and economic growth of contemporary China. A "neo-authoritarian" wing of the Communist Party may well seize on discontent in the poorer inland provinces to impose stricter economic controls on the rapidly developing coastal regions of China (Tempest, 1995, p. A8).
After 1997, Hong Kong will effectively be another Chinese coastal city and likely to share the fate of the coastal provinces. It may find a prosperous future as a modern-day equivalent of a 19th century Treaty Port, a Chinese window on the outer world. Alternatively, its prosperity may evaporate as China falls into turmoil or reverts into rigid economic as well as political authoritarianism. In the latter case, a flood of refugees may seek escape from Hong Kong, many of whom will be nearly unique among refugees in that they will be millionaires. Indeed, many Hong Kong residents have already anticipated the worst by purchasing houses abroad, notably in western Canada and in other countries such as Belize, but also in West Coast cities in the United States (Murphy, 1991, pp. 20-23).
The future of Hong Kong after 1997, like its present status as a major international commercial and trading center, is rooted in its complex history since the 19th century. Hong Kong island, the core of modern Hong Kong, was home to a few thousand Chinese farmers and fishermen when Great Britain acquired it in 1841. Whatever the intent of the British government, the actual driving force behind British occupation of the island was the desire of British merchants to use it as a base for drug dealing; illegal opium was a major item of British commerce to China at that time, and the merchants who transported it needed a convenient base from which they could operate free of Chinese authority (Cameron, 1991, p. 4).
Hong Kong island was simply annexed by Britain, without even a theoretical obligation ever to return it to China. In 1898, however, the British negotiated with the Imperi...