Hong Kong and China
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In 1997, the British crown colony of Hong Kong is scheduled to revert to Chinese rule under the terms of a 99-year lease concluded in 1898, as modified in 1984 (Cameron, 1991, pp. 192, 322). The end of this last vestige of the British Empire, a territory of rather less than 400 square miles, might seem an insignificant factor in the modern world. But on these 400 square miles stands a city of more than 5 million people, a city that is one of the most dynamic trading and financial centers in the world. The fate of Hong Kong after 1997 is of overwhelming importance to those 5 million plus people and more generally will play a major role in shaping the relationship between China and its neighbors and China's place in the world well into the next millenium. Moreover, concern over the prospects of Hong Kong after 1997 has been sharply increased since Britain and China negotiated its return in the 1980s. At that time, China was moving decisively away from Maoism and liberalizing both its political and economic policies. Economic liberalization has continued, but political liberalization came to an abrupt halt following the bloody suppression of freedom demonstrations in and around Tienanmen Square in Beijing in 1989. The people of Hong Kong now are confronted with the real possibility that harshly authoritarian political controls--and, perhaps, mass expropriation--might be imposed on them following the restoration of Chinese rule. These anxieties have only been increa
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prevented annexation even if it had attempted to do so. Mao and his associates probably judged the costs of a major international incident to be greater than the benefits of imposing Chinese authority and the Communist system on Hong Kong.
In the 1980s, when the reversion treaty was negotiated, the Chinese leadership had a more positive motivation. The chief concern of the Deng government was with China's economic development. To demand total imposition of the Chinese system on Hong Kong in 1997 would have been to kill a goose that was laying golden eggs. The Chinese were willing to accept a further 50 years of limitation on their authority in Hong Kong in order to preserve intact its new role as an economic locomotive for the neighboring Chinese provinces.
With the triumph of hardliners within the Chinese government in 1989, however, the prospective situation has changed again. An economically intact Hong Kong remains an important plus to the developing Chinese economy, but the government has shown itself willing to take considerable risks in its international relations in order to secure its authority at home. The possibility can certainly not be ruled out that a future Chinese government might abrogate the 1984 agree
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Approximate Word count = 2833
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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