The great game of international chicken that did not occur in the 1980s was the
United Kingdom holding a
referendum on Hong Kong’s future rather than negotiating with China. Territorial legislators generally opposed the handover to
Beijing while
London consciously refused to consult the residents.Had Hong Kongers voted for independence or continued
UK control, then Deng Xiaoping’s government, early in the reform process and only shortly beyond a costly conflict with Vietnam, would have hesitated to use military force to retake the territories. However, it is hard to imagine a later Chinese government not revisiting the issue and refusing to accept no for an answer.Hong Kong, essentially stolen by the world’s then dominant imperial power from the enfeebled Qing Dynasty, was reclaimed by the People’s Republic of
China to great fanfare in 1997. Even many ethnic Chinese around the world were proud to see what they conceived of as historic China rather than the ephemeral PRC overcome yet another humiliation inflicted by the West.Beijing promised to preserve the unique character of what became a Special Administrative Region for a half century. Hong Kong would be an anomaly, an outpost of liberty and tolerance in what remained a dictatorship capable of great violence, as in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And for years the PRC largely kept its bargain. A journalist friend said that in the early years Chinese authorities may have intervened less in his field than had
British colonial administrators.