The Fragrant Harbour, The Lost Sheep: Bringing Hong Kong back under The Crown

I speak as an Englishman who has lived and worked in Hong Kong, for a brief period in 2018, yet a period that nonetheless caused me to develop, in a short space of time, a deep affection for Hong Kong and its people, its ways, its offerings, its history, its capabilities and all else. Hong Kong is meaningfully invaluable as a political, economic, geographical and cultural entity to its own people and as an inspiration to the world, hence what a tragic waste and loss it would be to be squandered and pillaged by the vicious hyenas of the administration of the People’s Republic of China, and all their associates and sympathisers in Hong Kong.

Just like when Britain’s sovereign territory of the Falkland Islands was under attack by vicious dago thugs (and still remains a target of vicious envy to this day), we should feel no less significantly imperative here. The terms of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration have clearly been treated with contempt, and our former subjects are crying out for help from the enemy at the door, which we left them vulnerable to. It is time for a deadly serious consideration of reversing these bleak affairs and bringing Hong Kong back under the wing of the British Crown.

Regardless of any coercive de jure arrangements of a handover in 1997, in spirit and in duty, Hong Kong remains inescapably of Britain (requiring a far more violent and meticulous intervention to truly overturn that fact, though we wouldn’t put it past the Chinese to try, given their propensity for Cultural Revolution). Even if it is not under a British administration, it has nevertheless had many decades of a distinctly constructed Hong Kong identity which is set apart to the modern Chinese culture surrounding it.

As Frenchman Marc Chardourne observed of a visit to Hong Kong in the 1930s :

“I already begin to recognise all this. It is China – the howl of her starving park, her colour of spices, her stinking rags, her insolence, her voracity … But this city, that slowly emerges from the reeking atmosphere, piling up in a marvellous mirage its amphitheatre of buildings, palaces, bungalows, rising vertically with its hanging gardens, its winding roads, its castles in the air, its double peak silhouetted against the stormy sky – this is not China. It is an English city. It is Hong Kong.”

Ever since the most recent political antagonisms from China in Hong Kong, I have grieved for all that has been and may be lost in the Hong Kong in the coming years. I have also felt anger at those who have proposed solutions to the problem along the lines of emigrating the entire population to somewhere new, either as generic emigrants or with the explicit purpose to set up a new Hong Kong; most prominently, the idea of special economic zone charter city in Britain. This is firstly flawed due to the obvious fact that it would be completely unprecedented (in a modern context) for there to be a very small region upon the British mainland that has such extremely distinct economic policies from everywhere else on the same landmass (or whatever other distinct administrative arrangement). Furthermore, if this were implemented and genuinely successful, it ought to raise significant questions concerning why such an arrangement has not been done before in recent times for the benefit of Britain’s native population (but I digress). The more important flaw is that Hong Kong is not simply represented and defined by the mobility of its people (and the money, possessions, and capital they may or may not bring with them). What defines Hong Kong also innately consists of the tropical weather, the spectacular natural scenery, the sites of religious significance, the natural resources and immovable attributes that are a large factor in Hong Kong’s success (which I suspect in Hong Kong’s case, similar to Singapore’s, is strongly related to its key geographical location as a trading port) amongst many other things which are not so transferable. Anybody could easily recognise this had they actually spent time in Hong Kong. Furthermore, like Rome, Hong Kong was not built in a day, or even a month or a year, or even ten years; it was built in 156 years. This is not to say that absolutely no virtues of Hong Kong are practically transferrable, as many emigrants have demonstrated in the enclaves and communities they have set up elsewhere in the world, but to make a flippant proposal that the entire population can simply be upped and transferred thousands of miles away with a significant proportion of what makes Hong Kong Hong Kong just assumed to be maintained is at best a laughable attitude and at worst a contemptible one. It is invalidating over a century of history in Hong Kong’s development as a real tangible geographical political entity, as much as Hong Kong is defined by its people. It is equally, if not more, noble a proposal for Britain to save all of Hong Kong and restore the rightful sovereignty and protection and prosperity.

Before we get into the full nuances of why and how this might be justified and enacted, let us consider some historical context.

Anthropological colonial history in Hong Kong is of course complex and interesting. It is absolutely nothing like what any useless cynical Saidian anticolonial agitator will tell you, though neither is it simple and boring enough to speak only favourably of the actions of the British. It is in surprisingly recent years that the most balanced research into this field has been carried out. Whilst it is true the Hong Kong Chinese were not on some absolute equal political footing with the Hong Kong British, their economic prowess (which the ethnic Chinese have demonstrated in droves throughout the world in modern history) essentially always ended up speaking for itself for bringing them substantial prosperity. It was also widely acknowledged by the Hong Kong Chinese throughout their history that the extent of “oppression” under the British was nevertheless accompanied by the positive trade off of living in an environment with much relative material prosperity and political stability that was generally lacking in the rest of China in late Qing and Republic eras.

The background to Britain’s claim of Hong Kong lies in 1842 Treaty of Nanking which gave British sovereignty to Hong Kong Island, the 1860 Treaty of Peking which concerned Southern Kowloon and Stonecutters Island, and the 1898 Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory which concerned Northern Kowloon and the New Territories (all the remaining territory that encompasses what is today known as Hong Kong, making up 86% of the landmass). Contrary to what many might think, only the third of these three agreements in 1898 involved a finite 99 year lease, with the first two being in perpetuity. Yet it was all of Hong Kong that was handed over in 1997, which was apparently for practical reasons.

However, it was a legitimate blunder on the part of the British to have agreed to any kind of finite lease. It was a whimsical naivety on their part, as well as some sheer bad luck. A 99 year lease is a concept that exists in a more traditional understanding of English common law as a conventional upper limit of a lease for real estate, sometimes statutorily enforced. Though this number is fundamentally arbitrary, it is still commonly used to this day as a form of conventional wisdom for the lease of real estate or other business activity or concession of territory. Furthermore, to the British, 99 years likely just seemed like forever, and they could not possibly have envisioned the far more powerful position that China just so coincidentally happened to be in in the run up to the end of this 99 years – especially economically – that gave them significantly strengthened bargaining chips.

That all being said, this does not rule out every logical and theoretical (as opposed to practical) basis for British sovereignty over Hong Kong. On top of the aforementioned contempt shown by China to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the quality of life and the peace of mind of the population since 1997 has clearly declined, dignity has been respected far less, senseless erosion of historical legacies in the region have taken place in a similar vein to the original emergence of communism in the Chinese mainland. That’s not to say there are no lessons to be learned for Britain in reigning over Hong Kong in a way that grants the most realistic dignity and respect to the subjects (as well as lessons from all past British colonial administrations) but it is undeniable that prospects for Hong Kong under Red China have been and will continue to be dire in comparison.

If we were to now seriously consider the realistic possibilities of bringing Hong Kong back under The Crown again, before we get to what that administrative arrangement would actually be, we should first consider how the transition would work and the main difficulties in that.

The main difficulty being simply the potential for war with China.

I am absolutely no expert on military matters, but I might still lay some logical foundations and starting points that others of more intricate expertise can pad out or refine, should they agree with the logic.

Some sort of brutish confrontation between China and those who feel antagonised by it (whoever they may be, particularly immediate neighbours) is on the cards at some point soon. China have been significantly provocative outside their own borders to warrant it, on top of the atrocious actions they are carrying out in their own claimed dominion. However, it would be extremely important to keep this conflict confined to the issue and territory at hand. It would be wrong to justify and provoke a conflict with China on the whims of ungrounded ideological sentiments; a conflict for its own sake (which is very much the American way). Whilst we might still feel great disapproval about wider issues with Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and other controversies, we are acting for our own specific interests and it is not our place at the time to make such definite ultimatums about all wider issues in China. It would also lessen the casualties as much as possible.

It would also be extremely likely that we would not succeed without some outside help. Which opens up a whole new discussion about who Britain’s true and sincere friends our in terms of authentic British interests. During the talks between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher, Xiaoping is alleged to have said “I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon” to which Thatcher responded “there is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like.” There is some truth in her words – given the way the world responded to China in light of their recent antagonisms to Hong Kong and other places like Tibet and Xinjiang – but also given how much China has created special subversive financial interests for itself in many nations since the 1990s, the world’s very varied reactions to the new fresh antagonism that China has had against Taiwan, the general popular contempt shown towards the legacy of colonialism, we should not take any friendship towards the British with regard to Hong Kong for granted. The Falkland conflict brought about some help from expected places, such as the major Commonwealth realms, and some unexpected places like France and Sierra Leone and Chile. Refreshingly, the United States was an awkwardly indirect ally, given their own Cold War strategic sympathies to the Galtieri junta in the first place, with their initial insistence on a more thumb-twiddling diplomatic solution to the conflict. For once, the US knew their place and stepped back a little bit. In terms of getting help or friendship for the British to liberated Hong Kong, there are some possible candidates for those who would be worth capitalising on since they are currently in a state of feeling antagonised by China. This might include the Philippines, India, South Korea. Some less likely candidates might be Japan, given their own hostile occupations of Hong Kong during the Second World War, and Taiwan, given that its administration has previously had their own interests in the sovereignty of Hong Kong since before the Kuomintang retreat in 1949. But times and interests and alliances can change an awful lot, and it would be worth investigating just how much should the need arise.

In addition, it is worth singling out how American foreign policy interests have frequently been antagonistic or antithetical to British ones, especially since the World Wars. Whether it be their sympathies with Galtieri (thanks almost entirely to Mr. Kissenger), the invasion of Grenada, concerning Hong Kong itself, Franklin Roosevelt promising Chinese First Lady Soong Mei-ling that Hong Kong would be given to China should the Japanese be defeated (thankfully, in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the British moved in quickly to restore their sovereignty). American liberal imperialism was definitively a comically ironic exercise in ‘anticolonialism’ – in accordance with the new international liberal consensus from the formation of the United Nations – which was simultaneously a helpful self-serving strategy to simply steal the thunder of European world powers. Recent occupancies by unfavourable people and ideas in the highest echelons of American administration in the 21st century has shown that these gains of world hegemony decades earlier have now come full circle for them, particularly with culminations like the 2021 Fall of Kabul. Similarly NATO is a joke of a peace treaty which is little more than an excuse for the US to capitalise off the end of the Cold War for further world domination, done all with the essence of an ironic form of liberal progressivism – that had subverted the Anglo-Saxon essence of what had come before in the United States – and claim itself a staunch political antithesis to communism and tyranny. The irony has been lost on most but not the few of us who are not too awkward to admit it.

Another glaring reason for reclaiming Hong Kong is that the citizens would like it. There are various ways that this is indicated. Between 1986 and 1997, there was a surge of emigration totalling hundreds of thousands, prompted by anxiety due to the prospect of a handover becoming very real. Prominent destinations other than Britain included Canada, Australia, United States, Singapore and even Tonga.

Hong Kong Annual Emigration, 1981-2002

Since 1997 itself, the Hong Kong peoples’ vigilance against their new administration has been a constant background noise. Protests have very routinely taken place in on July 1st (the date of the handover) and have gained a new level of fervour in the past decade. The frequency of protest in general is most definitely far more than it ever was in colonial times.

The old colonial flag, or the Union Jack itself, has routinely been brandished by anti-China protestors. It is perfectly possible that the use of this flag is just provocatively symbolic as opposed to a genuine advocacy for a return of British administration. However, it is not unreasonable to assume it is at least a significant indication of a belief that better times were had under the British by the generations speaking from experience, as explicitly stated – for example – by veteran Hong Kong protester Grandma Wong.

Granted, it is a fallacy to assume that every street protest by virtue of its mere existence has a completely legitimate and worthy and noble cause behind it. In general, there should be caution about particularly liberal-progressive populist sentiment as a healthy basis for a change in administration, especially as far as British interests are concerned. Many pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong over the years warrant being viewed with caution as they might otherwise still be fully sympathetic to the continued existence of one country, two systems just with merely more scrutiny for suffrage and democratic rights, as laughable as that sounds. This is a suspicion explicitly stated by members of the Hong Kong Independence Party who have named and shamed various big names in Hong Kong pro-democracy activism such as Joshua Wong and Nathan Law for these very reasons. Some protestors have also brandished flags of the United States (usually accompanied with a message to Donald Trump) or the United Nations, and there would certainly be bleak implications for the people of Hong Kong to be “liberated” by the catastrophic American Empire or the United Nations’ blue-helmeted footsoldiers of Beelzebub (sometimes known as “Peacekeepers”).

All that being said, the overall high frequency of protest and demonstration, regardless of stated motivations, is still in itself a sign of some kind of underlying displeasure, a background noise of dread, whether that is the genuine fault of those being protested against, or an organic dissatisfaction that has affected would-be agitators, from inside or abroad. Fear and anxiety and the propensity for demonstration in a population is no basis for peace and prosperity, and it is more than a coincidence that it has happened much more frequently under one country, two systems than previous colonial times.

In general the people of Hong Kong have pushed to the limit their means of expressing discontent with the actions of the PRC administration, past and present, which most prominently includes routine yearly vigils in early June on anniversaries of the Tiananmen Square massacre. More recently, there was also many sincere tributes paid to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II after her death in September 2022, with very long lines forming outside the British Consulate to do so.

All these phenomena are all helpful tools for painting a full picture of an organic fertile ground that exists in Hong Kong today for a changing of the guard back to what it was before.

Fundamentally, the People’s Republic of China is not an administration that has ever had any mere implication of legitimate sovereignty over Hong Kong. The three distinct administrative eras in the mainland of China that have existed alongside the history of Hong Kong as we know it have warred ferociously with each other as much as they have warred with foreign powers. The “handover” was not “giving back” but putting Hong Kong under the burden of a well disguised antagonistic bully. Hong Kong under the British once again would afford them a perfectly agreeable level of political self-governance that all other Crown-dependant protectorate territories enjoy (including those that lie as close as the English Channel or the Irish Sea which nevertheless maintain a high degree of autonomy). This includes in even the most pressing characteristic policy areas of the present day, like the recent antics in Bermuda over the legality of same-sex marriage, which was made legal in May 2017 then illegal in June 2018, legal again in November 2018 and then illegal again in March 2022 (the culture surrounding such an issue is another matter, but nevertheless, it is an interesting case study into the extent of self-determination that protectorate British Overseas Territories can maintain, even on such pressing controversial modern issues).

Though before we finish here, there is one thing that still needs to be considered. To take back Hong Kong is currently extremely unthinkable and unrealistic. The elite in Britain today is paralysed and shackled with guilt at Britain’s legacy of colonialism and racism (on top of all the other fun things). This is also most pressingly true of the Royals, who have just experienced another pathetic faux racism blunder with Lady Susan Hussey, which adds to all else the Royals have gone through regarding Meghan Markle. The governing class in Britain also has its own issues when it comes to its own subjects at home and doing its rightful job, instead opting for a pathetic ungrounded metamorphosised progressive social liberal doctrine, very much fuelled by legacy of Blair, that requires its own severe scrutiny. This retaking of Hong Kong is something that could not possibly happen within any time horizon of the present day.

But there is another way of looking at it.

What is unthinkable and unrealistic might otherwise be thought of as bold and daring. The British ruling class has been completely devoid of any bold or daring motivations for well over at least a decade (though some cynics might even say a century). The exception to that might be leaving the European Union, but that was an event that every member of the British ruling and governing class was at best extremely reluctant to fully respect and at worst hysterically opposed to. If daring boldness is a new mindset to strive towards, it offers up some clear pills against the notion that Britain alone must be shackled with guilt for the errors of its past above all peoples and nations who have a guilty past (and/or present!). When push comes to shove, these people who are the most prominent anti-racist anti-colonial agitators at best completely insincere and at worst complete liars, adhering to a fraudulent system of materialist ethics concerning the alleged spiritual malice of bourgeois colonial arrangements which nobody has any obligation to respect whatsoever. We know that we are right and that our convictions are right, especially regarding the predicament of Hong Kong and the general virtues of the protections of The Crown over hostile modern republican barbarism (that is otherwise near-exclusively on offer to the more unfortified nations and people of the world), and our detractors are liars and cheats and mentalists, and wrong.

What is on offer here is more some guidelines or a skeletal blueprint that might be put into action at any given time that the governing class becomes of sound mind to do so. Not only might it bring back peace to Hong Kong but also break through stale consensuses of diplomacy and international relations that are shackling Britain in pursuing her most sensible interests abroad as opposed to acting on abstract ideological whims, as well as the rest of the world who suffer from it. The time will come when we might not only liberate Hong Kong but show to the world that our convictions are correct and might inspire such boldness.

A Dragon Dance performed in Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong to celebrate the coronation of King George V in 1911