Hong Kong and Macau_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 14th Edition) - Andrew Stone [11]
Old Hong Kong (1999) by Formasia – this fascinating large-format pictorial of old photographs comes in three volumes: Volume I covers the period from 1860 to 1900; Volume II from 1901 to 1945; and Volume III from 1950 to 1997.
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Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s 28th – and last –
British governor arrived in 1992, pledging to sceptical citizens that democracy would get back on track. China reacted badly, first levelling daily verbal attacks at the governor, then threatening the post-1997 careers of any pro-democracy politicians or officials. When these tactics failed, China targeted Hong Kong’s economy. Talks on certain business contracts and infrastructure projects straddling 1997 suddenly came to a halt, including the new airport programme.
Sensing that it had alienated even its supporters in Hong Kong, China backed down and in 1994 gave its blessing to the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. It remained hostile to direct elections, however, and vowed to disband the democratically elected legislature after 1997. A Provisional Legislative Council was elected by a Beijing-appointed election committee in 1996. The rival chamber met over the border in Shenzhen, as it had no legal status in Hong Kong until the transfer of power. This provisional body served until June 1998, when a new Legislative Council was elected partially by the people of Hong Kong, partially by business constituencies and partially by power brokers in Beijing.
As for the executive branch of power, the election was organised by China in 1996 to select Hong Kong’s first post-colonial leader. But Tung Chee Hwa (1937–), the Shanghai-born shipping magnate destined to become the SAR’s first chief executive, won approval by retaining Patten’s right-hand woman, Anson Chan, as his chief secretary and Donald Tsang as financial secretary.
China agreed to a low-key entry into Hong Kong, and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops were trucked straight to their barracks in Stanley, Kowloon Tong and Bonham Rd in the Mid-Levels. On the night of 30 June 1997 the handover celebrations held in the purpose-built extension of the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai were watched by millions of people around the world. Chris Patten shed a tear while Chinese President Jiang Zemin beamed and Prince Charles was outwardly stoic (but privately scathing, describing the Chinese leaders in a diary leaked years later to the British tabloids as ‘appalling old waxworks’).
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CHINA’S HONG KONG INVASION PLAN
The peaceful agreement that eventually settled the status of Hong Kong was by no means a foregone conclusion in the decades leading up to it. The key negotiators have since revealed just how touchy China felt about Hong Kong and how close it came to retaking the territory by force.
Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister who negotiated the deal, said later that Deng Xiaoping, then China’s leader, told her he ‘could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon’.
She replied that China would lose everything if it did. ‘There is nothing I could do to stop you,’ she said, ‘but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like.’
Lu Ping, the top Chinese negotiator, recently confirmed that this was no bluff on Deng’s part. Deng feared that announcing the date for the 1997 handover would provoke serious unrest in Hong Kong, and China would be compelled to invade as a result.
According to Lu, China had also been hours away from invading during 1967, at the height of the chaotic Cultural Revolution, when a radical faction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was poised to invade the British colony during pro-communist riots. The invasion was called off only by a late-night order from Premier Zhou Enlai to the local army commander, Huang Yongsheng, a radical Maoist who had been itching to invade.
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So the curtain fell on a century and a half of British rule,