Discourses on Hong Kong and the Handover

Chapter 4 “Discourses on Hong Kong and the Handover” introduces the official and media discourses of the 1990s circulating in Britain and the Chinese region. The first subsection unpacks the British discourses as background to the newspapers' different perspectives of the last Hong Kong (HK) Governor, Christopher Patten. It details how Patten's approach to China diverged from his predecessors' convergence strategies. His electoral reform package put him on a collision course with Beijing and in a delicate position in HK, cornered between the advocates and opponents of more participatory politics. The second subsection, “Chinese and Taiwanese Discourses on the Sovereignty Transfer”, first reviews the role of language in Chinese politics in general, before examining the main narratives in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) official discourse on HK, as well as the voices in HK and Taiwan. The HK discourses comprise those of the pro-Beijing lobby, the democratic groups, and the general public. The Taiwanese subsection discusses the Republic of China (ROC) position on the colonial rule in HK, its official rejection of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ scheme for Taiwan, and the discourses across the political spectrum. This chapter closes with a survey of Taiwanese public opinion on the past and future of HK.