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id="contentSub"><div id="mw-content-subtitle"></div></div> <div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Flag_of_Hong_Kong_(1959%E2%80%931997).svg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg/220px-Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png" decoding="async" width="220" height="110" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg/330px-Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg/440px-Flag_of_Hong_Kong_%281959%E2%80%931997%29.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="1200" data-file-height="600" /></a><figcaption>[T]he British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing. ~ <a href="/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke" title="P. J. O'Rourke">P. J. O'Rourke</a></figcaption></figure> <p><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Hong_Kong" class="extiw" title="w:British Hong Kong">British Hong Kong</a></b> was a colony and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Dependent_Territory" class="extiw" title="w:British Dependent Territory">dependent territory</a> of the <a href="/wiki/United_Kingdom" title="United Kingdom">United Kingdom</a> from 1841 to 1997, apart from a brief period under <a href="/wiki/Japan_during_World_War_II" title="Japan during World War II">Japanese</a> occupation from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Hong_Kong" class="extiw" title="w:Japanese occupation of Hong Kong">1941 to 1945</a> during <a href="/wiki/World_War_II" title="World War II">World War II</a>. The colonial period began with the occupation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Island" class="extiw" title="w:Hong Kong Island">Hong Kong Island</a> in 1841 during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War" class="extiw" title="w:First Opium War">First Opium War</a>. The island was ceded by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty" class="extiw" title="w:Qing dynasty">Qing dynasty</a> in the aftermath of the war in 1842 and established as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_colony" class="extiw" title="w:Crown colony">Crown colony</a> in 1843. The colony expanded to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Peninsula" class="extiw" title="w:Kowloon Peninsula">Kowloon Peninsula</a> in 1860 after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War" class="extiw" title="w:Second Opium War">Second Opium War</a> and was further extended when the UK obtained <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_for_the_Extension_of_Hong_Kong_Territory" class="extiw" title="w:Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory">a 99-year lease</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Territories" class="extiw" title="w:New Territories">New Territories</a> in 1898. </p> <table role="presentation" class="metadata plainlinks stub" style="background: transparent; font-style: italic;"><tbody><tr> <td class="noresize"><span typeof="mw:File"><a href="/wiki/File:Geographylogo.svg" class="mw-file-description"><img alt="Stub icon" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Geographylogo.svg/30px-Geographylogo.svg.png" decoding="async" width="30" height="30" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Geographylogo.svg/45px-Geographylogo.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Geographylogo.svg/60px-Geographylogo.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="160" data-file-height="160" /></a></span></td> <td>This <a href="/wiki/Category:Geography" title="Category:Geography">geography</a>-related article is a <a href="/wiki/Wikiquote:Stub" title="Wikiquote:Stub">stub</a>. You can help out with Wikiquote by <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=British_Hong_Kong&action=edit">expanding</a> it!</td> </tr></tbody></table> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Quotes">Quotes</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=British_Hong_Kong&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Quotes"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>Hong Kong has <a href="/wiki/Free_trade" title="Free trade">no tariffs or other restraints on international trade</a>. It has no <a href="/wiki/Regulation" title="Regulation">government direction of economic activity</a>, no <a href="/wiki/Minimum_wage" title="Minimum wage">minimum wage</a> laws, no <a href="/wiki/Price_controls" title="Price controls">fixing of prices</a>. The residents are free to <a href="/wiki/Buy" class="mw-redirect" title="Buy">buy</a> from whom they want, <a href="/wiki/Sell" class="mw-redirect" title="Sell">sell</a> to whom they want, to <a href="/wiki/Investment" title="Investment">invest</a> however they want, to <a href="/wiki/Employment" title="Employment">hire</a> whom they want, to <a href="/wiki/Work" title="Work">work</a> for whom they want. <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Milton_Friedman" title="Milton Friedman">Milton Friedman</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156334607/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon"><i>Free to Choose</i></a> (1980), as quoted in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/hong-kong-china-clamps-down-west-does-nothing/">"R.I.P. Hong Kong"</a> (12 August 2020), by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harsayani" class="extiw" title="w:David Harsayani">David Harsayani</a>, <i>National Review</i></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Hong Kong, like <a href="/wiki/Taiwan" title="Taiwan">Taiwan</a>, has always been an example of what a free China might look like. As <a href="/wiki/Chinese_people" title="Chinese people">Chinese</a> were starving and stumbling from one bloody five-year tragedy to the next during the latter half of the <a href="/wiki/20th_century" title="20th century">20th century</a>, Hong Kong was thriving under a system that can only be described as the anthesis of the mainland’s. <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harsayani" class="extiw" title="w:David Harsayani">David Harsayani</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/hong-kong-china-clamps-down-west-does-nothing/">"R.I.P. Hong Kong"</a> (12 August 2020), <i>National Review</i></li></ul></li> <li>This relative lack of external pressure, together with the rise of <a href="/wiki/Laissez-faire" title="Laissez-faire">laissez-faire</a> <a href="/wiki/Liberalism" title="Liberalism">liberalism</a> at home, caused many a commentator to argue that <a href="/wiki/Colonialism" title="Colonialism">colonial</a> acquisitions were unnecessary, being merely a set of “millstones” around the neck of the overburdened <a href="/wiki/British_people" title="British people">British</a> <a href="/wiki/Taxation" title="Taxation">taxpayer</a>. Yet whatever the rhetoric of anti-imperialism within Britain, the fact was that the empire continued to grow, expanding (according to one calculation) at an average annual pace of about 100,000 square miles between 1815 and 1865.28 Some were strategical/commercial acquisitions, like <a href="/wiki/Singapore" title="Singapore">Singapore</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aden" class="extiw" title="w:Aden">Aden</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands" class="extiw" title="w:Falkland Islands">Falkland Islands</a>, Hong Kong, <a href="/wiki/Lagos" title="Lagos">Lagos</a>; others were the consequence of land-hungry <a href="/wiki/White_people" title="White people">white</a> <a href="/wiki/Settler_colonialism" title="Settler colonialism">settlers</a>, moving across the <a href="/wiki/South_Africa" title="South Africa">South African</a> veldt, the <a href="/wiki/Canada" title="Canada">Canadian</a> prairies, and the <a href="/wiki/Australia" title="Australia">Australian</a> outback—whose expansion usually provoked a native resistance that often had to be suppressed by <a href="/wiki/British_Army" title="British Army">troops</a> from <a href="/wiki/United_Kingdom" title="United Kingdom">Britain</a> or <a href="/wiki/British_Raj" title="British Raj">British India</a>. And even when formal annexations were resisted by <a href="/wiki/Government_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Government of the United Kingdom">a home government</a> perturbed at this growing list of new responsibilities, the “informal influence” of an expanding British society was felt from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay" class="extiw" title="w:Uruguay">Uruguay</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant" class="extiw" title="w:Levant">Levant</a> and from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo" class="extiw" title="w:Congo">Congo</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze" class="extiw" title="w:Yangtze">Yangtze</a>. Compared with the sporadic <a href="/wiki/French_Colonial_Empire" title="French Colonial Empire">colonizing efforts of the French</a> and the more localized internal <a href="/wiki/Colonization" class="mw-redirect" title="Colonization">colonization</a> by the <a href="/wiki/United_States" title="United States">Americans</a> and the <a href="/wiki/Russia" title="Russia">Russians</a>, the British as imperialists were in a class of their own for most of the <a href="/wiki/19th_century" title="19th century">nineteenth century</a>. <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kennedy" class="extiw" title="w:Paul Kennedy">Paul Kennedy</a>, <i>The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000</i> (1987)</li></ul></li> <li>The tension between these conflicting aims is perhaps particularly acute in the late twentieth century because of the publicity given to the existence of various alternative “models” for emulation. On the one hand, there are the extremely successful “trading states”—chiefly in <a href="/wiki/Asia" title="Asia">Asia</a>, like <a href="/wiki/Japan" title="Japan">Japan</a> and Hong Kong, but also including <a href="/wiki/Switzerland" title="Switzerland">Switzerland</a>, <a href="/wiki/Sweden" title="Sweden">Sweden</a>, and <a href="/wiki/Austria" title="Austria">Austria</a>—which have taken advantage of the great <a href="/wiki/Economic_growth" title="Economic growth">growth in world production</a> and in <a href="/wiki/Globalization" title="Globalization">commercial interdependence</a> since 1945, and whose external policy emphasizes peaceful, trading relations with other societies. In consequence, they have all sought to keep defense spending as low as is compatible with the preservation of national <a href="/wiki/Sovereignty" title="Sovereignty">sovereignty</a>, thereby freeing resources for high domestic <a href="/wiki/Consumption_(economics)" title="Consumption (economics)">consumption</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_investment" class="extiw" title="w:Capital investment">capital investment</a>. On the other hand, there are the various “militarized” economies—<a href="/wiki/Vietnam" title="Vietnam">Vietnam</a> in <a href="/wiki/Southeast_Asia" class="mw-redirect" title="Southeast Asia">Southeast Asia</a>, <a href="/wiki/Iran" title="Iran">Iran</a> and <a href="/wiki/Iraq" title="Iraq">Iraq</a> as they engage in their lengthy war, <a href="/wiki/Israel" title="Israel">Israel</a> and <a href="/wiki/Arab_world" class="mw-redirect" title="Arab world">its jealous neighbors</a> in the <a href="/wiki/Near_East" class="mw-redirect" title="Near East">Near East</a>, and the <a href="/wiki/Soviet_Union" title="Soviet Union">USSR</a> itself—all of which allocate more (in some cases, much more) than 10 percent of their <a href="/wiki/Gross_National_Product" title="Gross National Product">GNP</a> to defense expenditures each year and, while firmly believing that such levels of <a href="/wiki/Government_spending" title="Government spending">spending</a> are necessary to guarantee <a href="/wiki/National_security" title="National security">military security</a>, manifestly suffer from that diversion of resources from productive, peaceful ends. Between the two poles of the merchant and the warrior states, so to speak, there lie most of the rest of the <a href="/wiki/Nations" title="Nations">nations</a> of <a href="/wiki/Earth" title="Earth">this planet</a>, not convinced that the world is a safe enough place to allow them to reduce arms expenditure to Japan’s unusually low level, but also generally uneasy at the high economic and social costs of large-scale spending upon armaments, and aware that there is a certain trade-off between short-term military security and long-term economic security. <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kennedy" class="extiw" title="w:Paul Kennedy">Paul Kennedy</a>, <i>The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000</i> (1987)</li></ul></li> <li>We got used to dividing the world into <a href="/wiki/Industrialized_countries" class="mw-redirect" title="Industrialized countries">industrialized countries</a> and <a href="/wiki/Developing_country" title="Developing country">developing countries</a> – rich and poor. However, four East Asian tigers would soon disrupt our worldview. The British colony of Hong Kong and the city-state of <a href="/wiki/Singapore" title="Singapore">Singapore</a> did the opposite of all other countries, and opened their economies wide, without trade barriers. The experts claimed that <a href="/wiki/Free_trade" title="Free trade">free trade</a> would knock out the small <a href="/wiki/Manufacturing" title="Manufacturing">manufacturing</a> sectors they had, but, on the contrary, they <a href="/wiki/Industrialization" title="Industrialization">industrialized</a> at a record pace and shocked the outside world by becoming even richer than the old <a href="/wiki/Colonialism" title="Colonialism">colonial</a> master, <a href="/wiki/United_Kingdom" title="United Kingdom">Britain</a>. Taiwan and <a href="/wiki/South_Korea" title="South Korea">South Korea</a> learned from this and began to <a href="/wiki/Economic_liberalism" title="Economic liberalism">liberalize their economies</a> with amazing results. Their rapid <a href="/wiki/Economic_growth" title="Economic growth">growth</a> took them from being some of the poorest countries in the world to some of the richest in a few generations. It was a global wake-up call because it was so easy to compare what the <a href="/wiki/Chinese_people" title="Chinese people">Chinese</a> in Taiwan achieved compared to the Chinese in <a href="/wiki/Mao_Zedong" title="Mao Zedong">Mao</a>’s China, and what the <a href="/wiki/Koreans" title="Koreans">Koreans</a> in the <a href="/wiki/Capitalism" title="Capitalism">capitalist</a> south created compared to the <a href="/wiki/Koreans" title="Koreans">Koreans</a> in the <a href="/wiki/Communism" title="Communism">communist</a> north. In the mid-1950s, Taiwan was only marginally richer than China. In 1980, it was four times richer. In 1955, <a href="/wiki/North_Korea" title="North Korea">North Korea</a> was richer than South Korea. (The north was, after all, where mineral resources and <a href="/wiki/Electricity" title="Electricity">power generation</a> were located when the country was partitioned.) Today, South Korea is twenty times richer than North Korea. <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Johan_Norberg" title="Johan Norberg">Johan Norberg</a>, <i>The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World</i> (2023)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>[M]ake everything from nothing. ... [T]he <a href="/wiki/Government_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Government of the United Kingdom">British colonial government</a> turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing. <ul><li><a href="/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke" title="P. J. O'Rourke">P. J. O'Rourke</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN/0871137607/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon"><i>Eat the Rich</i></a> (1997), as quoted in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/hong-kong-china-clamps-down-west-does-nothing/">"R.I.P. Hong Kong"</a> (12 August 2020), by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harsayani" class="extiw" title="w:David Harsayani">David Harsayani</a>, <i>National Review</i></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>As governor, I experienced the vitality of life in a booming and free <a href="/wiki/Asia" title="Asia">Asian</a> city, saw routinely the best and worst aspects of <a href="/wiki/Human_nature" title="Human nature">human nature</a>, and was made to revisit some of the principles in which I have always believed but to which I had rarely given much thought previously. In the darker hours of occasionally fretful nights I found myself face to face with the moral dimensions of political action to a greater extent than ever before. <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Chris_Patten" title="Chris Patten">Chris Patten</a>, <i>East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future</i>, Pan Books, second edition, 1999, p. 3</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Nevertheless, it is true that on 1 July 1997 Hong Kong became the only example of <a href="/wiki/Decolonization" title="Decolonization">decolonization</a> deliberately accompanied by less <a href="/wiki/Democracy" title="Democracy">democracy</a> and a weaker protection of <a href="/wiki/Civil_liberties" class="mw-redirect" title="Civil liberties">civil liberties</a>. This was a cause for profound regret, especially for <a href="/wiki/British_Empire" title="British Empire">the departing colonial power</a>. But it was China's doing and China's decision. I am pleased that Britain narrowly avoided complicity in the dishonourable act of denying the citizens of free Hong Kong what they had been promised in 1984. <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Chris_Patten" title="Chris Patten">Chris Patten</a>, <i>East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future</i>, Pan Books, second edition, 1999, p. 83</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=British_Hong_Kong&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: External links"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><span typeof="mw:File"><span><img alt="" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/12px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png" decoding="async" width="12" height="11" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/18px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/24px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="103" data-file-height="94" /></span></span> Encyclopedic article on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/British_Hong_Kong" class="extiw" title="w:Special:Search/British Hong Kong">British Hong Kong</a> on Wikipedia</li></ul>    </div><noscript><img src="https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1" alt="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;"></noscript> <div class="printfooter" data-nosnippet="">Retrieved from "<a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=British_Hong_Kong&oldid=3452517">https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=British_Hong_Kong&oldid=3452517</a>"</div></div> <div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" data-mw="interface"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="/wiki/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>: <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Geography_stubs" title="Category:Geography stubs">Geography stubs</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Foreign_relations_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Category:Foreign relations of the United Kingdom">Foreign relations of the United Kingdom</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Hong_Kong" title="Category:Hong Kong">Hong Kong</a></li></ul></div></div> </div> </main> </div> <div class="mw-footer-container"> <footer id="footer" class="mw-footer" > <ul id="footer-info"> <li id="footer-info-lastmod"> This page was last edited on 24 January 2024, at 15:05.</li> <li id="footer-info-copyright">Text is available under the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License</a>; additional terms may apply. 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