Prior to the the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong was mostly a fishing and farming port. The cession of Hong Kong Island to the British “in perpetuity” was the icing on the cake for the British in what China still refers to as the “Unequal Treaties” after the 1st Opium War. Unable to keep up with the demands for silver, which was the only “currency” China would accept for the vast amounts of tea the English public was consuming, England, through the British East India Tea company, came up with a scheme for another kind of currency. Opium. Although opium was illegal to import into China at the time, it had definitely found a market among the overworked and impoverished Chinese masses. Since trading opium was against the law in China, the British East India Company used private traders to take their contraband from Bengal in India to China starting in the late 18th century. By 1842, China was hooked. The British didn’t act alone in their opium trade with China. Other European countries, and the USA joined in to get a piece of the opium action.
As a result of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British “forever”. A portion of Kowloon was added at the 1860 Treaty of Peking. The British were not, however, able to get the same deal for the remainder of Kowloon nor for the New Territories, from the Dowager Empress Cixi in 1898. Their 99 year leases would be up for renewal in 1997. The British had set up a colonial government whose senior ranks were mostly held by the British. Democracy was never a high priority among the British in Hong Kong. The British didn’t believe the Chinese were capable of running Hong Kong. It wasn’t until the British “recovered” Hong Kong from the Japanese after World War II that Governor Mark Young proposed the Young Plan in 1946, in a first attempt to give Hong Kong a representative democracy. This plan was quashed in 1952 by Young’s successor, Alexander Grantham. But the clock was ticking ever closer to 1997 and the fate of Hong Kong after that was very much up in the air. In 1979, Hong Kong Governor Murray Macelhose brought up the future of Hong Kong in an unofficial meeting with Deng Xiaoping. No clear direction could be determined from that meeting. Hong Kong might remain as it had been under British control, or it might revert back to China. In the 1982 meeting between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher however, Senior Leader Deng gave a very clear mandate to Prime Minister Thatcher. All of Hong Kong would come back under Chinese control in 1997. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking was the only real bargaining chip that the British held to negotiate a good deal for the British. For the first time in the history of Hong Kong, a new question began to be floated? What would be best for the future of the people of Hong Kong?
The concept of “One Country, Two Systems” was proposed by Deng Xiaoping during negotiations with Margaret Thatcher in 1982. Even though Hong Kong would come back into the Chinese fold as a Special Administrative region, it would be able to keep its current system of capitalism and “a high degree of autonomy” for the next fifty years. Deng saw this to be the future of not only Hong Kong, but also of Macau, and hopefully, Taiwan. Hong Kong would have control of its own domestic affairs, but China would be responsible for diplomatic relations involving other countries and Hong Kong would benefit from China’s national defense.
Like all agreements, however, some things were left up to interpretation. Chief among these was, what was meant by a “high degree of autonomy?”
Chinese Odyssey 18
Great Britain and China
Must find a foundation
so life could go on
with no great alteration
“One Country, Two Systems”
was what they decided.
A plan leaving Hong Kong
a region divided.
The Panda in the Room PD 