Hong Kong future under nationalistic victory

What’s the most likely future of Hong Kong following a KMT victory in the civil war ?
Could have been handed over to the republic of China when the winds of change started to blown.
Given Independence as a Dominion .
Retained as a crown colony.
 
Depends how the KMT develops in relation to the West in general

If they remain west-friendly or neutral ideology and relation wise then it will just be given back after the lease without much attention, maybe a the UK gets a few mutually favourable trade deals to give back Hong Kong Island without fuss when the lease end
 
I could see a plebiscite being held, deciding if all of HK joins China, some sort of joint administration, or remain UK.
 
Of course one of the things to remember is how a Nationalist China will affect Hong Kong's development. A number of the post-WWII immigrants who were businessmen and industrialists came from cities like Shanghai to escape the Communists, likewise the masses of peasants and workers that provided the workforce. Here rather than being a relatively free and stable island of prosperity sitting next to an isolationist People's Republic they're going to be competing with other Chinese towns and cities that will be just as cheap as them. Now the KMT are going to be having their own problems governing China, both administrative and internal, so you could reasonably make the argument for their being reformists, albeit at a slower pace, at one end of the spectrum to becoming a corrupt dictatorship at the other or anywhere between the two as you want.


What’s the most likely future of Hong Kong following a KMT victory in the civil war?
Most likely outcome is that the New Territories would be handed back to China at the end of the lease, along with Hong Kong island and Kowloon which had been ceded in perpetuity but which weren't viable without the rest of the colony. The Nationalists were as strongly opposed to what were viewed as the Unequal Treaties as anyone else, working to getting them annulled was immensely popular domestically. Providing that this Nationalist China is at least vaguely democratic and capitalistic rejoining China could be rather popular with Hong Kongers.


Could have been handed over to the republic of China when the winds of change started to blown.
It's a possibility. On the one hand Hong Kong was very useful to retain and fully self-funding, on the other if terminating the lease early potentially opened the door to advantageous trade deals for the UK then they might well be sacrificed.


Given independence as a Dominion. Retained as a crown colony.
Neither of these is going to happen. Any trying to create an independent state, which will be viewed as Britain trying to keep effective control, or keep it outright respectively will be seen by China as an absolute non-starter. All they have to do is their own version of the Green March but without the military escort.
 
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As others have said, a nationalist China would be just as interested in getting back Hong-Kong and reversing the unequal treaties. If China was more democratic at the time of the handover the Hong-Kongers might be less hesitant to reintergration.
 
Having commented on this before I have imagined a scenario without World War Two due to a surviving Kaiserreich post-World War One. I see similar pressure on German befriending China and being enemies with Japan. Nationalist China had a strong agenda to get the Colonial Powers out of China and end the Treaty Port system so I assume the situation will be a rather isolated Hong Kong with China putting pressure on Britain to vacate early. Hong Kong would likely never get the exodus from Shanghai and both it and Canton are the big trade ports, Hong Kong never grows into a window on the PRC or a safe haven, if anything it falls into isolation, bypassed and a relative backwater, more like Gibraltar, its fate tied more to British strategic needs than commerce. As the Empire retreats it gets to be a distant pocket, especially if the Chinese avoid trading with the colony, a sort of boycott. In this scenario I imagined Singapore burgeoning into what Hong Kong became, it seems more relevant to a longer lasting British presence in India and SEA, it might be a better military outpost and seems a better link to Japan whom I would see as the other trade partner to the British rather than China who have moved towards the USA and Germany (maybe USSR too). Once a post-East of Suez strategy emerges then Hong Kong might lose its relevance fast.
 
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