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Hong Kong: a One‐Way Ticket to an Unknown Destination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Extract
THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE HONG KONG PROBLEM ARE WELL known and can be briefly stated. Britain acquired the colony of Hong Kong Island as a port of access to the China trade under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking which concluded the Opium War. Followin the Second Anglo-Chinese War a further 3¾ square miles of land, British Kowloon and Stonecutters Island, were ceded to Britain. But under the 1898 convention of Peking a much larger area, formerly part of Guangdong province and now known as the New Territories, amounting to over 360 square miles and including numerous small islands and the surrounding seas, was leased to Britain for 99 years. This lease runs out in July 1997. The Chinese Communist government in Peking has repeatedly declared its intention to reassert its sovereign right to control the whole territory of Hong Kong by 1997 ‘at the latest’. Indeed the People's Republic's leaders have made it clear that they have never accepted the treaties through which land was ceded and leased to Britain as being valid under international law. They regard them as part of the long series of ‘Unequal treaties’ imposed by the imperial owers which the rulers of China in that period were compellecf to accept because of military weakness. Thus there is no question of China being ready to renew the New Territories lease or to come to some agreement recognizing British sovereignty over Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Peking has never, since 1949, formally accepted the legality of British status in Hong Kong.
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- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1983
References
1 For a full account of the history of this treaty see Wesley‐Smith, Peter, Unequal Treaty 1898–1997, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
2 The Military Balance, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1982.
3 The Economist, 12 March 1983, p. 54.
4 ‘Britain in secret talks on Hong‐Kong’s future’, The Daily Telegraph, 7 October 1982.
5 ‘Premier Hua Guo‐Feng Holds Press Conference’, Beijing Review Vol. 22, No. 41, 12 October 1979, p. 11.
6 Quoted in ‘Counting Down to 1997’, Time, 11 October 1982, p. 14.
7 Reported in The Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1982.
8 For a discussion of the significance of these comments see leading article ‘Talking About Hong Kong’, The Times, 6 January 1983.
9 ibid.
10 Roderick MacFarquhar, ‘Hong Kong A Deal To Suit Both Sides’, The Times, 10 June 1983.
11 See Endacott, G., A History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1973, ch. 1, for early British political attitudes to Hong Kong.Google Scholar
12 Lewis, D. K., ‘The Prospects for Hong Kong’, Conflict Studies no. 142, London, Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1982, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar
13 Cheng, Joseph Y. S., ‘The Future of Hong Kong, A Hong Kong Belongers’ View’, International Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 3, p. 480.Google Scholar
14 ‘Nervous Chinese buy their way to Security’, The Observer, 24 October 1983.
15 The Economist, 12 March 1983.
16 For an excellent account of the Hong Kong government structure, see Miners, N. J., The Government and Politics of Hong Kong, Hong, Kong, Oxford University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
17 Newsweek, 20 September 1982.
18 D. K. Lewis, op. cit., p. 17.
19 See the informative analysis ‘Special Economic Zones – a foreign investment attraction’, Asia Research Bulletin, 31 May 1981, pp. 802–7.