Background
After being made a crown colony since 1843, the status of Hong Kong was changed effectively under the British Nationality Act 1981, which came into force on 1 January 1983. The Act renamed all existing British colonies to dependent territories. The renaming did not change how the government operated but it affected the nationality status of Hong Kong's then over 5 million inhabitants, most of whom were to become British Dependent Territory citizens — a status that could no longer be transmitted by descent.
Regardless of the competing claims for sovereignty, the PRC's's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping recognised that Hong Kong, with its free market economy, could not be assimilated into the People's Republic overnight and that any attempt to do so would not be in the interests of either. He advocated a more pragmatic approach known as the One Country, Two Systems policy, in which Hong Kong (as well as Macau, and potentially also Taiwan) would be able to retain their economic systems within the PRC. On 19 December 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong (The Joint Declaration) was signed between the PRC and UK governments. Under this agreement, Hong Kong would cease to be a British Dependent Territory on 1 July 1997 and would thenceforth be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC. Citizens opposed to the handover led to the first wave of emigration.
Read more about this topic: 1980s In Hong Kong
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