 Hong Kong's uniqueness is a result of its colorful history. Before its current status as a Special Administrative Region, and preceding its tenure as a British colony, the area now known as Hong Kong was a vibrant part of the Chinese empire.
Prehistory
There is evidence of human settlement in Hong Kong from Neolithic times. Five thousand years ago, people here were hunting, fishing, and making exquisite rock carvings.
China, Part I
Around the time the Great Wall was being constructed, the Qin Empire (think Terra Cotta warriors) absorbed Hong Kong. After the Mongol invasion of China, Hong Kong became a stage for political intrigue as the deposed Song dynasty set up its base here. |
Refugees poured in from the Mongol-occupied north. Hong Kong's "five original families" settled in the New Territories at this time and began farming; these clans are still active in the area, and play an essential part in keeping Hong Kong's heritage alive.
Around the time that Genghis Khan's descendants were being overcome by the Ming dynasty, Europeans were beginning to arrive in Asia. Portuguese settlers made nearby Macau a European stronghold; meanwhile, piracy and Mongol loyalists further threatened China's coastal areas. Thus, the Ming government ordered all coastal residents to move inland. Hong Kong bounced back after the edict was revoked, just in time for a fateful encounter with another group of foreigners.
Opium and Empire
Enter the British East India Company. English merchants founded a trading post in Guangzhou, up the Pearl River from Hong Kong, in the eighteenth century, and later occupied Hong Kong Island during the first Opium War. The Qing government ceded the island in 1841. The foreign merchants, bankers, opium traders, and job-seeking Chinese who flooded in created a populous center for free trade. Britain took the Kowloon peninsula in 1860, then negotiated a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. This doubled the colony's size, but it would come back to haunt the British government a century later.
A growing city
In the early 20th century, political turmoil in China continued to supply Hong Kong with new inhabitants. The fall of the Qing dynasty and the first Sino-Japanese war drove thousands of people to seek a new life in the city. The Japanese occupation during World War II brought great hardship to the territory; after the war, however, the population increase resumed. Following the Communist 1949 and Cultural Revolutions in 1949 and the 1960s, foreign firms and skilled laborers came to Hong Kong en masse, transforming Hong Kong into a manufacturing hub.
A crisis of conscience
In the 1960s, Hong Kong faced growing discontent as a global anti-colonial movement grew. Communists, influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China, sparked riots in Hong Kong demanding an end to British rule. Combined with the imminent expiration of Britain's lease on the New Territories, this forced the colonial government to re-evaluate its policies. Governor Sir Murray MacLehose eliminated government corruption and instilled a sense of belonging in Hong Kongers through expanded social and cultural investment. When the Chinese market opened in the 1970s, although most of Hong Kong's factories moved across the border, the city reinvented itself as a center for commerce and tourism.
1997
Although Great Britain had leased the New Territories for 99 years, the Chinese government had never recognized British claims on the rest of Hong Kong. Furthermore, if Britain returned only the legally leased (not seized) land, Hong Kong's population would be divided between two countries. As the deadline approached, the Chinese government demanded that the return of Hong Kong in its entirety, but Britain remained concerned about Communist China's impact on Hong Kong's liberties. Eventually, talks between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Chairman Deng Xiaoping settled on a peaceful solution: "one country, two systems." Hong Kong would return to China, but retain its established monetary, legal, and trade practices for fifty years.
Although a number of Hong Kong people emigrated abroad after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, Hong Kong's establishment as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China on July 1, 1997 was celebrated as a return to the motherland.
The transition has been a smooth one; many former émigrés have returned to the prosperous S.A.R., as business and educational opportunities continue to grow. The development of new infrastructure, a revamped educational system, and historical preservation amid urban redevelopment are now keynotes in government policy, and have been catalysts for growth in the twenty-first century.
