Raviteja asked: Why the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997? What were the terms and conditions?

R. N. Das replies: Hong Kong was acquired by Britain in three stages after defeating China in the Opium War. The first was Hong Kong Island, which was ceded to the Great Britain in perpetuity by the Treaty of Nanking on August 29, 1842. The Kowloon Peninsula was leased to Britain by the Convention of Peking in 1860, and the new territories on a 99 year lease under the Second Convention of Peking in 1898. China regarded these treaties as unequal, imposed on China under the duress of ‘gun-boat diplomacy’.

As the 99-year treaty was to expire on July 1, 1997, both Britain and China started negotiations in early 1980s. The historic joint declaration on the future of Hong Kong was signed on December 19, 1984 between Premier Zhao Ziyang and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Under the joint declaration, an innovative “one country, two systems” was devised, under which Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty while retaining its political and economic system. The tenets of the joint declaration were later elucidated in the Basic Law, under which the present Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is governed.