Sino-British Confrontation over Hong Kong

Hong Kong, one of the most modern cities in the world, is one of its greatest anachronisms. It is the last corner of Asia where Europeans rule, a rock-pool left, brilliant, vital and teeming, by the historic ebb tide which saw the age of European dominance over Asia ending in this century's second half The Germans, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the British, whose domains in Asia were once greatest of them all, withdrew or were forcefully evicted. But Britain preserved its power undiminished over the tiny but populous patch of China named Hong Kong, and thus the reversion of Hong Kong to China in 1997 will close an epilogue to the age of Europe's Asian dominance.