did Hongkongers answer?
With protests. There were substantial protests in 2003 versus an (unsuccessful) proposal for an anti-subversion legislation. The 2014 ruling sparked the so-known as Umbrella Motion: professional-democracy demonstrators employing umbrellas to protect by themselves from police pepper spray occupied elements of the town for 79 days.
In 2019, a invoice that would have authorized suspects to be extradited to mainland China led to some of Hong Kong’s premier protests at any time. Hundreds of thousands of people stood up versus a brutal police response for months. It was ended by the arrival of Covid-19, and Beijing’s imposition of a new nationwide stability regulation, which makes it possible for any one suspected of terrorism, international interference or seditious actions to be arrested.
What has its impact been?
Hundreds of people today have been arrested beneath the national security legislation, most of them pro-democracy activists. The totally free press has been muzzled: pro-democracy newspapers these kinds of as Apple Each day (whose publisher Jimmy Lai has been jailed) have been forced to close.
Protests have all but disappeared from the streets educational facilities use textbooks that condition the province was in no way a British colony. The new chief govt (the sole authorized candidate) is John Lee, a previous police chief who oversaw the crackdown on the Umbrella Motion. In lots of respects, Hong Kong is a Chinese city like any other.
