On July 1st, 1997, the United Kingdom handed over the crown jewel of its last remaining overseas possessions, that being Hong Kong, to China, as they had previously agreed in the past. However, although widely supported by both parties, this agreement still came with several conditions. The British presence in Hong Kong greatly impacted how the whole territory fundamentally functioned, ranging from driving on the left-hand side of the road to having their distinct currency. As such, having them adapt to an entirely new system of government in the form of the People’s Republic of China would be impossible overnight. Thus, the most important clause of the handover illustrated that Hong Kong must remain as its own “Special Administrative Region” (SAR), with its jurisdictions apart from territorial sovereignty, for 50 years until 2047, something referred to as the “One Country, Two Systems” doctrine. However, this promise of autonomy has recently started to chip away. Protests against a more unified judiciary, language encroachment, and media influence have started to rock Hong Kong over the past few years, bringing it closer to mainland China at the intense opposition of Hong Kongers. It seems that One Country, Two Systems may not last until 2047.
However, to fully understand the situation on the ground, the actual reality, and the dynamic surrounding this tense situation, I concluded that basic research on the topic would not suffice. I could not just state facts and boldly assume that the synthesized product reflected what was happening in Hong Kong. It is an entirely different place from anywhere I have ever been, so this demands more from me than what I have. I needed to reach out to somebody who knew what this was like, who grew up in the tug-of-war between Hong Kong and mainland China, and who understood the situation from a unique perspective. I thankfully managed to get in contact with a friend of mine, a dissident and critic from Hong Kong who is now living abroad in the United Kingdom. For the sake of his safety and his family’s safety, he will be referred to as “Charlie” for this interview, as per his request to remain anonymous.
To get a better sense of how the average Hong Konger feels, Charlie started by explaining where their regional identity lies, more specifically, who exactly it is that they feel closer to as a people. “It’s more of its own thing currently,” Charlie illustrated, “mostly because of the language barrier between Hong Kong and the mainland.” Charlie is referring to the Cantonese-speaking area of southern China, where Hong Kong lies, which contrasts with the Mandarin-speaking rest of the country, which is the primary language of China. “There was never a big push for people in the middle and working classes to start speaking English until the 2000s, and many people still practice Chinese folk religion and celebrate traditional Chinese festivities, so you could say they feel closer to China than Britain.” That was one of the key reasons why the transfer of Hong Kong between the UK and China was initially widely well-received, as the people there did not see themselves as British but rather closer to their fellow Cantonese speakers on the mainland. However, while Charlie says that is still the case today, he also points out the British’s influence and how it makes Hong Kong distinct. “We also celebrate Christmas and Easter, bank holidays, whereas in China and Taiwan, they aren’t. All road and public safety signs are written bilingually in traditional Chinese and English. The only mainline railway in Hong Kong is signalled and built to the same specifications as British railways. Theoretically, you can run a Class 319 (a British train) on it.”
One of the main problems Hong Kong faces is the increasing influence of mainland China despite the agreement made in 1997, and a significant front of this problem lies in the language usage within Hong Kong. “Cantonese is somewhat fading but not as much as it is/has in Macau,” Charlie explained, pointing out Macau, a Portuguese possession until 1999 in a very similar agreement to Hong Kong. “Most people who started/went to primary school after 1997 will be somewhat fluent in Mandarin, whereas millennials and early Gen Z kids growing up in the digital age will be even more fluent in Mandarin due to increased access to Chinese media, and children born after 2010 will speak Mandarin at a near native level due to the excessive amount of Mandarin language short form content they consume. If you go to their classroom, you’ll hear Mandarin spoken more than Cantonese.”
Charlie was required to learn Mandarin Chinese in school when he still lived in Hong Kong, and he can read and speak it at a conversational level. In terms of comparing Cantonese and Mandarin, Charlie uses the former much more frequently. “It’s not going to go extinct any time soon,” he says, “it has 80 million native speakers and is one of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world.” Cantonese is widely spoken throughout the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces of southern China, and although it is not as widely sidelined as many other minority languages throughout China, Mandarin Chinese is encouraged by the Chinese government and can be seen in most modern-day media, a key driving factor on the recent rise in Mandarin among Hong Kong’s youth according to Charlie, but it can also be seen elsewhere. In the city of Guangzhou, which used to be the cultural heart of the Cantonese-speaking world, Mandarin has surpassed that of Cantonese. “Cantonese has substantially declined in Guangzhou because of migration from other parts of China,” Charlie says, which he also points out could be a warning sign for Hong Kong regarding its own language demographics, as Mandarin has become the official business language in the entire country.
For Charlie, the main issue, and the one that made him and his family move to the UK, was, of course, the ever-pressing and more famous issue of increasing Chinese authority in Hong Kong despite “One Party, Two Systems.” While language reshuffling might be a more silent takeover, to him, the louder takeover is already happening and violates the handover agreement. So, I asked him why he thought the Chinese government was doubling down on Hong Kong now rather than in 2047.
“They saw the liberals as a threat to the regime, or the more extreme wing of the liberals, I should say,” he responded, referring to more democratic-leaning politicians opposed to the Chinese Communist Party. “It’s because the Chinese government doesn’t like separatism, and half the population was doing that. It doesn’t like people who threaten the stability of the regime. The government wanted to find an excuse to crush liberal opposition. So they did since many of them were separatists and/or wanted more autonomy, protested on June 4th (associated with pro-democracy protests and the subsequent crackdown) and were against Article 23, which is essentially national safety legislation that was supposed to be done ages ago but never did until this year because of them. The pro-Beijing (Mainland) faction got defeated in a landslide so badly in the 2019 local elections that they had to change the election rules.” Charlie, therefore, attributes the crackdown and increasing ties to the mainland, at least in terms of when force is used, to several people within the extreme liberal caucus. “The extreme ones are the ones throwing Molotov cocktails at police cars and buildings and doxxing police officers.”
Whether it be in the form of the increasing presence of Mandarin Chinese and its influence on the speakers of Cantonese or a police response directed by the Chinese Communist Party at groups of pro-democracy advocates, Hong Kong indeed lies at a historical crossroads. Anything could happen for any reason as uncertainty for its future rises by the day and as 2047 gets ever closer. “I don’t know what’ll happen in 2047,” says Charlie, “I doubt Hong Kong will lose its SAR status. We drive on the left; our cars are right-hand drive, our legal system is based on English common law, it would be impractical to swap.” Charlie cannot comment on whether or not he has participated in protests against the Chinese Communist government. However, he encouraged me to guess based on his viewpoints, which present themselves as a combination of neutrality and scorn towards government authority. With relative optimism for the future of his former home and caution amongst the potential warning signs, Charlie retains a rare and unique perspective from someone brave enough to speak out on what is happening. It can only be guessed as to how many other people live with the same thoughts as him.
Edited by Lucy De Cartier
Oliver “Ollie” Scott-Hansen is an undergraduate student at McGill University studying history and Russian language, hailing from just outside New York City, yet maintaining similarly strong ties to his familial heritage in north and central Italy. He joined the Catalyst team in Fall 2024 as a staff writer, something he enjoys doing as a hobby as well. With a particularly vested interest in Eastern Europe, the post-USSR world, and the Russo-Ukrainian war, coupled with his various connections throughout the global international relations space, Ollie reports on issues throughout the world that mostly center around key geopolitical developments in contentious places mostly involving war/conflict, and domestic affairs within the United States. He has experience mainly reporting from Telegram, carefully analyzing the Russian Invasion of Ukraine through his updates forum there, but also spends considerable amounts of his free time glued to maps and statistics trying to make sense of the crazy world that surrounds our day-to-day lives.