Yuen Kit (Jacky) Chau

Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellow in the Humanities

20082009 Forum on Change

Yuen Kit (Jacky) Chau

Philosophy, Politics, Economics/Finance

College '10

Hong Kong: Ten Years Since the Handover

On July 1, 1997, China resumed its sovereignty over Hong Kong. In 1984, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping proposed an intriguing idea that Hong Kong could continue to operate under its capitalist system and lifestyle for 50 years, a policy that was later adopted in the Basic Law of Hong Kong. Now more than ten years have passed since the handover. What are some of the major social, economic, and political changes that have occurred in Hong Kong since 1997? In particular, the study will look at the tensions between forces of convergence and divergence in Hong Kong over the period.