ABSTRACT
The main title of this book, “Reluctant Exiles?”, may give the impression that Hong Kong people are being driven from their homeland and settling overseas by force of circumstance rather than by willing choice. The return of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on 1 July 1997 is seen to be the main factor increasing nervousness and causing emigration. It is the time when a people reared in the freedoms of laissez-faire capitalism will be handed over to a country that, at least from the perspective of mid-1993, will still be a centrally planned economy run by the Communist Party. The key question revolves around whether Hong Kong can be successfully absorbed into the People’s Republic of China without threatening and disrupting the economic, social, and political systems of Hong Kong. Few are sanguine enough to believe that the transition will be uneventful.
