Hong
Kong Returned to China
July 1, 1997
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
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