1997 and After: Will Hong Kong Survive? A Personal View

Abstract

HONG KONG is, and always has been, a curiosity. It was born as a consequence of the activities of early nineteenth-century capitalists plying a trade of dubious morality along the south China coast. China's last imperial dynasty was simply unable to resist the incursion of British naval power support of its merchant adventurers. The Qing government was obliged to sign away (in perpetuity!) its right to administer a rocky island off the Guangdong coast. It gave the British an opportunity not merely to develop their own alternative to Portuguese Macau as a trading station for Western commerce China, but also allowed them fundamentally to challenge the very rules of the China trade by which Britain, and later other Western nations, could pressure a weak dynasty to act the interests of Western commerce. The centuries-old tributary system, already weak, virtually collapsed. China was obliged to confront Western commerce on Western terms, and, after the signing of a set of unequal treaties, that confrontation occurred on Chinese soil. China's door was forcibly opened-kicked in might be a better term-to the full force of an economic system that it was ill-prepared to meet.' The first British venture at colonialism the Far East was not met with enthusiasm. Even Palmerston, the arch-defender of British interests abroad, was uncertain about the value of the settlement which Elliot had wrested from the Chinese after the first Opium War. If Britain was to open China's doors by force-and Palmerston was not convinced that