What was hong kong like under british rule

The territory, ruled by a governor appointed from London was of course liberal in the sense of its economic system, but not its political system which was unquestionable. If you take the conceptualization of young people in Hong Kong at face value, they will look up to the United Kingdom as a superior and benevolent mother country which has an obligatory duty to "protect" the former colony against its parent nation, China.

Despite having never lived through it, nostalgia for the empire is paramount, envisioned as a golden and glorious era whereby Hong Kong was at its height and there was no worry about interacting with "The Mainland," which is consistently perceived as inferior not only on a political level, but also a social level, failing to meet their expectations of British grandeur. Protesters set fire outside a police station in Hong Kong's Kowloon area, September 7, The reality however, was different: Hong Kong was built upon a clear racial hierarchy whereby the white Britons and their financial interests were inflated above that of the locals, whom existed initially as a cheap and convenient labor force when the colony thrived as a manufacturing hub.

English literature in the 20th century reflects this mentality, mocking Chinese as being simply useful for laundry. In this case, the s was a turbulent time in Hong Kong. Starting in the late s, the U. However, Hong Kong residents cannot elect their own leaders; rather, a chief executive is elected by a 1,member election committee. Starting in , elections were conducted using a list of candidates vetted by Beijing. That and other Chinese policies, like a recent attempt to allow extradition to the mainland, have led to mass protests, strained British-Chinese diplomatic relations, and fueled increasing concerns that China is stifling public dissent, interfering in local politics, and eroding human rights in Hong Kong.

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The dotted line marks the boundary between Hong Kong and China. Eager for even more, it renewed fighting with China in and sparked the Second Opium War which the French Empire also joined.

When the war ended in , the Convention of Beijing forced China to cede the Kowloon Peninsula south of a dividing line known as Boundary Street. The lease was set to expire in 99 years, meaning that China expected Britain to hand the region back over on July 1, After the war, dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas won independence from Japanese and European control. But Britain continued to rule over Hong Kong, one of its last major colonial territories.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre, it was clear to many that this was unlikely to be the case although, bizarrely, that optimism returned in the s. After , English-speaking countries partially opened their doors to those who were lucky enough to be able to afford emigration from Hong Kong; Britain had an oversubscribed scheme to offer citizenship to 50, Hong Kongers in Between and , 10 percent of the population of Hong Kong emigrated.

Hong Kongers do not see themselves as citizens of the PRC, as surveys by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong have repeatedly shown, but put local identity first. However, their ability to defend their identity and to aspire to democracy has been crippled by the dominance of Beijing.

This has been the case since the demonstrations against the introduction of the national security bill, seen as a weapon against dissent, under Article 23 in the Basic Law back in Hong Kong is not a democracy. It responds to the wishes of Chinese Communist Party officials in Beijing. The Umbrella Movement five years ago aimed to achieve genuine universal suffrage in choosing the chief executive is chosen, but failed to secure any changes. Hong Kong is a rare example of an area with a largely liberal population, yet with an undemocratic system.

The United Kingdom had a window to change that before Having failed to do so, it has greater obligations now. Today, more than half of young people in Hong Kong wish to seek a better and freer life elsewhere.

Naturally and understandably, British nationals overseas want British citizenship. In a United Kingdom already torn by immigration issues, handing citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people, however strong the moral case, is a political impossibility.

There are, however, intermediate steps that can provide real aid for Hong Kongers.