Monday, August 08, 2005

Back To 1982: A Shock Poll About the Handover

Today, most Hong Kong people don't bat an eyelid about being part of China. And why should they? On balance, China has been great for Hong Kong, bailing it out really when its only remaining big domestic industry, the property sector, was down in the dumps.

But it is interesting for me to read a poll conducted back in 1982, when Britain was first entering into talks with China over the future of Hong Kong. The Far Eastern Economic Review poll showed that only 2% of Hong Kong people wanted the territory handed back to China, and 66% wanted no change in its status as a colony.

You find the reference to it here. Fascinating how things change. As things turned out, the return to China hasn't really been bad at all and has become Hong Kong's lifeline. One wonders what would have happened to Hong Kong if its people had been given a choice?

Incidentally, I am not trying to make some blanket statement about democracy here, just engaging in a bit of "what if..."

3 comments:

Madame Chiang said...

this post made me smile...remembering the build up to the hand over and the world's media forecasting the doom, gloom and fear that would occur come midnight on 30th June '97.....and as you say...it hasn't been all bad!!!

Dave and Stefan said...

Must have been so deprerssing to have been a gloom-and-doom, knowing-little-about-HK reporter from the States trying desperately to drum up a story about the Handover, having nothing happen and to have the final indignity of a huge rainstorm get you and your equipment soaking wet...

Madame Chiang said...

yes....it can't have been much fun...

After I posted the above comment I was trying to remember the name of a novel that came out a short time before the hand over...it ended with a 'Tiananmen Square style massacre in Victoria Park'...I think the name was '1997, the Year of the Ox'... or something similar. It just seemed fairly typical of the way the media and the rest of the world saw HK at that time.