They didn’t have to evict. The lease was up on the New Territories, without which Hong Kong was not able to survive. They didn’t have to kick the British out…the British recognized that they couldn’t really hold onto Hong Kong without the NT to sustain it.
It was certainly the correct thing to due under international law, but whether it was the “right” thing to do is up to debate. In not allowing the locals any kind of plebiscite to determine their own status the PRC is just as guilty of colonialism (at least in the moral sense) as the UK.
In 1909 there was a proposal to return the Weihai Garrison to China in exchange for perpetual rule of the New Territories, but that wasn’t acted upon. If it had Hong Kong would still be the Gilbralter of the Orient. It was later returned to China anyway in 1930.
The place isn’t defensible or self sufficent. There wasn’t much the Brits could do omce the Chinese decided they wanted it other then negotiate the nest termd for a handover that they could,
No, not really. The colony of Hong Kong was acquired in three parts. The first part (Hong Kong Island) was granted to Britain in perpetuity by a treaty in 1842. Some additional territory (Kowloon Peninsula) was granted to Britain in perpetuity a second treaty in 1860. And finally a third treaty in 1898 granted Britain the final (and largest) piece of territory (known as the New Territories) for a period of 99 years.
So it was only this third piece of territory that Britain was legally obligated to turn back over to China in 1997. But this posed a dilemma. While almost half of the people in Hong Kong lived in the original two territories, they were dependent on the New Territories for supplies (including most of its water). Britain could have insisted on holding on to Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula but China would have been in a position to cut off these areas and essentially starve them out.
Maybe Britain should have treated Hong Kong like West Berlin in the Cold War and tried to maintain the city. But they decided to negotiate with China and agreed to turn the entire colony over to China when the 1898 lease expired.
From a moral standpoint, I feel Britain should have opened its borders to all Hong Kong residents between 1984 and 1997. These people were British subjects and should have been allowed to the option to resettle in some other part of Britain rather than simply be turned over to China.
AndyAu, what’s the debate? You’re correct that the British government sold the Hong Kongese down the river.
The British government had plenty of chances, let’s be charitable, in the post WW2, to make Hong Kongese British subjects full British citizens. Think of the joke that the BNO was?
This. Once China decided it wanted Hong Kong back the colony was indefensible. Even with the New Territories HK was not really self sufficient and the PRC had the ability to make the place ungovernable without any direct military intervention.
It had the chances but it was never going to happen. Call it racist or pragmatic but HMG was never going to allow several million ethnic Chinese the right to come to the UK. By the 70s and 80s immigration was a political hot topic (it still is!) and no party could be seen to provide such an open door. Remember the 1981 British Nationality Act effectively ruled out the few thousand ethnically British Falkland Islanders settling in Britain (it was only the Argentinian invasion and the war that led to this being rethought).
What’s the issue with Hong Kong right now? I thought it was pretty autonomous, and the Chinese government didn’t particularly interfere in the internal governance? I know their chief executive is only pseudo-democratically elected because their electoral college-type institution has some non-democratic elements, but I don’t think that’s any worse than the British appointed ruler of Hong Kong who wasn’t democratically elected at all. Has China done stuff recently to make Hong Kong specifically less free? I haven’t seen anything in particular.
Disclaimer: These are 2013 numbers, not 1997.
I’d guess a little bit of both. The UK proper has 53 million people living in it; Hong Kong, 7 million. The UK has a population density of 661.9 per square mile; for comparison’s sake, the U.S.'s population density is 88.6.
Now I’m certain that if they’d been given full rights as British citizens, not all 7 million Hong Kongers would choose to move to Great Britain. But even if 10% of them did, you’d still be talking about adding 700,000 people, which is no small amount.
(And currently the UK has only 0.4% ethnic Chinese citizens, so perhaps racism played no small role).
Please keep in mind I’m just going by numbers, and have no personal knowledge of circumstances. After all, there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics.