Word: kowloon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...people pitched their way across the South China Sea to Hong Kong, mostly in rickety, open vessels. Last week 51 of them -- eight men, 17 women and 26 children -- learned they had risked their lives for nothing. Awakened at 3 a.m. at the Phoenix House refugee detention center in Kowloon, they were asked to gather their belongings, then herded into trucks by government personnel, some equipped with batons and shields. From there they were taken to Kai Tak Airport and put aboard a jet. Destination: Hanoi...
...British began the negotiations by conceding that their 99-year lease on the New Territories (constituting 90% of the colony) would elapse in 1997, yet contending that Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were theirs in perpetuity. China quickly squelched that claim. Then London demanded a continued British presence in a Chinese-owned Hong Kong after 1997. Peking said no to that too. With little progress being made, the Chinese delivered an ultimatum last fall: if no agreement was concluded by September 1984, they would unilaterally announce the terms of the colony's future. That got Britain's attention...
...exports greater than those of all mainland China. Britain has ruled the colony for 142 years under three treaties signed in the 19th century with imperial China's impotent Qing dynasty. One treaty grants Britain perpetual control over the island of Hong Kong and the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula. Two other pacts provide for British sovereignty over the outer "New Territories" until...
...terms of Britain's 99-year lease, more than 90% of Hong Kong's land area, the 373-sq.-mi. New Territories, will revert to China. (Treaties signed in 1841 and 1860 give Britain ownership of the remaining 34 sq. mi.-Hong Kong island and portions of Kowloon-" in perpetuity.") Although an arrangement short of total reversion may eventually be worked out between London and Peking, permitting Hong Kong to continue to function as it does now, some fear that China will insist on full sovereignty. That could mean the end of Hong Kong's capitalistic ways...
That future, in the eyes of Hong Kong's 5.5 million nervous residents, has never seemed more in need of clarification. From the luxurious mountaintop mansions of "the peak" to the factory floors of Kowloon, from the shimmering office towers of the business district to the wretched squatter camps near Aberdeen, the consuming topic of conversation nowadays is what exactly will happen to Hong Kong before July 1, 1997. That is the date when more than 90% of Hong Kong's land area, the 373-sq.-mi. New Territories, will revert to China under the terms...