THE HISTORY OF HONG KONG

By Ryan Ratnam

The City of Life. The City of Lights. The Pearl of the Orient. All these are various nicknames for the city of Hong Kong that nearly 7.5 million people call home. However, Hong Kong is facing its biggest crisis yet and could very soon be no longer known as any of these names, but just another district of the People’s Republic of China. Many of the people living in Hong Kong right now do not view the Chinese as their brothers and sisters but conversely, foreign oppressors that seek to destroy democracy in Hong Kong and insist homogeneity with the rest of China. But how did all this happen? Why is Hong Kong at loggerheads with what used to be its mother country and why is China so insistent on absorbing the region into the Chinese system? All that can be explained by diving into the history of Hong Kong, something that straddles both the Western and East Asian worlds.

The story of Hong Kong’s current plight starts nearly two centuries ago in 1842 when China ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British after their defeat in the first Opium War. Without lingering too long on a topic which is owed its own conversation, the Opium wars were two wars between primarily Britain and China over Britain’s illegal exportation of Opium that China tried to suppress. In both cases China lost and Britain was granted significant trade privileges in the form of The Unequal Treaties. Hong Kong can trace its wealth back to being a port city and given its coastal exposure and access to the rest of East Asia and South Asia, it was very desirable for the British. China’s loss in the second Opium war in 1860 further consolidated Britain’s power over Hong Kong with the 1860 Convention of Peking which ceded the rest of northern Hong Kong to the British. However, what was most significant was what happened 38 years later.

China looks back on its pre-Communist history (before 1949) with shame, calling it the Century of Humiliation. Especially in the late 19th century, China was firmly under the thumb of the Western imperial powers, and it took the example of Japan breaking their Unequal Treaties to encourage them to overthrow the Emperor and declare a Republic in 1912. Britain’s sweeping imperialism made them unbeatable and therefore they could demand whatever they liked. This context helps to explain China leasing Hong Kong, along with 235 other islands, to Britain in 1898 for 99 years. From that moment on, Hong Kong was no longer part of China, it was a British territory. Of course being so closely situated geographically, Hong Kong experienced a degree of affiliation with China. For example, during the brutal Japanese invasion of China, Hong Kong became a haven for Chinese refugees. Although later, when Japan occupied Hong Kong in the early 1940s, immigration was the opposite, Hong Kong residents fleeing to mainland China, the population dropping by almost a million.

After WWII, Britain eventually re-established order and many residents returned. In the 1950s, Hong Kong experienced an economic surge through its light industries such as textiles. However, this economic upturn was not translated over to the Hong Kong workers who experienced very poor working conditions in order to cut costs as low as possible. Hong Kong was the epitome of deregulation yet that also meant very few worker’s rights. This coincided with the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s, spurring many to protest, destabilising the region for many months. However, once workers began to reap the benefits of their economy in the next few years, protests came to a halt. This is thanks to extreme economic growth beginning in the late 1970s.

The foundations of Hong Kong’s economy are three-pronged. As said before, its position made it an ideal trading port and the goods and money flowing through the region helped to build up its infrastructure. However, after that, Britain’s intense deregulation of the territory made it very desirable. The laissez-faire free market economy that Hong Kong operated in resulted in very low taxes on trade, making it the ideal location to export and import through. Through this, Hong Kong began to develop an electronics market, able to acquire electronic parts cheaply through this trade and export them through the lack of taxes. The other area its economy thrives off is business and banking. Low taxes are a symptom of less regulation and Hong Kong’s corporation tax was 16.5%, lower than all of the G7 countries, making it the ideal base for large companies to set up. For banking, the lack of regulation makes handling finance in the region very easy, not having to follow the same rules that Western countries impose such as liquidity ratios. As a result, Hong Kong’s economy began to grow significantly in the 1970s, GDP growth rates hitting highs of nearly 14% in 1987.

With less than two decades to go before the UK’s lease on Hong Kong was up, the UK and China began talks over the future of Hong Kong in the early 1980s. The result of these talks was an agreement called ‘One Country, Two Systems’. This agreement meant that although Hong Kong would become part of communist China in 1987, it would still maintain its Capitalist economy and some parts of democracy for at least 50 year after the handover – 2047. The Tiananmen Square massacre in China in 1989 gave them a lot less leveraging power in this agreement and it was signed as Hong Kong law a year later.

In the twilight years of a Britain owned Hong Kong, the newly elected British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, decides to draft last minute proposals for democratic reform in Hong Kong. China is outraged, threatening to renege on the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ agreement. As a result of the uncertainty, the Hong Kong stock market crashes and an agreement is eventually made that incorporates a milder version of Patten’s reforms – neither China nor Britain win this disagreement.

Finally, in 1997, Britain hands over Hong Kong back to the Chinese, ending more than a century’s worth of governing based upon imperialism. However, it becomes clear very fast that 50 years is too long for China. One of the first significant points of contention concerned the group Falun Gong. Falun Gong are a group who advocate spiritual practices and beliefs such as meditation. A group that sounds so harmless is strangely seen as a threat to the Chinese government, their values at loggerheads and after Falun Gong began to become too popular, they were banned in China in 1999. However, the group remain legal in Hong Kong. In 2002, 16 members of the group were arrested in Hong Kong during a protest and were charged with public obstruction. Many see this as the first sign of China imposing their own laws on Hong Kong.

In 2003, there is an outbreak of protests against Article 23, an anti-subversion bill proposed by China that many feared would isolate Hong Kong from the rest of the world and prevent free speech against the People’s Republic. After intense protest, progress on the bill is halted indefinitely. However, China was not prepared to back down just yet. Less than a year later, they ruled that Beijing had the right to veto any moves towards democracy, sparking accusations from Britain that China are not respecting the 50 year ‘One Country, Two Systems’ agreement and a protest of 200000 people on the anniversary of the handover. The Legislative Council, effectively Hong Kong’s parliament, is seen as key to maintaining democratic attributes in Hong Kong. Yet during the early 2000s, pro-Beijing parties began growing their majority, many accusing China of fostering an atmosphere of fear thanks to bills such as Article 23.

Further demonstrations continue and the High Court of Court of Final Appeal gave pro-democracy protestors hope, overturning eight of the Falun Gong members convicted in 2002. Mediation seems on the horizon with leading pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council travelling to mainland China, where many had previously been banned, to speak with Beijing. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, also pushes for democratic attributes such as universal suffrage, although pro-democracy candidates say that this is not enough. However, this is continually tempered with actions by China, such as restricting pregnant women travelling to Hong Kong in order to evade the country’s former One-Child policy. In 2008, the pro-democracy Legislative Council retain their third, having a growing veto over the region and pressure continues to grow on China to grant Hong Kong full democracy. However, this is curtailed in 2012 when Donald Tsang undercuts his legacy as Chief Executive with growing concerns over his ties to wealthy businessmen. The pro-democracy vote in 2012 does not fall significantly, but it was well below their hopes.

A key thing to remember in the pro-democracy/ pro-Beijing struggle is that those for democracy were not necessarily in support of the West. For example, there were large protests in 2013 in support of Edward Snowdon, who had fled to Hong Kong, showing Hong Kong to not support the US. Whilst many may automatically attribute democracy as a Western ideal, the people of Hong Kong certainly do not.

Significant protests in 2014 see the city occupied by those against China in response to the new bill that would allow China to vet candidates for the Hong Kong leadership election. More than 100000 people protest, including many students, in what is dubbed as the ‘Umbrella Protests’, images highlighting the sea of umbrellas that protestors would put up to protect themselves from tear gas. Despite this, China did not back down and 6 pro-independence candidates were disqualified from elections in 2016.

Regular smaller protests continue but the next large clash comes in 2019. This is against a key bill that would allow extradition of arrested Hong Kong residents to China. Many accuse Beijing of creating a police state and these protests sweep the city, there being many clashes with armed Police, notably across the University of Hong Kong’s campus. There is no real resolution to these protests but they are abruptly curtailed by China’s nationwide Covid-19 lockdown. During China’s recovery, when the rest of the world was grappling with peaks of the virus, China arguably took advantage of this distraction and introduced a new security bill. The law would allow China to introduce a new security agency in Hong Kong, in which Chinese officials could operate under Chinese rather than local Hong Kong laws. Offenders outspoken against the Republic could face a life in prison and extradition to China thanks to the bill passed the year before. Chinese laws would replace many Hong Kong ones and the country’s judiciary would be under the thumb of the mainland’s. Thousands of people protested against the bill. However, this bill is no longer in the future. It was passed in a mere six weeks, bypassing normal procedure. According to the BBC, very few people were able to read it, including the current Chief Executive, Carrie Lam.

For the Hong Kong residents, this could mean the end of democracy and free speech and the new hyper-regulation of China would undercut the economy and make it no longer desirable for trade. All is not lost for Hong Kong however, the UK applying significant pressure through giving Hong Kong residents citizenship that could cause a brain drain and pressure is mounting from Australia too. Yet although certainly worried, as it stands, China has not budged. Perhaps this is the end for Hong Kong, history repeating itself as the island is simply absorbed into another imperialist system.