1997
Hong Kong Returned to China
At midnight on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong reverts back to Chinese
rule in a ceremony attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince
Charles of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. A few thousand Hong Kongers protested the turnover, which
was otherwise celebratory and peaceful.
In 1839, Britain invaded China to crush opposition to its
interference in the country’s economic, social, and political affairs. One of
Britain’s first acts of the war was to occupy Hong Kong, a sparsely inhabited
island off the coast of southeast China. In 1841, China ceded the island to the
British with the signing of the Convention of Chuenpi, and in 1842 the Treaty
of Nanking was signed, formally ending the First Opium War.
Britain’s new colony flourished as an East-West trading center
and as the commercial gateway and distribution center for southern China. In
1898, Britain was granted an additional 99 years of rule over Hong Kong under
the Second Convention of Peking. In September 1984, after years of
negotiations, the British and the Chinese signed a formal agreement approving
the 1997 turnover of the island in exchange for a Chinese pledge to preserve
Hong Kong’s capitalist system. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was peaceably handed
over to China in a ceremony attended by numerous Chinese, British, and
international dignitaries. The chief executive under the new Hong Kong
government, Tung Chee Hwa, formulated a policy based on the concept of “one
country, two systems,” thus preserving Hong Kong’s role as a principal
capitalist center in Asia.