This Day in History: o retorno de Hong Kong 'a soberania chinesa (NYT)

China Resumes Control of Hong Kong, Concluding 156 Years of British Rule By EDWARD A. GARGAN RELATED HEADLINESTime of Uncertainty begins: Will Beijing Honor Vows? Year of the Trojan Horse Empire's Sunset? Not Just Yet Hong Kong's People The Biggest Colony Tiananmen Square OTHER HEADLINESClinton Outlines Tax Cut Plan, Putting Emphasis on Education Registry Laws Tar Sex-Crime Convicts With Broad Brush Benchmarks of Justice: In 9 Extraordinary Months, the High Court Developed a Vast Panorama of Landmarks Crime Drops, Again North Korea Agrees to Talks Art Dealer Accused of Fraud In Jail and in the Spotlight Tyson Asks Forgiveness HONG KONG, Tuesday, July 1 -- In the first moments after midnight, in a ceremony of solemn precision and martial music, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong today, ending 156 years of British colonial rule. Seconds after British soldiers lowered the Union Jack for the last time to the strains of 'God Save the Queen,' China's red banner was raised, marking the transfer of this free-wheeling capitalist territory to Communist control. It was an event awaited with trepidation as well as excitement since 1984, when Britain and China agreed on terms for the transfer of power over this territory wrested from China in the 19th century wars over the opium trade. And it ushered a time of uncertainty over whether China would honor its pledge to maintain Hong Kong's way of life largely unaltered for the next 50 years. For many ordinary people in the streets of Hong Kong, this was a time of celebration, not necessarily over the departure of the British or the arrival of the new masters from Beijing, but for experience of witnessing a big moment in history. [Page A9.] In the convention center where the handover of power took place, China's President, Jiang Zemin, using a Mandarin dialect as alien to Hong Kong's Cantonese-speaking people as the English of the British authorities, declared the event 'a festival for the Chinese nation and a victory for the universal cause of peace and justice.' 'The return of Hong Kong to the motherland after a century of vicissitudes indicates that from now on, our Hong Kong compatriots have become true masters of this Chinese land and that Hong Kong has now entered a new era of development,' Mr. Jiang said. Change came quickly as the territory's new rulers assumed control. At the stroke of midnight, Hong Kong's elected legislature was abolished, and a Beijing-appointed body of lawmakers took its place. A range of Hong Kong's civil liberties were rolled back as new constraints were placed on the right to protest and association, and any form of speech promoting the independence of Taiwan or Tibet was banned. Change came in small ways too. Across Hong Kong, police officers, fire fighters and all the uniformed services unpinned their colonial insignia and replaced it with the new symbols of China's Hong Kong. The British coat of arms was removed from above the main government building at midnight, and the royal emblem was pried from the Rolls-Royce that used to ferry the British Governor about and will now serve Hong Kong's new Chief Executive. Quietly, almost forgotten, Prince Charles of Britain and the former colonial Governor, Chris Patten, were driven from the handover ceremony to the harbor front, where the royal yacht Britannia waited to bear them away from Hong Kong. Shortly after the midnight change of sovereignty, President Jiang gave the oath of office to Beijing's choice to govern this territory, Tung Chee-hwa, a 60-year-old British-educated shipping magnate. As dawn broke, an unbroken procession of Chinese Army armored personnel carriers, trucks and buses carrying 4,000 soldiers streamed over the border and through the streets of Hong Kong. At villages along the way, thousands of Hong Kongers waited in the rain, waving flags and bouquets of flowers and shouting welcomes to the soldiers. British rule ended in a ceremony whose details exhausted the negotiating skills of both sides. On a simple dais inside the just completed Exhibition and Convention Center, two pairs of flagpoles -- one flying the Union Jack and the British Hong Kong flag, the other bare -- stood before chairs for Mr. Jiang's party and those accompanying Prince Charles. Prince Charles spoke briefly. 'The United Kingdom,' he declared, 'has been proud and privileged to have had responsibility for the people of Hong Kong, to have provided a framework of opportunity in which Hong Kong has so conspicuously succeeded, and to have been part of the success which the people of Hong Kong have made of their opportunities.' 'God Save the Queen' was played by a band of Scots Guards in tall, bearskin hats, and the Union Jack was brought down. After a five-second pause, time for British cymbals to stop vibrating, the Chinese national anthem was played and the Chinese flag raised alongside the new flag of Hong Kong. Hong Kong had returned to Chinese rule. The transfer from British rule began at 4:30 P.M. Monday, when the doors of Government House, the home for British governors since 1855, opened and Mr. Patten, his wife, Lavender, and their three daughters walked down the steps. Drawn up at attention in the sweeping circular drive was the police band in snow-white tunics. In a blue suit, the bags under his eyes heavier than usual, his now gray-white hair a bit disheveled, Mr. Patten mounted a small stepped dais. The band broke into the first stanza of 'God Save the Queen,' and Mr. Patten, Hong Kong's 28th Governor, lowered his head, swallowing heavily in a surge of emotion, emotion that would shake the Governor repeatedly through the day. Eight officers from the Royal Police Training School snapped through a sharply choreographed flipping of rifles, turns and slow-step marching in a salute to the last Governor. Stepping from the dais, Mr. Patten walked slowly down a line of representatives of each of the territory's services, from the Correctional Services Department to the Auxiliary Medical Services, all in wilting white dress uniforms. Then, as a single bugler played 'Last Post,' a thin drizzle brushed the courtyard, and the British flag slipped down the flagpole. The police band struck up Mr. Patten's favorite song, 'Highland Cathedral,' and with the folded flag on a royal blue pillow, he stepped into a Rolls-Royce. Slowly, the long black car flying the Governor's ensign from the hood circled the courtyard before Government House three times, a Chinese ritual performed by all previous governors to signal 'we shall return.' As Mr. Patten's car pulled from the gates of Government House, gates that still bore the Queen's seal, crowds waved and cheered. A small contingent of police officers in their green summer uniforms swung the iron gates closed, ending 122 years of British residence. The drizzle turned to showers and then to a downpour that washed the harbor front in sheets of monsoon-borne rains. Still, the British farewell ceremony began sharply at 6:15 P.M. as a gray sky melted into hues of gold and rose. Two dragon dance teams rose and fell across a tarmac ground that once was the main British naval base here. A succession of performances by choirs and orchestras, and arias sung by Dame Gwyneth Jones and Warren Mok followed. With rain pelting down on him, Mr. Patten delivered his final speech as Governor, a short piece of oratory that remained as robustly defiant as any he has given, a declaration of his own principles as Governor and a public challenge to much of Chief Executive Tung's philosophy of governance. 'Our own nation's contribution here,' he said, 'was to provide the scaffolding that enabled the people of Hong Kong to ascend: the rule of law, clean and light-handed government, the values of a free society. The beginnings of representative government and democratic accountability.' 'Hong Kong's values are decent values,' he continued. 'They are universal values. They are the values of the future in Asia as elsewhere, a future in which the happiest and the richest communities, and the most confident and the most stable too, will be those that best combine political liberty and economic freedom as we do today.' At 8:45 in the evening, just after the fireworks celebrating British rule ended, 509 officers, soldiers and sailors from the Chinese Army began moving over the border in glossy black Audis, buses and open-back trucks, in which troops stood at attention, their white gloved hands gripping the wooden side rails. Other trucks in camouflage paint, some with green canvas covers, followed slowly behind. In Hong Kong's newly built convention center, a curving, sculpted-roofed edifice jutting into the harbor, a banquet was given by the British for 4,000 guests, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and China's Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, who has spearheaded Beijing's arrangements for Hong Kong. Over Scottish salmon, stuffed chicken breast and a red fruit pudding with raspberry sauce, Hong Kong's wealthiest and most powerful people, British and Chinese alike, ate their last meal under a British flag. Neither President Jiang nor Prime Minister Li Peng, the first Communist Chinese leaders to set foot in colonial Hong Kong, attended the banquet. With only an hour of sovereignty left, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook of Britain, relaxed with hands in his pockets, waited at the entrance of the new Hong Kong convention center, Chief Executive Tung at his side, for the arrival of President Jiang. An honor guard of Black Watch in white jackets and kilts stood at attention. Mr. Jiang's black bulletproof Mercedes, with both Hong Kong and Chinese license plates, arrived moments later. The Chinese President was helped from the car, and Mr. Patten shook his hand, saying simply, 'Welcome to Hong Kong.' Against the surge of patriotic sentiment and the wisps of nostalgia for the departed British, there were protests from pro-democracy figures who had been expelled from the legislature with the advent of Chinese rule. From the balcony of the Legislative Council building, Martin Lee, the leader of the pro-democracy forces in the disbanded legislature, told thousands of demonstrators that democracy would return to Hong Kong. 'We know,' he told the crowd below, 'that without a democratically constituted government and legislature, there is no way for our people to be insured that good laws will be passed to protect their freedoms.' 'If there is no democracy, there is no rule of law,' he continued. 'We want Hong Kong and China to advance together and not step back together. We are proud to be Chinese, more proud than ever before. But we ask: Why is it our leaders in China will not give us more democracy? Why must they take away the modest democracy we have fought so hard to win from the British Government?' Meanwhile, detachments of Chinese troops fanned out across Hong Kong, taking possession of military bases. At the Prince of Wales barracks, still bearing that name this morning, an honor guard stood at attention while the Chinese flag was raised. And on the radio station that had served British forces here, 107.4 FM, there was nothing but the hiss of empty static. At Possession Point, the place where on Jan. 26, 1841, Capt. Edward Belcher first raised the British flag, there were memories, expressions of happiness, pride and worry. On a bench in what is now Hollywood Road Park, Choy Sum Mui, 75, reflected on her long life and the future that awaits her under a new sovereign. 'I came to Hong Kong when the Japanese bombed my village,' she said, speaking slowly. 'I'm illiterate, so I don't know much about things unless people tell me. People say this is Possession Point, but it doesn't mean much to me. I've never seen a Communist before. I don't know what they are like. Really, I'm so old already, all this change doesn't mean much to me.' On Possession Street, a Mr. Lam, 72, said: 'It's a good thing we can finally get rid of the imperialists. We're all Chinese. I feel great. This land belongs to China.'