Hong Kong - The Terbulent Times
Author: P VISWA MATHAN
ISBN: 9789889766665
RM69.90
Publisher, CAL BOOKS
Publication Date,
Format, Paperback
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HONG KONG and its people have a remarkable history. The territory comprising a barren rock on China's southern coast with a natural deepwater harbour, and its adjoining regions were the bounty that British opium traders extracted, in the mid-19th century, for ceasing their assaults on a weak and powerless Qing dynasty China. Since then, two world wars as well as the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and upheavals in China transformed the territory from a pirates' hideout to an economic miracle. Equally, significant was the transformation of its population, largely refugees from China A docile bunch Today, their children and grandchildren are showing the courage to stand up to their new sovereign, the People's Republic of China, and demand civil rights. The author, a journalist, a front-row observer witnessing this transformation since the mid-1960s, discusses the British policy and actions concerning its China coast colony as well as China's handling of its new possession, which Britain bequeathed, in the words of its last Hong Kong governor, as something larger than Cleopatra's dowry. The bequest has benefitted Britain enormously, lts exports to China skyrocketed, from £1.9 billion to £22,3 billion between 1999 and 2017. meanwhile, Beijing's move to chip ax~'ay at the freedoms guaranteed in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and the Basic Law, has made many Hongkongers rise in protest. This unrest was in its sixth month as this book event to print. Where will it lead? Will Hong Kong become the tail that will wag the dog, and bring down the communist dictatorship in China, now in its eighth decade? Other communist dictatorships in the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, from which Chinese communists had drawn inspiration, have crumbled in their seventh decade. Viswa Nathan is a journalist based in Hong Kong. Born in Kerala on the southwest coast of India, he moved to Hong Kong in 1965 and joined the Far Eastern economic Review
