This post was inspired by the paragraph about the former flag of Hong Kong in yesterday’s post on the flags of the world.
Hong Kong island was actually ceded in perpetuity by the government of Qing China to the British crown in 1842 in the Treaty of Nanking, and subsequently the Kowloon peninsula was also ceded in the 1860 Convention of Peking. In the 1898 Second Convention of Peking, the Qing government leased the land now known as the New Territories to the United Kingdom for ninety-nine years.
By the terms of the treaties signed by both parties, the United Kingdom was obligated to return only the New Territories to the government of China in 1997, and not the entirety of Hong Kong. Furthermore, the question of who is the legitimate successor state to Qing China is not settled, as both the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Communist China claim that role.
Britain therefore had grounds for refusing to hand over Hong Kong, or at least the most developed parts of it, to Communist China, an option that it chose not to pursue for political reasons.
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The Hong Konger Front advocates that the people of Hong Kong be allowed to hold a referendum to decide whether Hong Kong should become an independent republic.
– davinci 11778
The flag of colonial Hong Kong represents one of freedom and security against civil war, massacres, Great Leap Backwards, Cultural Revolutions, Tiananmen Square Massacres of unarmed students and constant lies and misinformation from Xinhua state propaganda which covers up SARS and corruption but plays up Chinese nationalism.