What's Past is Prologue: Recalling Hong Kong's handover a quarter century ago from UK to China

“What’s Past is Prologue” series, an homage to William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, looks at events of the past that seem to reoccur later with remarkable similarities. Frank Nickell of the Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation, previously a longtime faculty member at Southeast Missouri State University, is primary historian for these articles, which are carried intermittently in the Southeast Missourian.

Twenty-five years ago this past summer, 156 years of British rule of Hong Kong ended with the July 1, 1997, formal handover of the colony to the People's Republic of China.

Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, had been in office two months at the time.

Diana, Princess of Wales, by then divorced from Prince Charles, had less than two months to live.

Frank Nickell, local historian now with Cape Girardeau's Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation, visited Hong Kong "four or five times" before the Chinese government took sovereignty.

One of the most densely populated places on earth, Hong Kong Island sits on 34 square miles of territory.

"When you go into that harbor, you see all of those buildings [and] all of those people, in that small area with more than 7 million people," Nickell recalled. "It's one of the most crowded areas of the world, one of the wealthiest, one of the most vital and one of the most contentious. If you want to get a sense of how beautiful Hong Kong is, watch the 1955 film 'Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing', with William Holden and Jennifer Jones. Victoria Harbor is one of the great visual sights in the world."

A quarter of a century ago, part of the pact China made with the United Kingdom in return for British handover of control was a promise the Hong Kong region would enjoy considerable political autonomy for 50 years after the Union Jack — the British flag — was lowered there.

The agreement came to be popularly known as "one country, two systems."

To wit: Hong Kong would remain a capitalist system until 2047 while the rest of the nation remained in a communist system.

China appears to be reneging on the accord.

In 2020, China imposed a new national security law giving the government broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters, which sparked protests in Hong Kong, reported the Council of Foreign Relations and many news outlets.

The future

"I think Hong Kong and also capitalist Taiwan are going to be significant world problems over the next 50 to 75 years. [The U.S.] will have to deal with those, without any question, because the issues in both are large and complex," Nickell opined.

On Sept. 18, President Joe Biden said American forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, even to the point of committing U.S. forces — a promise the Biden administration has not made to Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.

"The Chinese will not compromise [on Taiwan] and I think the United States will not compromise. This will continue to be a trouble spot. If we're looking at the past as a prologue to the future and to future problems, Taiwan is one of the most critical places in the world right now," Nickell said.

Taiwan is an island approximately 100 miles from the coast of southeast China and has maintained its independence since Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist Party fled there after the communist revolution in 1949.

Beijing has long regarded Taiwan as a renegade province whereas the Taiwanese regard the island as an independent country known as Republic of China (ROC).