Straight WI: Britain still has Hong Kong

Alright, so as the title implies, this is a what if about Britain holding onto Hong Kong, it's not an AHC, so no need to talk about probability or anything. Just chalk it up to having a permanent lease.

That dealt with, what would the impact be? How would Britain's role in Asia be changed? Would they be regarded as more of a world power? Could Hong Kong be integrated over time into the union as a normal part of it?
 
When Britain handed over Hong Kong IOTL, the city-state was undergoing democratisation, something that's now proving to be a sticking point for China and pro-Chinese HK lawmakers. I imagine a British HK remaining a flashpoint in Chinese-British relations, but would definitely still be a democratic hub.

Also, while ridiculously difficult, it's not impossible for Britain to hold on to HK. It just needs the backing of the US, huge routs on the part of the Chinese, and a push to Shenzhen to secure water supplies and a bargaining chip. Achieving all of them, though, requires obscene amounts of Iron Lady luck, one the Britons, fortunately or not, are not willing to gamble.
 
As far as I understand the PRC used Hong Kong as a "window" to the West and funneled trade through it while keeping it on a short leash, especially by controlling its water supplies from the mainland. Since this is an alternative history discussion one could surmise that a more conservative regime would prefer this to actually opening itself to the West. Hong Kong would perhaps get access to greater trade and manufacturing inland, focusing it there rather than giving opportunity to ROC and Japanese (or even American) enterprises thus making the UK a bigger player in Asia. Successive UK governments might have seen greater value in an "East of Suez" presence with less willingness to concede Asia to the United States. One could see a stronger RN since the UK needs to fly the flag more independently, greater revenue and opportunity spurring better domestic economics, and so on as the small shifts reverberate. The potential is rather greater than it seems I think.
 
As far as I understand the PRC used Hong Kong as a "window" to the West and funneled trade through it while keeping it on a short leash, especially by controlling its water supplies from the mainland. Since this is an alternative history discussion one could surmise that a more conservative regime would prefer this to actually opening itself to the West. Hong Kong would perhaps get access to greater trade and manufacturing inland, focusing it there rather than giving opportunity to ROC and Japanese (or even American) enterprises thus making the UK a bigger player in Asia. Successive UK governments might have seen greater value in an "East of Suez" presence with less willingness to concede Asia to the United States. One could see a stronger RN since the UK needs to fly the flag more independently, greater revenue and opportunity spurring better domestic economics, and so on as the small shifts reverberate. The potential is rather greater than it seems I think.

Interesting. Do you think if there was a permanent lease that there would be any idea of fully integrating (seats in Parliament, and treated like Scotland or Wales with a devolved Assembly) Hong Kong into the Union around this time?
 
I am not versed enough in British politics to give more than a speculative response. I suspect the impetus would be greater than for say a Gibraltar, the potential tax revenue would likely spur more government interaction both ways, i.e. more representation and more oversight, both would argue for it. But then the strength of Hong Kong is that it is neither fish nor fowl, a little ambiguity might be what the PRC prefers. I say pick a course and set out the reasons it goes that way to see if it works. Fascinating possibilities.
 
It would also be very interesting if China gets a more nationalistic government and how they would react to a foreign military base on their southern shore.

Just recently they refused to let a US Carrier into HK, how would they react if it was still part of the UK?


But I do agree with Michaelwest about, HOW to keep HK part of the UK. Cause the only way that is happening is if China thinks it is China's best interests.
 
It would also be very interesting if China gets a more nationalistic government and how they would react to a foreign military base on their southern shore.

This was my counter thinking as I pondered the issue raised. Honestly I assume a Communist leadership does not view the Opium War and Hong Kong as the humiliation a KMT leadership should. A KMT China would be open to trade and focus on Shanghai to the detriment of Hong Kong, it would pressure the UK to concede the territory and go back to Europe, I see Hong Kong becoming an unwanted ward more like Macau and the UK more willing to cut ties with it.

That said I wonder if the UK would be a bigger presence in Asia with our notional Hong Kong and near monopoly on the China trade? Would Singapore have become as independent or Taiwan as successful? Would it have been a better glue to make the entire Commonwealth prosper?

Could this special trading relationship have led to the UK being dominant today in manufacturing with cheaper China labor? To illustrate would say an Apple Computers move to the UK to become a bigger player outside the domestic US, eventually developing gadgets best made in China and pushing all that profit through the London Exchange? Making the UK another focus of post-industrial high-tech leadership? As I said, I could see tiny Hong Kong leveraging an entire different timeline for the UK for any thinker who draws out the threads of possibility.
 

Sargon

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Actually, as for acquiring the New Territories there's a chance in 1909. Apparently, there was enough belief that the Chinese government would be agreeable to the exchange of the British concession of Weihawei for the permanent acquisition by Britain of the New Territories that the governor of Hong Kong suggested it to the Colonial Office. However, Sir Frederick Lugard's proposal did not receive much interest from the British government. Weihawei wound up being returned in 1930.

Have this proposal looked at more seriously and accepted, and this may be a way to solve the problem of getting the New Territories on a permanent basis. As for the future, well that's another thing.


Sargon
 
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This was my counter thinking as I pondered the issue raised. Honestly I assume a Communist leadership does not view the Opium War and Hong Kong as the humiliation a KMT leadership should. A KMT China would be open to trade and focus on Shanghai to the detriment of Hong Kong, it would pressure the UK to concede the territory and go back to Europe, I see Hong Kong becoming an unwanted ward more like Macau and the UK more willing to cut ties with it.

That said I wonder if the UK would be a bigger presence in Asia with our notional Hong Kong and near monopoly on the China trade? Would Singapore have become as independent or Taiwan as successful? Would it have been a better glue to make the entire Commonwealth prosper?

Could this special trading relationship have led to the UK being dominant today in manufacturing with cheaper China labor? To illustrate would say an Apple Computers move to the UK to become a bigger player outside the domestic US, eventually developing gadgets best made in China and pushing all that profit through the London Exchange? Making the UK another focus of post-industrial high-tech leadership? As I said, I could see tiny Hong Kong leveraging an entire different timeline for the UK for any thinker who draws out the threads of possibility.

Very interesting thinking. I think just Hong Kong could possibly change things up economically and technologically.

I don't think the fate of Singaporean independence would be altered, but people do forget that Harry Kuan Yew wasn't opposed to the British, so you never know.
 
I don't think the fate of Singaporean independence would be altered, but people do forget that Harry Kuan Yew wasn't opposed to the British, so you never know.

My thought is that the UK fights harder to retain ties to Singapore and Singapore sees itself as another part of this Hong Kong trading elite. Perhaps Singapore is also sidelined but perhaps it develops into the other link in this global trading-finance-shipping "cartel" exploiting the trade Eastward as Hong Kong exploits Westward. Just seeds but I wonder about the shift in emphasis beyond just the remnants of Empire in Asia.

And would the post-war ship building have moved from Japan to China instead of Korea? Would the UK have remained a dominant player in international shipping and ship building, designing hulls in the UK while building them in Chinese yards? Shipping engines and fittings to balance cargo while completed ships move goods to Europe and Eastern USA? Might up end Korea's boom. Would British automakers get deals in China, Rover or Morris becoming partners in the Chinese car industry? Might dilute both the Japanese and US trade balances. Would the RN be more important to successive governments? Imagine Hong Kong having its fingers on the oil trade to China? Might BP be an even bigger player globally? Would containers have become more influenced by the China trade and our hypothetical British influences? These are the flashes I see in the crystal ball. The UK crowd has a lot of fertile ground to plow here.
 
Actually, as for acquiring the New Territories there's a chance in 1909. Apparently, there was enough belief that the Chinese government would be agreeable to the exchange of the British concession of Weihawei for the permanent acquisition by Britain of the New Territories that the governor of Hong Kong suggested it to the Colonial Office. However, Sir Frederick Lugard's proposal did not receive much interest from the British government. Weihawei wound up being returned in 1930. Have this proposal looked at more seriously and accepted, and this may be a way to solve the problem of getting the New Territories on a permanent basis. As for the future, well that's another thing.
Even that might not be enough, the Communists in particular view the original agreement over Hong Kong as part of the Unequal Treaties and might decide to not recognise any subsequent treaties signed by the Republic of China after the Xinhai Revolution. One idea I had was for the swap to go through and then later the British doing better in Burma during WWII so that the Burma Road is able to remain open and supplies of arms continue to flow into China from armouries in India, the British sign treaties with the KMT and CPC recognising the swap of Weihawei for the New Territories as legitimate and binding in return for arms and materiel. Also included are terms giving Hong Kong permanent Most Favoured Nation trade status, guaranteeing water supplies, the promise to refrain from intervening in China on either side post-War, and that if Britain ever decides to give Hong Kong up China must be given first refusal to reclaim it before it can be transferred to a third party or become independent. Chiang Kai-shek and Chairman Mao sign for the KMT and CPC respectively, that I think would be enough to make it difficult for later governments of either of them to try and wriggle out of it. This is getting away from vega's original question though.

Personally I don't think it would make massive amounts of difference to be honest. Britain didn't start withdrawing from the Far East until the early 1960s or the bulk of the colonies out there until the 1970s and that was mainly due to with financial costs, the UK was going through a financial crisis so decided it couldn't afford to keep a presence 'East of Suez'. The only reason that Hong Kong wasn't returned is likely China, IIRC Portugal offered to return Macao before its lease expired but was firmly rebuffed, that it was self-financing without needing UK support, and that any domestic moves on the part of the locals to get rid of the UK would just mean a return to Maoist China that they wouldn't want. I doubt Britain keeping it would have much of an impact on their role in Asia or being seen as a world power to be honest. If by 'integrated over time into the union' you mean become a full part of the UK then I would say that would be pretty unlikely in my opinion, the UK tightened restrictions on resident of Kong Kong gaining UK citizenship and passports in the run-up to the handover in our timeline, I really can't see them opening the floodgates to unlimited immigration by making the colony into a part of the UK since the current day Special Administrative Region has a population roughly ten per cent that of the UK. With a permanent lease and no prospect of a return to China the main difference I can see would be possibly an earlier and more thorough introduction of democracy, the end result being much like Gibraltar in that they would be effectively self-governing but remaining a British possession so as to not have to rejoin their former owner.
 

Sargon

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Even that might not be enough, the Communists in particular view the original agreement over Hong Kong as part of the Unequal Treaties and might decide to not recognise any subsequent treaties signed by the Republic of China after the Xinhai Revolution.

Well I did say the future after such an exchange would be another thing. ;)

Personally I don't think it would make massive amounts of difference to be honest. Britain didn't start withdrawing from the Far East until the early 1960s or the bulk of the colonies out there until the 1970s and that was mainly due to with financial costs, the UK was going through a financial crisis so decided it couldn't afford to keep a presence 'East of Suez'. The only reason that Hong Kong wasn't returned is likely China, IIRC Portugal offered to return Macao before its lease expired but was firmly rebuffed, that it was self-financing without needing UK support, and that any domestic moves on the part of the locals to get rid of the UK would just mean a return to Maoist China that they wouldn't want. I doubt Britain keeping it would have much of an impact on their role in Asia or being seen as a world power to be honest. If by 'integrated over time into the union' you mean become a full part of the UK then I would say that would be pretty unlikely in my opinion, the UK tightened restrictions on resident of Kong Kong gaining UK citizenship and passports in the run-up to the handover in our timeline, I really can't see them opening the floodgates to unlimited immigration by making the colony into a part of the UK since the current day Special Administrative Region has a population roughly ten per cent that of the UK. With a permanent lease and no prospect of a return to China the main difference I can see would be possibly an earlier and more thorough introduction of democracy, the end result being much like Gibraltar in that they would be effectively self-governing but remaining a British possession so as to not have to rejoin their former owner.

Aye, well aware of all that, sadly. My father-in-law fled the mainland during the Cultural Revolution, The Red Guards seized all his property, beat up family members and made him become a farmer. That didn't go down too well with him as you might expect, so he fled Taishan for Hong Kong.

Presently my wife as a BN(O) holder is dealing with the very complicated, expensive and tiresome immigration process in the UK. In an altered TL I agree with you that there wouldn't be much change to that either.


Sargon
 
Well I did say the future after such an exchange would be another thing. ;)
Yeah. Some sort of arms for recognition deal was the only thing that I could think of to make it possibly stick, it's a bit more difficult to denounce a treaty when if it were to have Mao's own signature on it. Even then things would possibly get tense from time to time.


Presently my wife as a BN(O) holder is dealing with the very complicated, expensive and tiresome immigration process in the UK. In an altered TL I agree with you that there wouldn't be much change to that either.
Oh gods, I can just imagine. Death of a thousand (paperwork) cuts?
 
My two cents: One way to do this would be an ultra maoist regiem to step up in China. To ultra maoists, British Hong Kong would in fact be benificial since it will just be another example of the "capitalist pig-dogs” enroaching onto Chinese soil. This would create an extended 60s for HK, as events similar to the 1967 Riots occur more and more.
 
My two cents: One way to do this would be an ultra maoist regiem to step up in China. To ultra maoists, British Hong Kong would in fact be benificial since it will just be another example of the "capitalist pig-dogs” enroaching onto Chinese soil. This would create an extended 60s for HK, as events similar to the 1967 Riots occur more and more.

As I readily admit no expertise in the intricacies of Chinese politics, it appears that a more stalemated regime of Hua Guofeng as "leader" and Deng Xiaoping as behind the scenes reformer would potentially give us the a PRC that prefers to keep up an official inward focus and "strict" Maoist face with a Hong Kong as its preferred window to the west, reform being pursued much slower and even less in ways that influence politics, perhaps very much a fiction but setting up an alternative Hong Kong in control of the trade with China through the Seventies, Eighties and beyond. This Hong Kong becomes what it began as, a way to control trade with the Europeans without these foreigners actually getting into China's internal affairs. That is my amateur's read of how it might have been.
 
Oh gods, I can just imagine. Death of a thousand (paperwork) cuts?
If it's anything like the one I had to go through, the paperwork wasn't too difficult but the amount they wanted to know about me as the British Citizen husband was deeply intrusive and the amount we had to shell out made a very big dent in my wallet (something over £5k from memory).
 
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