New textbooks for Hong Kong schools will state the territory was never a British colony, local media report. Instead, the books declare the British “only exercised colonial rule” in Hong Kong – a distinction drawn to highlight China’s claims of unbroken sovereignty.
China has always asserted it never gave up sovereignty and its surrender of Hong Kong to the British was due to unfair Opium War treaties in the 1800s.
The UK returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 after ruling for over 150 years.
During its rule, it referred to Hong Kong – a port with a deep harbour that grew into a booming city state, and one of the world’s leading financial centres – as a colony, as well as a dependent territory.
The United Kingdom governed the area from 1841 to 1941, and from 1945 to 1997, after which it was handed back to China.
China maintains Hong Kong has always been its territory – that the British only occupied it after 1842.
Credit: bbc.com
