How many in Hong Kong supported reunification?

October 6, 2006 7:31 AM

How many Hong Kongers supported reunification before it happened? Now?

I'm aware that in the 60s at least there were pro-communist groups in Hong Kong. But did people want reunification in the 80s as the Sino-British Joint Declaration was made or in the 90s when the changeover occurred? How about now—would Hong Kong people prefer to be independent or under the British again?

Feel free to comment or compare on Macao and Taiwan as well. John Woo's film Bullet in the Head inspired this question.

posted by grouse to Law & Government (2 answers total)

I do not know about today, but I do recall from a Chinese Politics course I took (sorry no real sources), that a vast majority of the population of HK when queried by the colonial authority as to whether they would prefer independence or reunification chose reunification. This is significant becuase these people by and large were the same ones or the children of those who had fled Shanghai and other mainland cities in 1949 to get away from the communists. The crux of this is that while they were not fans of the communists, the sense of "Chineseness" was still very strong, and the idea of not being part of China was not acceptable to them. Chinese patriotism tends to overshadow political differences, even radical ones.
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:41 AM on October 6, 2006

I can only speak anecdotally, but pretty much all my relatives (and I have a lot of family over there) save the elderly considered immigrating elsewhere and most did (although the majority would return later when things did not look as bad as they had originally feared).
posted by juv3nal at 3:51 PM on October 6, 2006