• MyHeritage Wiki
  • Genealogy research by location
  • China
  • British Handover of Hong Kong to China
    • Main contributor: David Heffernan
    A painting of Hong Kong Island, c. 1850

    The British handover of Hong Kong to China was an event which occurred at midnight on the 1st of July 1997 when the United Kingdom handed over one of their last remaining colonies, Hong Kong, to the People’s Republic of China. British rule over Hong Kong dated back to the First Opium War or Anglo-Chinese War, fought between 1839 and 1842. The war ended in Britain acquiring control over the island of Hong Kong as part of their efforts to extend their empire into the Far East. Hong Kong expanded massively as a center of British colonial rule, settlement and economic activity here in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Even as Britain granted independence to vast swatches of its empire after the Second World War, such as India and Pakistan in 1947, and large parts of Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it retained control over Hong Kong, in large part because the People’s Republic of China as a communist power was a US and British adversary in the Far East until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Even before the war wound down, plans were underway to handover Hong Kong to China. This was completed in 1997. The handover has led to a large wave of migration from Hong Kong to Britain in recent years owing to the perceived downgrading of democratic institutions in Hong Kong in recent years by China.[1]

    Research your ancestors on MyHeritage

    British handover of Hong Kong to China chronology of eventsBritish handover of Hong Kong to China chronology of events

    Hong Kong is a strategic island with many natural harbors located in an ideal place in the South China Sea. Prior to the nineteenth century it was not a major city of any kind, but there were fishing villages and trading centers on the main island and the surrounding coastal regions. Hong Kong is not a single island. Rather there is a main Hong Kong Island along with nearby islands and mainland harbors like Lantau Island, Stonecutter’s Island, Kowloon and the large highlands on the Chinese mainland. It was an ideal site for a coastal base when the British developed an interest in expanding into this region in the nineteenth century.[2]

    The First Opium War

    The First Anglo-Chinese War or First Opium War was fought between 1839 and 1842. For two centuries prior to this the Chinese had attempted to limit their exposure to western, European influences, particularly the introduction of Christianity and European technology. By the middle of the nineteenth century, with the advent of European steamships, new weaponry and the desire of the British to sell off the excess tea and opium they were cultivating in India via the English East India Company, they went to war with China, ruled at the time by the Qing Dynasty. The war was not between two equal sides. Britain had heavy cannon, powerful ships and was a much greater logistical and organizational power. Within a short period of time they occupied a lot of Chinese coastal regions, including around Hong Kong. Via the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 the Chinese ceded Hong Kong to Britain.[3]

    A Second Opium War followed between Britain and China between 1856 and 1860. This was even more devastating for the Chinese and involved the French and Russians joining with the British against the Chinese. After Beijing was seized by the Europeans, the Chinese made even more concessions, including parts of the Kowloon Peninsula and other lands around Hong Kong. The islands and the coastal regions consequently became the center of British colonial and commercial activity in the South China Sea and the Far East, a colony as important for their activity in the east as Singapore and its dominance of the Straits of Malacca.[4]

    Extent of migration to Hong Kong and plans for handoverExtent of migration to Hong Kong and plans for handover

    The extent of British and other colonial migration to Hong Kong from the early 1840s down to the 1990s was very considerable. A few hundred administrators arrived swiftly to map the territory and begin developing the colony in the 1840s and 1850s. Thousands more came between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as British commercial interests in the Far East continued to grow. By the 1980s it is estimated that there were between 100,000 and 150,000 people of British ethnicity or mixed heritage living in Hong Kong. More importantly, the colony had developed into an enormous city of some five million people by the early 1980s. This would not have happened had the British not expanded the city into a major outpost of the British Empire in the Far East.[5]

    Events marking the handover in 1997

    It was at this juncture that the British began considering handing over the city state or colony. In the late nineteenth century the British had leased extra lands from China in order to expand the colony, so there was an increasingly complex relationship between the British and the Chinese already. During the Second World War, Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese, weakening British control here.[6] Although British rule resumed after the war, once the Chinese Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, there were growing calls for the city state to be handed over to China, much in the way India and Pakistan had become independent of Britain in 1947 and a wide range of African colonies like Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda had also been granted their independence by the British in the late 1950s and 1960s. China’s status as a communist state, though, complicated matters during the Cold War, but from the 1970s onwards the US, UK and others normalized relations with China and believed that it might be moving towards becoming a more western, market-liberal country.[7]

    In 1982 China and the UK entered negotiations to hand over Hong Kong to China. The Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984 and stated that the city would be handed over to China in thirteen years’ time on the basis of the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. This stipulated that Hong Kong would become part of China in 1997, but it would continue as a democracy for 50 years thereafter, only adopting the Chinese system if it still prevailed in 2047. After years of extensive planning, on the 1st of July 1997 Hong Kong was handed over to China by Britain in an event that was heavily televised and promoted across the world. While many British people left Hong Kong, the handover did not lead to a huge exodus of Hong Kongers in 1997.[8]

    Demographic impact of the handoverDemographic impact of the handover

    The handover and new system worked fine for many years. That is until the early 2010s when the Chinese government began ignoring elements of the “One Country, Two Systems” agreement that had been put in place in 1997. This was meant to function until 2047.[9] However, gradually during the 2010s and early 2020s the Chinese government began reducing the democratic system in Hong Kong and bringing its government more into line with the rest of the People’s Republic of China. This led to mass protests that generated international headlines. Despite the protests, the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement effectively collapsed following the imposition of the National Security Law of 2020.[10]

    As political crackdowns continued in the early 2020s, tens of thousands of Hong Kongers began leaving the city. Some were British expats with long links to Hong Kong unhappy to continue living there. Others were business people whose work was severely impacted on by the changed circumstances and legal arrangements. And others still were political opponents of the regime. Many headed for the US, though a huge proportion went to the UK. Using the Hong Kong British Nationality Act of 1990, which was developed as part of the handover process, just over 150,000 Hong Kongers have moved to the United Kingdom since the passage of the controversial National Security Law of 2020. Hence, Britain’s experience in Hong Kong over the last 180 years has been to build it up into a great city and then to see many hundreds of thousands of people leave the city for the UK and elsewhere since the handover to China in 1997, especially since 2020.[11]

    See alsoSee also

    Explore more about the British handover of Hong Kong to ChinaExplore more about the British handover of Hong Kong to China

    References

    1. ↑ https://hongkongfp.com/2022/07/02/pictures-1997-handover-hong-kong-britain-china/
    2. ↑ Patrick Yeung, ‘Trade Ties between Hong Kong and Mainland China’, in Asian Survey, Vol. 10, No. 9 (September, 1970), pp. 820–839.
    3. ↑ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/first-china-war-1839-1842
    4. ↑ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/second-china-war
    5. ↑ Gary Chi-hung Luk, From a British to a Chinese Colony?: Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover (Berkeley, California, 2017).
    6. ↑ https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250613144918/https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/life-and-death-in-hong-kong-during-the-second-world-war/
    7. ↑ https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/britain-and-decolonisation-in-south-east-and-south-asia-1945-1948
    8. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/2017/jul/01/hong-kong-handover-china-timeline-1997-20
    9. ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40426827
    10. ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838
    11. ↑ https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3275525/more-150400-hongkongers-have-moved-uk-using-bno-pathway


    Authors template (click twice to edit)
    Retrieved from ""

    APA citation (7th Ed.)

    David Heffernan. (2025, October 26). *British Handover of Hong Kong to China*. MyHeritage Wiki. https://www.myheritage.com/wiki/British_Handover_of_Hong_Kong_to_China