ABSTRACT
The triangular relationship between Britain, China and Hong Kong that dominated the history of the colony also played an important role in the period leading up to the colony’s return to China. In 1979, when Hong Kong Governor, MacLehose, visited Beijing to discuss the possibility of an extension of the New Territories lease, Hong Kong was not the same society as it had been in 1950 when it separated from the mainland. Economically, Hong Kong was one of the leading financial and trading centres in the world, known as one of the four ‘mini-dragons’ in Asia. Culturally, the colony had developed its own identity. The term Xianggang ren (Hongkongese) was popular both within and outside the territory. In the early 1980s, when the Chinese government indicated that China would take back the colony in 1997, Hong Kong was not enthusiastic about its return. To Hong Kong, China was not just the ‘motherland’, but a country with a Communist government and third-world economy. The uncertainties of an unknown future beyond 1997 meant that the colony suffered a crisis of both confidence and identity from the early 1980s. Between 1982 and 1984, Hong Kong was excluded from Sino-British negotiations about its own future. Between 1984 and 1988, the colony battled against both the Chinese and the British governments over changes to its political structure. China’s uncompromising decision to establish a nuclear power station near the colony, and the drafting of Hong Kong’s constitution of the Basic Law between 1985 and 1990 did not impress the community. Furthermore, the Chinese government’s handling of the Beijing student democracy movement in 1989 also reinforced Hong Kong’s view of the Chinese government as an undemocratic Communist regime. The failure of both Britain’s confidence-boosting scheme after the Tiananmen Square incident and the political reforms instituted by the last Governor, Chris Patten, on the eve of the colony’s return to China reflected the demise of British influence in the triangular relationship. As a consequence, and more than in any other historical periods, Hong Kong cinema has become, in the 1980s and 1990s, a forum for the construction, exploration and questioning of Hong Kong’s sense of nationhood.
