Quotable
quotes
Knowledge is power
“Knowledge is power.”
— Francis Bacon (1561-1626), British philosopher.
“The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.”
— Don Herold (1889-1966), American author and humorist.
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
— Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), English biologist and educator.
“I am never afraid of what I know.”
— Anna Sewell (1820-1878), English writer.
“It is better to ask some of the questions
than to know all the answers.”
— James Thurber (1894-1961), American author and cartoonist.
19 December 1984
A day that rocked Hong Kong
| Hong Kong entered a new era on 19 December 1984.
With the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, more than a century
of British rule over Hong Kong entered its final stages. At the end of
the first Opium War, the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 ceded Hong Kong to
Britain. In the following 155 years, the tiny island of Hong Kong passed
through tumultuous times and grew into a prosperous city playing a significant
role in global politics and economics. In September 1982, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Beijing to begin the lengthy process of negotiations about the future status of Hong Kong. These negotiations paved the way for the first official round of Sino-British talks in July 1983. After two years of negotiations, representatives of the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China — including Prime Minister Thatcher and Chinese Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang — signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration on 19 December 1984. It was a landmark decision that changed the future of Hong Kong. In the Joint Declaration the United Kingdom declared that it would restore Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, and the Chinese government declared its principle of “One Country, Two Systems” for Hong Kong. In the following years, the relationship between the two sides was sometimes tense. |
There were controversies regarding the restrictive
provisions for the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive and the
construction of a new airport at Chek Lap Kok. Conflicts and fears about
what would happen after 30 June 1997 seemed to grow daily even though
China had promised that Hong Kong would be allowed to continue its form
of government for at least 50 years. In 1989, Britain declared that it
would not give right of abode to British Dependent Territory citizens
in Hong Kong. An emigration crisis followed and tens of thousands of Hong
Kong people migrated to foreign countries like Britain, Canada and the
U.S. However, after many controversial years, the agreement eventually led to the successful re-accession of Hong Kong by China. |
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| The signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. |