Hong Kong owned by england

What if England owned Hong Kong and territory instead of just renting from China would China invade to reclaim territory?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
While the majority of Hong Kong was on lease, a small part was under de jure British control. This part was ceded along with the rest of Hong Kong because maintaining it separately was not viable. If the entirety of Hong Kong was under de jure permanent British control, then China might invade if Britain refuses to hand it over. Hong Kong is an island unlike Macau, but is still much easier to invade than Taiwan. Whether Britain would fight China to keep Hong Kong is beyond my knowledge.
 
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OTOH, if the New Territories, et al, where also de jure British, not a 99 year lease, would Britain even be obligated to return it then, assuming a POD far enough back where such is the case. Hong Kong has long been a major business and transport hub, having de jure control of it in entirety up through the modern day could radically change British politics and involvement on the world stage.
 
OTOH, if the New Territories, et al, where also de jure British, not a 99 year lease, would Britain even be obligated to return it then, assuming a POD far enough back where such is the case. Hong Kong has long been a major business and transport hub, having de jure control of it in entirety up through the modern day could radically change British politics and involvement on the world stage.
See what happened to Goa.

China doesn't even need to militarily invade Hong Kong; it could just declare an embargo and collapse the whole city (Hong Kong without economic ties to China is like NYC not having anything to with the rest of the USA, there's no rationale for it).
 
During the early 20th century, scotland, Wales, and Ireland all become independent(be a dominion or full independence). This turns Great Britain and Ireland into England. Ta da Hong Kong is ruled by England and not Great Britain. :p
 
See what happened to Goa.

China doesn't even need to militarily invade Hong Kong; it could just declare an embargo and collapse the whole city (Hong Kong without economic ties to China is like NYC not having anything to with the rest of the USA, there's no rationale for it).

Or the UK could make China an economic deal at some point. China may be a communist government, but they love making money.
 
That would kind of be interesting if it were actually a part of England itself and administered as such within the United Kingdom. But that probably requires a pre 1900 point of divergence.
 
Well, Cuba will never be in a good position to pull up a Goa on Guantanamo Bay.

Yea, to elaborate, the US is right nearby, and its navy is well within the means to keep Guantanamo Bay fighting in case of an invasion by Cuba, and that's still understating things.

Portugal, in contrast, is a vestigial empire with practically no navy that could cross halfway around the world to run logistics, much less garrison Goa with enough men to fight a country that's very, very big. This was the situation Hong Kong and Britain was in, and realistically, the British did what they could to extract the best conditions for Hong Kong under Chinese rule, notwithstanding anything of recent days that ought to be discussed in our dedicated Hong Kong thread in Chat.
 
If the entirety of Hong Kong was ceded (not just leased) to the UK, a lot would depend upon the leaders in each country come the era of Chinese power. If, for example, Deng Xiaoping attacked Hong Kong in 1982 (as he threatened to do during talks with PM Margaret Thatcher) there would be little Britain could do to stop them - Thatcher herself admitted that "there is nothing I could do to stop you," but warned that, "the eyes of the world would now know what China is like".

I such a situation I imagine that Thatcher would refuse to drop the British claim, and British rule over Hong Kong might be recognised by much of the 'Western Bloc' even if China has de facto control.

Alternatively, if there was a permanent cession and Deng restrained his impulse to attack, there might be a firmer justification for joint administration, or perhaps even joint sovereignty. I suspect the former to be more likely; one of the PRC's main points of argument was that the treaties which had placed the territory in British hands were 'unequal'.

I don't know if joint Anglo-Chinese administration with Chinese sovereignty meets the requirements, or even whether such a situation would last.
 
The British on a couple of occasions considered returning Weihaiwei for a permanent cession of the New Territories. Have the British return Weihaiwei in exchange for the New Territories and an expansion of HK into the mountains and lakes to the north (effectively making today's Shenzen part of HK). It'd be bigger and more defensible.
 
If the entirety of Hong Kong was ceded (not just leased) to the UK, a lot would depend upon the leaders in each country come the era of Chinese power. If, for example, Deng Xiaoping attacked Hong Kong in 1982 (as he threatened to do during talks with PM Margaret Thatcher) there would be little Britain could do to stop them - Thatcher herself admitted that "there is nothing I could do to stop you," but warned that, "the eyes of the world would now know what China is like".

I such a situation I imagine that Thatcher would refuse to drop the British claim, and British rule over Hong Kong might be recognised by much of the 'Western Bloc' even if China has de facto control.

Alternatively, if there was a permanent cession and Deng restrained his impulse to attack, there might be a firmer justification for joint administration, or perhaps even joint sovereignty. I suspect the former to be more likely; one of the PRC's main points of argument was that the treaties which had placed the territory in British hands were 'unequal'.

I don't know if joint Anglo-Chinese administration with Chinese sovereignty meets the requirements, or even whether such a situation would last.
Thatcher might refuse to drop the claim, but her successor will almost certainly recognize reality.

Reagan probably isn't going to do too much (look at the initial debate within the Reagan Administration over the Falklands business), and we Americans really needed China to put the screws on the Soviets.
 
Thatcher might refuse to drop the claim, but her successor will almost certainly recognize reality.

Like Ukraine has recognized a Russian Crimea? Oh wait.

This could be a major blow to the reputation of China and would likely lead to them not being endorsed by the US to enter the WTO and thus their great economic rise would never happen.
Not at any scale that we saw OTL that is.
 
No matter what its formal status, the PRC can have it whenever it wants.

From the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking: "China confirms, in its entirety, the second Article of the Protocol of Lisbon, relating to the perpetual occupation and government of Macao by Portugal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Portuguese_Treaty_of_Peking A recognized perpetual right of the UK to all of Hong Kong would be about as valuable.
 
Thatcher might refuse to drop the claim, but her successor will almost certainly recognise reality.

Like Ukraine has recognized a Russian Crimea? Oh wait.

I think @pinerana is right. If Hong Kong is seized violently, then it will be difficult for any British administration to drop the claim, even if they make no real attempt to assert it in practice. If 'enough' British servicemen die in its defence, then it will live on in national memory for at least a couple of decades. Chances are that the UK position will become one of claiming sovereignty, and proposing a referendum in the territory to decide its fate (a referendum which the PRC will almost deny).

It might become something like the Taiwan situation today, in the sense that the PRC is recognised by most countries as the 'true' China, but most of these countries also maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Similarly, both the UK and China will insist that their claim to Hong Kong is legal and de jure (if not de facto), but it probably won't actually affect relations much long-term.

Reagan probably isn't going to do too much (look at the initial debate within the Reagan Administration over the Falklands business), and we Americans really needed China to put the screws on the Soviets.

I agree with you. Britain will be in the Western camp come what may, but China needed to be persuaded to cooperate. That's why I'm pretty certain that Hong Kong will become Chinese, but I still suspect that the British claim will endure in theory if not in practice.

From the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking: "China confirms, in its entirety, the second Article of the Protocol of Lisbon, relating to the perpetual occupation and government of Macao by Portugal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Portuguese_Treaty_of_Peking A recognized perpetual right of the UK to all of Hong Kong would be about as valuable.

I think Britain is rather more formidable than Portugal. Obviously the PRC could roll into Hong Kong with virtually no difficulty, but Britain could potentially make trouble in different ways. The UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council after all. And there are the nuclear submarines to think about - obviously Britain won't use them to start WWIII over the territory, but they may at least give China a reason to think more carefully about Anglo-Chinese relations.
 
To most of the world, China's ceding Hong Kong to the British--whether as a leased territory or as a "permanent" colony--will look like an "unequal treaty" that simply had no validity in the post-World War II era. There would be no more protest over the PRC taking control of it than there was over India taking over Goa. To be sure, the PRC itself might prefer a special status for Hong Kong and negotiate with the British for it, but if such negotiations fail, the Chinese will take control one way or another, and suffer very little in the way of consequences.

The analogies with Crimea and Taiwan just don't hold. To the Ukrainians, Crimea isn't a distant colony but an integral part of their own territory. As for Taiwan, it is a de facto independent state, even to nations that do not recognize it formally.
 
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