The legacy of the colonial administration of Hong Kong, viewed from the majority of constituencies in Britain, is chiefly formed from the characteristics of the territory on the eve of retrocession. This, it will be noted, is in sharp contrast to the views formed by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and many Chinese observers. The British prefer to emphasize personal freedoms, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the efficiency of government, the competitiveness of business, the preeminent status in international trade, the suppression of corruption, the quality of the engineering infrastructure, and the improving health and welfare provisions as essential characteristics of their legacy.Their Chinese counterparts are much more likely to hark back to the bad old days of national humiliation and imperialist exploitation, seeking to draw the attention of all compatriots to the historical significance of reunification.

As the one and a half centuries of British colonial rule draw to a close on 30 June 1997, it is timely to review the true legacy of British administration in Hong Kong. It would be naive to resort to any simplistic blanket judgment or to issue any sweeping endorsement or condemnation on the mixed record of the British administration. It would also be dangerous to look only at the attainments in the final days of the British regime and use them to reconstruct, or even to substitute for, the full span of British rule. Even given a charitable view of this sunset era of the British regime as its finest hour in Hong Kong, a more informed and balanced assessment of its past deeds must be appreciated in the fuller context of the actual inputs and outputs of British officialdom in shaping developments in the territory and the life of Hong Kong people during the entire course of British rule.

Hong Kong has been part of Chinese territory since ancient times. Before the British occupation, Hong Kong had achieved considerable development in agriculture, fisheries, the salt industry, transportation, cultural undertakings and education. It was by no means a desolate and barren land at that time. British troops occupied Hong Kong Island on 25 January 1841 during the Opium War. In August 1842, the British government formally annexed Hong Kong Island by forcing the Qing government to conclude the Sino-British Treaty of Nanking. In the Second Opium War, British troops forcibly occupied Kowloon in 1860. In October the same year, the British government annexed Kowloon after forcing the Qing government to conclude the Sino-British Convention of Peking. When imperialist powers were locked in their bid to carve up and grab spheres of influence in China, Britain again forced the Qing government into signing the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory in June 1898 by which it leased a large expanse of Chinese territory south of Shenzhen River and north of Boundary Street and some 235 islands, renamed later as the “New Territories,” thus achieving its occupation and control over the entire Hong Kong region.

With the end of the Deng Xiaoping era, China is struggling to define its future. Ongoing socioeconomic changes, impelled by Deng's reform since 1979, pose an unprecedented challenge to the post-Deng political leaders in terms of how to govern an increasingly open and economically prosperous but tension-ridden and potentially unstable society. This question also concerns many Chinese intellectuals and has actually become a new locus of intellectual political thinking. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that expanded economic freedom would foster the demands of political liberalization, the view prevailing in current Chinese intellectual circles is that of so-called neoconservatism.1 This term is loosely used to label a body of arguments calling for political stability, central authority, tight social control, role of ideology and nationalism.2 Such calls are also made by the government, but neoconservatism distinguishes itself from the official statements by defending the current political order from somehow different approaches and with very different rhetoric.

“Who friend, who enemy?” So asks Rewi Alley, poet-laureate of Sino- Foreign Friendship, echoing Mao. This article considers Friendship2 in the Chinese Communist sense; its principal focus is on the work of Alley and his role as an official Friend of China.3 Friendship is a key theme in China'ss foreign policy repertoire, and the Friend of China is a living embodiment of that Friendship. In the days when the People'ss Republic was isolated in the international community, any foreigner who was involved in China in some way had the potential to be labelled a Friend. Friendship implied obedience to the Chinese government'ss version of events. Declared ideological commitment to the ideals of the Chinese Communist Party was preferred, but not essential.

Abstract:On 17 May 1996, in a crypt at Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing, a private memorial was held by Ding Yilan to commemorate the deaths in the Cultural Revolution of her husband Deng Tuo, Liu Ren, Wu Han, and later of Liao Mosha. The date was the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Cultural Revolution and the suicide death of Deng Tuo. Mourning for Deng Tuo had been forbidden at his death when Ding Yilan was ordered to have the body cremated under a false name in a distant crematorium. Mourning ceremonies at the tenth and 20th anniversaries were impossible. In 1996 when it seemed that she might not live until the 40th anniversary, she decided time was running out. With no possibility of public commemoration because of the known disapproval of the Central Party authorities, Ding Yilan, in failing health, had arranged a private memorial for Deng Tuo and the other two members of the Three Family Village, with 40 invited guests. She included Liu Ren, the second secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee in the 1950s and early 1960s.