Why is China denying Hong Kong was a UK colony? | News

It’s not a new position for China, but the go is a even further case in point of Beijing’s dedication to implement its interpretation of historical past and gatherings and inculcate patriotism as it tightens its grip around Hong Kong subsequent large protests demanding democracy in 2019.

“Hong Kong has been Chinese territory considering the fact that historic instances,” says 1 new textbook observed by the AP. “While Hong Kong was occupied by the British next the Opium War, it remained Chinese territory.”

It is 1 of 4 sets of textbooks being provided to universities to change these presently in use, all stating the similar posture, Hong Kong’s South China Early morning Submit newspaper documented before this week.

Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 till its handover to Chinese rule in 1997, with the exception of Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945. Its colonial status was the end result of a pair of 19th century treaties signed at the end of the 1st and 2nd Opium Wars, together with the granting of a 99-year lease in 1898 to the New Territories, which enormously expanded the dimension of the colony.

China’s Communist Social gathering, which seized electrical power throughout a civil war in 1949, claims it never ever acknowledged what it calls the “unequal treaties” that the previous Qing Dynasty was compelled to indication pursuing army defeats.

In the late 20th century — with China unwilling to prolong the lease on the New Territories, and the colony not feasible without the need of them — Britain entered into protracted and normally contentious negotiations with Beijing in excess of disorders for the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule.

Ultimately, China took regulate of Hong Kong in 1997 below a “one state, two systems” arrangement that would hold the city’s economic, political and judicial methods unique from all those in mainland China for 50 years. That was laid out in a 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration registered with the United Nations, whilst China now refuses to recognize the arrangement.

HAS THIS Issue Come UP Just before?

In 1972, just months soon after the China seat at the United Nations was transferred to Beijing from the Republic of China govt that fled to Taiwan in the course of the civil war, the governing administration acted to get rid of Hong Kong and Macao, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1999, from a U.N. checklist of colonies, correctly stripping them of their correct to self-willpower.

At a time when European nations had granted independence to other colonies, China feared the similar could take place to the British and Portuguese enclaves it wished back again. “The settlement of the issues of Hong Kong and Macao is solely in China’s sovereign proper and does not at all tumble under the regular class of ‘Colonial Territories,’” China’s consultant said at the time.

Mary Gallagher, who teaches Chinese research at the University of Michigan, explained then-Chinese leader Mao Zedong wanted to assure that Hong Kong would keep on being component of China. “So Hong Kong moves in between the Chinese empire and the British empire, but loses its correct to decide its personal long term,” she mentioned.

WHY IS HONG KONG Transforming TEXTBOOKS NOW?

The new textbooks are element of broader modifications to schooling subsequent the 2019 protests, in which many students participated and some performed leadership roles.

The texts are for liberal reports lessons, which the governing administration overhauled previous year just after professional-Beijing lawmakers and supporters said they encouraged opposition and activist imagined. The courses now focus on themes this sort of as countrywide security, patriotism and identification.

The textbooks encourage the official see that the protest movement was the outcome of overseas agitation and threatened national protection. The Beijing govt utilized this kind of arguments to go a sweeping National Safety Law for Hong Kong in 2020 curtailing absolutely free speech, criticism of authorities and political opposition.

Authorities have released a National Stability Training Day on April 15, with students inspired to master more about national protection and take part in instructional routines that emphasize the value of preserving China.

The new textbooks are aspect of a thrust to deliver Hong Kong’s institutional values more closely in line with all those of mainland China, especially in the parts of politics and record. Increasingly, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is imposing his eyesight of strongly nationalistic and ever more authoritarian rule on the location.

China has sought to eradicate any memory of the military’s 1989 bloody suppression of scholar-led protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Sq., citing pandemic issues to ban once huge general public commemorations in Hong Kong on the June 4 anniversary.

“The Communist Party has a monopoly of the truth of the matter and of background in China,” reported Steve Tsang, a Chinese politics expert at the Faculty of Oriental and African Studies in London. “In the Xi tactic to record, info are merely incidental. Only interpretation matters. And only one particular interpretation is permitted.”