Shrinking Borders

Is Hong Kong really China. Yes. No. Wait, yes. But hold up, no. China and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Macau, have a long relationship. Most of us are familiar with the Opium Wars and how Britain took control of Hong Kong as a colony. They finally returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 under the condition that for 50 years Hong Kong would maintain its Western-style democracy. It worked perfectly well for China, but it's changing now.  Mainland China is now encroaching more and more on Hong Kong. The border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in China (from now on, China will refer to the mainland) has long been a symbolic one. Think of it as the iron curtain of Asia, or China rather. Don't forget the 38th parallel.

Though China has promised to not barge in on Hong Kong, it sort of is. China’s military is supposed to defend Hong Kong, so they have a huge building right in the middle of the city. That is definitely an encroaching presence. Also, China has been slowly influencing the media. Most Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, but China has been trying to introduce Mandarin news outlets and other forms. Mandarin is of course the standard spoken form of Chinese used in mainland.

So what happened? Why is China trying to encroach on the one part that is free. For the past few decades, Hong Kong has had an economy equivalent to a quarter of mainland China’s economy. But now, China has these mega cities like Shanghai and Tianjin that are worth more than Hong Kong. So you can imagine how China essentially doesn’t respect Hong Kong. They don’t have to respect Hong Kong because they don’t contribute that much anymore to the gross GDP.

It's quite an interesting phenomena, where Hong Kong was once the symbol of what could never be obtained, a true jewel of Asia. So what will happen in 2017, when the lease expires? The world may never know.