Calling 1997 event ‘handover’ belies ‘substance of momentous occasion’, Hong Kong No 2 official Matthew Cheung says

Chief secretary points to earlier article by the Post and defends government’s move to erase word from its website

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Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung has responded to a report stating that the government has removed the word ‘handover’ in online mentions of the 1997 event. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 1:34pm, 3 May 2018Updated: 10:51pm, 3 May 2018

Using the word “handover” to describe Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 “does not accurately reflect the substance or description of this momentous historical occasion” and falls short of official guidelines on terminology, the city’s No 2 official said on Thursday.

In a letter to the Post published online on Thursday, Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung defended the decision by the government’s Protocol Division to remove any mention of a “handover of sovereignty” from its website. Cheung said it was “entirely appropriate” to do so and “not rewriting history at all”.

“The term ‘handover’ was purely a convenient term coined in the run-up to 1997,” he added.

Government rewrites history of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover, one inconvenient phrase at a time

Cheung was responding to an article by the Post from Tuesday, which reported the alterations.

Text on one of the site’s pages had earlier read: “Since the handover of sovereignty over Hong Kong on 1 July 1997, a number of foreign state or government leaders have visited Hong Kong.”

After the changes, it began simply “Since July 1, 1997”.

The change followed a row over terminology, after the Education Bureau’s external textbook review group said that describing China as “taking back” Hong Kong in 1997 was problematic.

A screen capture of the original text on the website of the government’s Protocol Division.