Peter Kammerer

Shades Off | Patriotism should not lead to a single, Beijing-approved view of Hong Kong history

In our attempt to bring Hong Kong’s account of its own history in line with the mainland Chinese version, there needs to be room to accommodate different points of view

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A scene depicting the end of colonial rule in Hong Kong was included in the performance on June 28 this year, celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, at the National Stadium in Beijing. The events of July 1, 1997, referred to in the past in Hong Kong’s school textbooks as the Hong Kong handover, is now described as a return to Chinese sovereignty. Photo Simon Song

Peter Kammerer

Published: 6:45am, 7 Sep 2021Updated: 6:51am, 7 Sep 2021

History is fluid, being shaped over time by research and interpretation. A saying that it is “written by the victors” is also partly true.

Knowing that should have prepared me for a visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History. Still, I was surprised to read in the section on British colonial rule that “through three unequal treaties, Britain succeeded in illegally occupying the entire area of Hong Kong”.

It can’t be disputed that the Qing dynasty was in a weak bargaining position in the face of foreign pressure in the 19th century; two wars waged – the second with a combined military force from Britain and France – were lost and, each time, territory was conceded in treaties. That was how Hong Kong Island became part of the British empire in 1842, and the southern part of the Kowloon peninsula in 1860.

A third pact in 1898 gave it control of the New Territories. Negotiating from a weak position can be interpreted as “uneven”, but is an agreement that leads to the handing over of territory “illegal occupation”?

Children display a placard showing a ‘Timeline of the invasions by Great Britain into the whole Hong Kong territory’ and the unequal treaties that followed, in front of Beijing’s Revolutionary History Museum, during a patriotism-building activity organised by their elementary school on October 24, 1996, ahead of the 1997 handover. Photo: AFP

Yet this is how one draft text book for the revamped high school liberal studies course, renamed “citizenship and social development”, portrays events. It describes the end of colonial rule on July 1, 1997, as Beijing “resuming the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong” rather than a “handover”, as previous editions taught.

That is in keeping with the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative that, despite the treaties, China never gave up sovereignty of Hong Kong because the pacts were illegal and violated international conventions.