WI: Britain keeps Hong Kong "in perpetuity"

What if the British keeps Hong Kong and its New Territories forever instead of a 99 year lease? How will this affect relations with China in the following 20th century?
 

kernals12

Banned
What if the British keeps Hong Kong and its New Territories forever instead of a 99 year lease? How will this affect relations with China in the following 20th century?
Just how does Britain keep Hong Kong "in perpetuity"? Do you think Britain has any chance in a war against China?
 
What if the British keeps Hong Kong and its New Territories forever instead of a 99 year lease?

Hong Kong proper was already ceded in perpetuity. It was the New Territories that were on the 99-year lease, instead. The easiest way, therefore, to get the New Territories ceded in perpetuity would be around the same time as when Kowloon (which started out also as a leased territory) was ceded - which requires a pre-1900 POD, with the First Convention of Peking in 1860.
 
Hong Kong proper was already ceded in perpetuity. It was the New Territories that were on the 99-year lease, instead. The easiest way, therefore, to get the New Territories ceded in perpetuity would be around the same time as when Kowloon (which started out also as a leased territory) was ceded - which requires a pre-1900 POD, with the First Convention of Peking in 1860.

And as I noted it will mean about as much as Portugal's right to "perpetual occupation and government of Macao"...
 

Khanzeer

Banned
What if after Tiananmen square incident
The Chinese to divert attention from home take over Hong Kong?
Do British respond?
If so what can they do ?
Falklands retake ?
 
I'm not sure about forever, but suppose the British cut a deal with China whereby they would agree to pressure the United States to drop its recognition of Taiwan in exchange for China overlooking the 99-year lease, or extending it, or adding a fifty-year leaseback agreement or something along those lines?

Obviously Britain had no chance of using force against China, and especially after WW2 Britain didn't have a particularly tasty carrot with which to entice China - we sold the carrots to the United States in exchange for munitions, and it took us ages to grow the carrots back because we had to keep giving carrots to the United States. So we didn't have any carrots or very many sticks.

The idea of post-war Britain pressuring the United States to do anything is laughable - that issue with the carrots again - but do the Chinese know that? Could we con them? Unlikely.
 
Another thing is that China could make Hong Kong economically useless through even a partial economic blockade.
 
Claim that the PRC will not be recognized as a successor state to Qing Dynastic China, from which Hong Kong was extracted from. Brits could use this as a pretext to not hand over the New Territories.

Obviously PRC won't accept this and they will likely go for a hostile approach like a blockade or even military occupation. Even if Hong Kong is reinforced with additional military forces, PLA's sheer numbers would still overwhelm the British. The only chance the British would have is by getting UN support, and to get this they would need to conduct a referendum on whether Hong Kong joins China or remains a colony.

I believe the Hong Kongers wouldn't be too keen on joining Red China, and thus the results would work in the British favour by attracting international support (and opposition to China). From here there could be a variety of options such as UN sanctions against the PRC and/or deployment of a peacekeeper force to the border. Eventually China would be forced to back off (or else Tiananmen Square may turn out differently for them).
 
Claim that the PRC will not be recognized as a successor state to Qing Dynastic China, from which Hong Kong was extracted from. Brits could use this as a pretext to not hand over the New Territories.

Obviously PRC won't accept this and they will likely go for a hostile approach like a blockade or even military occupation. Even if Hong Kong is reinforced with additional military forces, PLA's sheer numbers would still overwhelm the British. The only chance the British would have is by getting UN support, and to get this they would need to conduct a referendum on whether Hong Kong joins China or remains a colony.

I believe the Hong Kongers wouldn't be too keen on joining Red China, and thus the results would work in the British favour by attracting international support (and opposition to China). From here there could be a variety of options such as UN sanctions against the PRC and/or deployment of a peacekeeper force to the border. Eventually China would be forced to back off (or else Tiananmen Square may turn out differently for them).

This is just not going to happen. The UK recognized the PRC very early (January 1950--just a few days after India became the first non-Communist state to do so) in part precisely because it knew it held Hong Kong pretty much at the PRC's mercy. Certainly the US wouldn't defend it. When the Communists were rapidly gaining control of China in 1949, the US refused to make a firm commitment to the UK to defend Hong Kong because doing that would require the establishment of a "military position well inland" which in return would require "a movement of large-scale forces into China." Thus, "unless we are willing to risk major military involvement in China and possibly global war" it would be "unwise" for the US to contribute to the defense of Hong Kong. https://books.google.com/books?id=BGITDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45 As for the UN, the PRC was willing to defy it in Korea and would certainly be willing to do so over Hong Kong if it was determined to take it (which it would do long before 1997 if the UK refused to recognize it). And unlike the Chinese intervention in Korea, a Chinese takeover of Hong Kong would be seen by much of the UN (outside the US and western Europe) as simply China reclaiming territory it lost by imperialist "unequal treaties" (with the UK even trying to go back on those!).
 
David T hits the nail on the head.
This question comes up again and again and the answer is always the same: no matter how legally ironclad Britain's occupation of Hong Kong is, it will stem from an unequal treaty. That means China can always say it is pursuing a legitimate claim, and even most western countries would accept this.
Following on from this: if China cannot win Hong Kong at the negotiating table or through internal unrest a la the sixties riots, it will eventually seek to annex it directly- and the city cannot be defended without the use of nuclear war, which the UK will not commit to.

Finally, even if we accept that China does not challenge the legality of the perpetual lease and that China does not use the PLA to take the city for some reason, as soon as it possesses the New Territories it controls Hong Kong's water and power supplies, at which point annexation becomes a fait accompli.
 
And as I noted it will mean about as much as Portugal's right to "perpetual occupation and government of Macao"...

Except that in the Portuguese case, after the Carnation Revolution the new MFA-led Portuguese government wanted to get rid of Macao right away and Beijing flat out refused to take back Macao. A compromise was eventually reached which would eventually allow for the transfer of Macao back to Chinese rule in 1999. Had the Carnation Revolution not happened, the Portuguese could have gotten away with retaining Macao in perpetuity.
 
The Chinese refused to take Macao because they didn't want any potential tensions with the handover that might spook the real prize: the financial centre of Hong Kong.

If the Portuguese had decided to hold on to Macao, the Chinese would have 'offered' to take it as the same time as they did Hong Kong, or possibly later. But once they had Hong Kong, Macao would certainly have gone next- and the Portuguese would have every bit as much ability to keep it as they did Goa.
 
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