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Britain exchanges Weihaiwei for the New Territories; other concessions for greater Hong Kong?

J

Jackson Lennock

Well-known member
In 1909, the British Governor of Weihaiwei (up in Shandong) proposed that the country return Weihaiwei in exchange for a permanent cession of the leased New Territories of Hong Kong (British since 1898 and until 1997). This idea wasn't taken up.

What if it had been? Britain here gets the New Territories in perpetuity as part of Hong Kong.


Additionally - could Britain have exchanged or returned other concessions for making Hong Kong even larger? A border further north on the on the Yangtai and Wutong Mountains would give Hong Kong more water and a more defensible boundary. The border could extend along the mountains further east to include the Dapeng Peninsula, and could extend south to include the Wanshan Archipelago.

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I don't really think it changes the reality that once the PRC or any other Chinese government recovers from the warlord period they will make diplomatic moves and eventually military ones to take it back from a declining British empire
 
Torten said:
I don't really think it changes the reality that once the PRC or any other Chinese government recovers from the warlord period they will make diplomatic moves and eventually military ones to take it back from a declining British empire
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The rest of the world may be uneasy with such irredentist stuff, though. Look at the precedent it could set for Germany and its eastern territories.
 
A bigger Hong Kong would be a more defensible Hong Kong too. OTL the Chinese had the simple option of cutting off Hong Kong's water supply if Britain didn't give it up.

Here, the border is further north, rooted in somewhat tough mountains, and includes various reservoirs such that Hong Kong is self-sufficient for its water needs.
 
You can only really speak in generalities here. The bigger Hong Kong's hinterland is, the more defensible it is, yes. And removing the legal imperative to return the New Territories lease means there's the lack of a trigger date where there has to be a firm set of choices on Hong Kong on the part of both a Chinese government and a British government.

But China will never give up aspirations to take back Hong Kong any more than Spain has on Gibraltar. As such it really depends on how China and Britain progress for the rest of the century. If British status and power projection goes into a nosedive then undoubtedly a Chinese government will try to actively press the issue of Hong Kong, and potentially, if Britain finds itself in a very bad state, likely try to seize it.

This increases the likelihood of Hong Kong remaining a seperate unit but that's about all you can say. It doesn't guarantee that.
 
China's going to want it back if it can, especially the PRC. It all comes down to if they're willing to use force (i.e. think other countries won't back the UK if it fights to hold on). I think by the time they're being wooed in from the cold and become everyone's favourite big trading partner, war's most likely off and Hong Kong gets lovebombed to get them to want to rejoin the mainland instead: lots of cultural outreach, students invited to Beijing universities, shiny trade, money quietly going to pro-unification parties.
 
Let's consider for a moment why Weihaiwei was in British hands. At the start of 1898 Germany had captured Tsingtao and set up a naval base there, compounding a military threat in northeastern China when Russia seized Port Arthur in 1895. These were the key catalysts for Britain to take up the Weihaiwei lease, so the waters leading to Beijing and Tianjin wouldn't be monopolised by potentially hostile powers. Russia lost Port Arthur to Japan in 1905, which was bound by treaty to alliance with Great Britain, but after the war the lack of strategic direction with the neutralisation of the Russian threat and Japan's expansionist aims in China cooled relations with Britain once the euphoria had worn off. On top of this Japan's ascendancy had further provoked Kaiser Wilhelm II's xenophobia, and Tsingtao became a focal point of German naval expansion as part of Weltpolitik. Even if Britain's military presence in Weihaiwei was mostly a token one, it still offered a harbour and staging point for military operations that could frustrate the ambitions of either power.

What good does a territorially enlarged Hong Kong offer by comparison? To the British colonial mind at the turn of the century, 99 years was "as good as forever", and expectations of a hostile China as a military and economic juggernaut weren't exactly high. Sure, fortifications could be built and developed and settlement encouraged, but is that going to deter Japan from defying the Open Door Policy to carve out a sphere of influence in Manchuria, or Germany from building up the East Asia Squadron into a force capable of blockading Shanghai and/or Tianjin? Great Britain had considerably less appetite to partition China into foreign spheres of influence, because they saw a stable China which they could do business in as ideal - hence their adherence to the Open Door Policy - and Japan was the Great Power most intent on undermining that accessibility - hence their opposition to it.

Don't get me wrong, as a Hongkonger I'm still pretty attached to the idea of it enlarged and/or remaining under British governance, and I hold a lot of affinity for my Cantonese cultural identity. But there are some realities in the bigger picture that have to be accounted for. There are reasons why the idea was not taken up outside of Lugard's office.
 
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Honestly I can't help but think "no 99 year lease" may mean an earlier end to British Hong Kong, as China's still got the incentive to push for it back and it's not even about trying to make sure the planned end date stays that way(/and is the end date for all of it).
 
OwenM said:
Honestly I can't help but think "no 99 year lease" may mean an earlier end to British Hong Kong, as China's still got the incentive to push for it back and it's not even about trying to make sure the planned end date stays that way(/and is the end date for all of it).
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I concur. It feels likely that this is a timeline where the riots in the sixties lead to the Red Guard coming over the border in '67, which leads nowhere good.
 
SenatorChickpea said:
I concur. It feels likely that this is a timeline where the riots in the sixties lead to the Red Guard coming over the border in '67, which leads nowhere good.
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What about an equivalent to the 12-3 incident in Macau? That led China to get a lot of influence over Macau, which is why Macau is much more pro-Beijing than Hong Kong.
 
SoldierOfChrist said:
Casino industry’s got more to do with Macau’s present political climate than anything that happened during the CR.
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Both are rather intertwined. The families which run the gambling sector are closely tied to the political elite that came to power after 12-3 and the triads, and it's because of that, along with their effective control over the press, education, and economy, that enabled them to consolidate their control well before the transfer of sovereignty in 1999.
 
Hong Kong was acquired by force by a colonial power - China wanting it back isn't irredentism. German irredentism would be wanting territories back in which no Germans live. China taking Hong Kong back is kicking out an invader.
 
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
Hong Kong was acquired by force by a colonial power - China wanting it back isn't irredentism. German irredentism would be wanting territories back in which no Germans live. China taking Hong Kong back is kicking out an invader.
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Irredentism is a politically neutral word which describes a desire to regain territory lost. I don't think its helpful to moralise that word and use different language for cases we approve of vs cases we don't.

Ukraine's current position towards the Crimea is as much an irridentist one as the Russian one prior to the annexation. Because both want to obtain territory lost. The ethics of that desire is irrelevant.
 
I think this would be a timeline in which China has no incentive to even pretend to honour the orginal treaties between Imperial China and Britain, which were forced on the Chinese at the point of a gun. In OTL, they could make a big show of honouring them because HK was going to China soon anyway; in ATL, they'd probably move armies to the border and say "you can have a reasonably organised withdrawal and handover, or we take it by force - either way, we're taking it back."

Chris
 
Gary Oswald said:
Irredentism is a politically neutral word which describes a desire to regain territory lost. I don't think its helpful to moralise that word and use different language for cases we approve of vs cases we don't.

Ukraine's current position towards the Crimea is as much an irridentist one as the Russian one prior to the annexation. Because both want to obtain territory lost. The ethics of that desire is irrelevant.
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I'm not talking about ethics, and please don't make assumptions like that. China viewed the British in HK as an unpleasant tenant and patiently waited for their lease to expire. They didn't need to redeem lost territory because it wasn't lost, it was leased. I guess for the island it's technically irridentism.
 
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