Hong Kong Handover to China
Britain returned Hong Kong to China at midnight on 30 June 1997, at the expiry of a lease. The territory was three pieces acquired separately: Hong Kong island ceded in perpetuity in 1842 after the first Opium War, Kowloon in 1860, and the New Territories leased for ninety-nine years in 1898. The lease is what forced the timetable. The New Territories were more than ninety per cent of the land and could not be separated from the rest, so the whole thing had to go back. Margaret Thatcher raised the validity of the nineteenth-century treaties with Deng Xiaoping in 1982 and was told that China could walk in that afternoon if it wanted to. The Joint Declaration of 1984 committed China to one country, two systems — Hong Kong to keep its legal system, currency, free port, and way of life for fifty years as a special administrative region with a high degree of autonomy. The Basic Law of 1990 is its constitution, and it holds out universal suffrage as an eventual goal without a date. Chris Patten, the last governor, widened the franchise for the 1995 legislative elections, which Beijing regarded as a breach and undid at the handover. The ceremony was in heavy rain, the royal yacht sailed at midnight, and some 800,000 people had left the territory in the preceding decade. Mass protests followed in 2003, 2014 and 2019, and a national security law imposed in 2020 ended most organised opposition. Britain had also acquired the place for a reason worth stating plainly. The wars that produced the cessions were fought to force China to accept the import of opium, which is the origin of the treaties whose expiry ended the arrangement.
- Year: 1997 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
