The British Empire: Hong Kong

A tradition of protest that challenged British rule, and later Chinese authority, is now being suppressed. Protest is criminalised. Activists like Joshua Wong have been arrested under national security law, defended by Xi Jinping as restoring order and sovereignty.

An independent legal system, a free press, and the hard won right to speak and protest, albeit managed through police licencing, took shape in the final decade of British rule. They are now being dismantled.

At the 1997 handover, China promised 50 years of continuity. That promise now looks like empty words; Hong Kongers were handed over by Britain without securing in enforceable statute those freedoms, and China has now broken it. This is not just a crackdown, but a struggle for Hong Kong’s future, defined by how its past is understood.

For some Hong Kongers, protest is a way to defend a legacy of freedom, shaped in a city where space to organise, argue and dissent expanded, especially after Tiananmen Square in 1989, as demands for representation intensified. Its population surged and its economy became a global financial centre.

For others, these protests threaten order and reflect the lasting influence of empire. Hong Kong’s history is one of Chinese sovereignty interrupted by colonial invaders, not replaced. Its people, capital and lifeblood have always been tied to China; Hong Kong’s growth was built on that connection, and protests are a legacy of imperialist invasion of Chinese Islands rather than a foundation to defend.

If the colonial past is erased, so too is the basis of those rights, forcing a harder question.

Was Hong Kong shaped most by British power or Chinese power?