The students demanded senior government officials negotiate with them, then staged a hunger strike. On May 19, premier Li Peng confronted demonstrators; the next day, as the unrest spread across China, the government declared martial law.

Wang Dan tried to persuade student leaders to return to their campuses, but the crowd swelled and refused to disperse.

Civil unrest arrived in Beijing suburbs with talk of soldiers being attacked and their weapons stolen. Tanks rumbled through Beijing's streets but stopped short of the square. Tension mounted at home and abroad. In Hong Kong there were rallies to support the students, but on June 3, Li and president Yang Shankun ordered an end to the 'turmoil'.

Televised statements advised people to stay at home. Instead, more than a million poured into the streets of Beijing. Early on June 4, the army moved into Tiananmen Square.

In parts of Beijing mobs attacked soldiers, beating them and ripping off their uniforms. In and around Tiananmen Square, tanks ran over students fleeing and citizens standing to protect them. Rifle shots silenced the protests. The world erupted in outrage and disgust.

On June 5, 1989, the editor wrote 'the appalling massacre of civilians in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army has produced a fear of the communist regime resulting in an enormous outburst of emotion in the territory'.

The paper said 10 years of winning confidence through China's 'open door' policies and economic reforms had been wasted in one night of slaughter. But clamour to scrap Hong Kong's return to China was 'simply wishful thinking', it said.

Instead, the editorial urged the British government to take steps to protect the people of Hong Kong and alleviate the deepening and destructive sense of uncertainty.

Joint Declaration is signed in Beijing

In February 1984, Britain and China held talks in Beijing that led to British agreement to withdraw from Hong Kong on June 30, 1997. 'The only question is how this can be achieved without causing either a major brain drain or serious political and economic instability,' said the Post. The paper predicted the Chinese, British and Hong Kong governments would have to find a way to reassure people that life after the handover would be no less attractive and stable.

'We want to see Hong Kong survive in something very close to its present shape and form, because it has proved its use and value and can contribute significantly to those who understand how it operates,' it commented. The Joint Declaration was signed in December.

WHEN SEASONED BRITISH politician Christopher Patten arrived in Hong Kong in July 1992, for a five-year term as the 28th and last governor of the British Crown Colony, a Post cartoonist conveyed a grimly accurate warning about what lay in store.

Patten's style of governance would contrast sharply with that of his predecessor, Sir David Wilson. When Patten announced liberal political reforms, relations with China plunged into a deep freeze that never thawed.

Wilson, a respected Sinologist, tried to maintain local and global confidence in Hong Kong. It was a demanding task at a time of momentous political upheaval in China coupled with fear about the future and a 'brain drain' from Hong Kong.

Breaching the Walled City

The Kowloon Walled City, begun in 1847, was an enclave of disgrace: a rotting, festering pile of dangerous, illegal buildings inhabited by the desperately poor and controlled by criminals. When the wretched, 2.7-hectare slum was demolished in 1992 it ended a squalid chapter in Hong Kong history.

The city existed because of a quirk in the New Territories lease of 1898 under which it remained subject to Chinese rule. That provision was eventually scrapped, but the notion was revived after 1949 by criminals who took refuge in the area and claimed they were in China. Successive Hong Kong governors permitted the travesty to endure, but with Hong Kong's return to China signed and sealed, in 1992 authorities decided to act.

Before the bulldozers could start on turning the area into a cultural park, however, the government paid lavish compensation: one slum landlord who owned scores of illegal apartments pocketed more than $1 billion.

The alphabet trial

Hong Kong was absorbed by the 1991 trial of a smooth-talking conman who tricked women into sex. Lurid evidence was presented concerning what he did with Miss A, Miss B, Miss C, Miss D and Miss E.

All were attractive young women, some aspiring starlets. All had been tricked into bed by the slightly built, round-faced Chin Chi-ming, who promised them roles in movies. In an interview with the Post before being jailed for three years, 11 months, for blackmail, attempted procurement and theft, Chin boasted of bedding more than 700 women.

Numerous actresses who subsequently became famous fell for his ruse but could not be persuaded to give evidence. So it was up to five brave unknowns to help convict Chin. Their identities were protected in court, but subjected to intense speculation in the Chinese popular press.

The evidence was salacious, and thousands lined up every day for seven weeks for the 48 public seats available at court.

ICAC celebrates as Carrian tycoon is jailed

George Tan Soon-gin, head of the once-mighty Carrian Group, was arrested in October 1983 and taken in handcuffs to Wan Chai police station. But it took another 13 years before the tycoon could be brought to justice for causing the collapse of the property empire under a $6.18 billion debt.

On September 20, 1996, Tan pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud. Eager to end the marathon legal process, prosecutors accepted guilty pleas and agreed not to prosecute on 15 other charges. The prosecution did not ask for costs. It was estimated the case cost the public $210 million. The trial was the longest in Hong Kong history.

Tan, 62-years-old when he was convicted, admitted getting secret loans for his ailing empire from Bumiputra Malaysia Finance in the early 1980s. Tan was released in 1998 after serving less than two years in prison. He spent most of his term in a hospital ward.

The conviction is regarded as one of the greatest victories of the ICAC. A senior investigator on the case, Brian Carroll, said the outcome showed nobody was above the law.

Finding a political voice

For 140 years after the British raised the Union Flag at Possession Point, there had been almost no involvement in politics of the general Hong Kong public. A few thousand people might turn out to vote in Urban Council elections, but the territory was run by the governor and his senior civil servants, with notional advice from appointed advisors.

That changed in the 1980s. Suddenly, people demanded a voice in their own future, although the first two political parties were not formed until 1990. The United Democrats assembled in April, followed by the Liberals in June.

'First step to democracy' announced the Post in September 1985, when Hong Kong staged direct elections to the Legislative Council. About 25,000 voters selected 18 candidates to represent the territory's 10 geographical and eight functional constituencies.

CRIME

Corruption scandals rocked the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club in the 1980s. In 1983, the ICAC arrested 30 people, including three senior security officials, for suspected bribery. Seven were charged, including the deputy controller of security.

Just after dawn on May 30, 1990, seven men and a woman, all from Hong Kong, were led to the gallows in two prisons outside Kuala Lumpur.

It was the largest mass execution of drug smugglers in Malaysia's history. The three condemned had been arrested eight years earlier and convicted of dealing in 12.8 kilograms of heroin.

Police combed the hills above Sai Kung in 1984 when they discovered hundreds of marijuana plants up to two metres high growing in plantations around deserted villages.

With precise timing and using commando-like tactics, a squad of robbers swooped on a Guardforce security truck at Kai Tak in July 1991. They overpowered and bound the four guards, pushed them into the back of the truck and drove off. A short distance away, the gang hurled 10 money sacks from the security vehicle into a waiting van. Then they vanished with $167 million in cash. The audacious robbery was the biggest in Hong Kong history.

Stock market closes

In October 1987 the chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Ronald Li Fook-shiu, suspended trading for four days after a record 420.81 point crash of the Hang Seng Index. At a press conference to justify the controversial move, Li demanded the expulsion of a journalist who dared question the legality of the closure. The Post said the decision to close was ' a prudent move' but questioned Hong Kong's guarded reaction in the broader picture of the global market.

It was the beginning of the end for Li, who was known as 'the headmaster' because his word was law. On January 2, 1988, he was woken in a dawn raid by the ICAC. In October 1990, after a six-week trial, he was convicted of accepting rewards for supporting the listing of two companies on the stock market. He served two years and eight months in Stanley Prison.

June 1, 1986: Li Ka-shing, 'youthful 57-year-old chairman of Hutchison and Cheung Kong Holdings', as the Post called him, declared himself furious at the Insider Dealing Tribunal's finding that there had been insider trading in a Cheung Kong subsidiary in 1984.

SIR YUE-KONG PAO, one of the legendary Shanghai tycoons whose business acumen helped to transform Hong Kong from a war-shattered wreck into a modern business metropolis, died in 1991 aged 73.

Known as the 'king of the seas', or Y. K. to his friends, he added property and many other interests to his maritime core businesses. When he died, his worth was estimated at $10 billion. He had given at least $100 million to charities, many linked to education on the mainland. Arriving in Hong Kong in 1949 - aboard one of his own ships laden with fellow refugees - he set about creating a commercial empire that still thrives.

THE GOVERNMENT PROUDLY announced in 1983 that it would spend $77 million over three years to provide tap water to homes in 560 small villages in the New Territories. Officials were surprised when some angry villagers rejected the proposal on the grounds that they would have to pay for water instead of getting it free from village wells.

Galaxy of stars challenges triads on the streets

Hong Kong film stars staged a demonstration in Admiralty in 1992, protesting against the involvement of organised crime in the film industry. Action-man Jackie Chan led the 200-strong procession of actors and actresses to the police headquarters to hand in a petition calling for an end to acts of intimidation and violence by triads seeking to extort money from film-makers.

One of the protest organisers was director Philip Chan Yan-kin, a former police sergeant. The rally was initiated after two reels of a new film were stolen from a production company. Triads were attracted by the large sums of money that could be made by Hong Kong film studios; in 1991, 125 local movies grossed $1 billion.

Jackie Chan (below, second left) said triads had threatened to disrupt filming if they were not paid $50,000 for the first and last day of shooting and $5,000 for every day in between. Films were shot under police protection.

Gun terror strikes

Nineteen eighty-four was the year of the gun. In a running battle in February, a 19-year-old girl was shot dead outside her North Point home - the fourth person in two weeks to be slain by gun-toting bandits. Two other people were wounded.

She died during a shootout that started in Central, raged up and down Hong Kong Island and ended at the Cross Harbour Tunnel entrance. The gang had tried to grab a large consignment of money being carried from an armoured car into Po Sang Bank, Central. Guards resisted and the shooting started.

Carrying bags of cash, the gang hijacked cars and sped away, followed by police, as the shooting continued. One car was surrounded at the tunnel. Another was abandoned on The Peak.

A week later, before dawn, armed detectives quietly surrounded a high-rise residential block in Causeway Bay. Most residents were evacuated, then police knocked on the door of one flat. More than 60 shots were exchanged during an hour-long gun battle. Explosives were used to blow a steel grille off its hinges and stun grenades were thrown inside.

Two officers were slightly injured and a suspect shot in the chest. Police grabbed four men, seized seven guns and almost 200 rounds of ammunition, and found some of the stolen $5 million. Five men were later charged.

Also in 1984, armed bandits staged daring robberies at the Peninsula hotel, in Tsim Sha Tsui goldsmiths' shops and in Causeway Bay jewellery outlets.

SEVEN PEOPLE DIED in September 1988 when an ageing Trident of the Civil Aviation Administration of China crashed while landing at Kai Tak in driving rain. The front of the aircraft broke away as it swerved off the runway and crashed into Kowloon Bay. Car dealer Wong Kui-leung, 38, heroically kicked open an emergency door, helped passengers into the water and swam back and forth helping them to shore.

Death on Braemar Hill

Island School pupils Nicola Myers, 18, and Kenneth McBride, 17, walked up the secluded slopes of Braemar Hill in April 1985 to do their homework in tranquil surroundings.

Three men and two boys saw the couple and decided to 'have some fun', a court was told in 1987. That resulted in their being tortured and murdered: Myers was raped and her body bore more than 500 cuts. McBride was strangled and suffered more than 100 other injuries. Finding the killers was a frustrating task for detectives but eventually they cracked the case. The three men, aged 23, 22 and 18 when they committed the crimes, were jailed for life. Two 16-year-olds were detained indefinitely. All remain in prison.

The Nicola Myers and Kenneth McBride Memorial Fund was set up by the parents of the murdered teenagers to help needy schoolchildren.

WARWICK REID was head of the Hong Kong Legal Department's Commercial Crime Unit when he tried to prove crime could pay. When police discovered in the late 1980s that the prosecutor had taken $12 million in bribes to fix trials, Reid ducked out of Hong Kong, was tracked to Manila, eventually grabbed and sent back to Hong Kong and jailed in 1990.

While serving more than four years in prison he audaciously did another underhand deal - taking a NZ$1 million bribe to sign a false affidavit on behalf of a fellow inmate, Malaysian businessman Ch'ng Poh. This came to light after he was released, but the ICAC relentlessly tracked him down to his native New Zealand, launched a prosecution there and saw Reid once again sent to jail - where he apparently found Jesus.

Reports later alleged that he still had millions of graft dollars hidden away that were never surrendered.

BUSINESS

Controversy sparked over the construction of China Light and Power's joint venture $36 billion nuclear powerplant at Daya Bay, in Guangdong province. In 1983, environmentalists expressed concern about the plant, expected to start producing electricity for Hong Kong in 1991. Industrialists and businessmen, however, heralded the plant as a cheap source of power.

Plans to build a new airport at Chek Lap Kok were shelved amid the economic uncertainties of 1983. Instead, $750 million was spent on expansion work at Kai Tak to enable the airport to process a forecasted 18 million travellers a year.

After three years of intense lobbying, Dragonair in September, 1988, won the rights to fly from Hong Kong to Beijing, a route monopolised by Cathay Pacific. Initially, it was given permission to fly eight charter flights to the capital during October 1988 alone, but later was granted full service rights.

Rumours of a bank run rocked the Hang Seng Index in July, 1991. Anxious depositors lined up outside banks to withdraw their savings. The Index fell 35.21 points, ending the day at 3,962.46. The afternoon steadied with news that 145,637 square feet of land at Fanling had fetched $1.01 billion, about 2.5 times more than expected. HongkongBank (now HSBC) fell to $27.60, Dao Heng Bank was $1.68 and Sun Hung Kai was $2.45.

In autumn 1983 the Hong Kong dollar slump-ed to record lows, down from $9.50 to US$1. The collapse came during Sino-British talks on the future of Hong Kong.

'The decline and fall of the local currency continued unabated,' the paper said. 'The foreign exchange market has gone wild.' The situation was not helped by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declaring: 'There is great financial and political uncertainty about the future of Hong Kong.' On October 15, 1983, the government announced it would peg the Hong Kong dollar and the US dollar at the fixed rate of 7.8. This has remained a solid Hong Kong government fiscal policy.

Unemployment was another worry in 1983, with 5.1 per cent of the workforce out of a job. This was the highest number since the recession of 1974, the Post noted. The rise in the jobless rate resulted from factories relocating over the border to take advantage of the cheaper land and labour available under the 'open door' policies introduced by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

Entertainment

Maggie Cheung Man-yuk was awarded the Best Actress Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1992 for her performance in the movie Centre Stage.

The second Asian laser karaoke regional championships was aired live on TVB in March 1992. With participants from across Asia, including Indonesia and the mainland, 14 artists sang their hearts out before a cross-cultural audience.

Hong Kong's team from the Holiday Inn Golden Mile took the 1984 title at the 11th International Snow Carving Championships held in Sapporo, Japan.

David Bowie came to town in 1983. The most expensive concert tickets cost $180 and fans lined up hours before they went on sale. They sold out in a record two hours.

John Woo (Ng Yue-shum) moved to Hollywood in April 1992 after signing up with Universal Studios to make the action film Hard Target, starring Jean-Claude van Damme.

Senior Executive Councillor, Dame Lydia Dunn, was awarded a life peerage in the Queen's Birthday Honours list on June 16, 1990, making her the first woman from Hong Kong to be given a peerage and the only other peer in the territory apart from Lord Kadoorie. The peerage was given just 18 months after she was made a Dame Commander of the most excellent Order of the British Empire. The British press referred to her as 'Hong Kong's Thatcher' and indeed she was Hong Kong's 'most powerful woman' until Anson Chan Fang On-sang was made Chief Secretary. The Baroness was virtually the sole survivor of Governor Chris Patten's purge of the Executive Council in 1992, but she left the territory in 1995, following her husband the former attorney-general Michael Thomas back to the UK.

SPORT

In February 1984 veteran jockey Philippe Paquet suffered severe facial and head injuries after a heavy fall from Silver Star during a race at Sha Tin. He was carried off the track in a coma and crippled for life. By December, Paquet was able to watch the races at Sha Tin. He was in the stands when he saw his friend Brian Taylor thrown from Silver Star. Taylor hit the ground head first a few metres from where Paquet was hurt and later died.

A $60 million fund-raising initiative began in 1986 to finance the construction of a 23-metre bronze Buddha near the Po Lin monastery on Lantau Island, first proposed in 1974. It was completed in 1989.

Enraged pig and chicken farmers used manure during protests against hygiene regulations introduced in 1987. The farmers were furious at the new rules governing the disposal of tons of manure from their farms. Ecologists had warned that the runoff was polluting areas such as the Tolo Harbour. The farmers protested outside Legco (left) and attempted to stop members, including the Governor, leaving the building. 'There is no excuse for this kind of mob behaviour,' the Post editorial said, pointing to the $630 million in grants, loans and compensation the farmers had been promised.

Proposals in 1983 to reduce the penalty for homosexual practices from a life sentence to a fine were scrapped after protests from church and community leaders in Hong Kong, despite such acts being legal in Britain. It was not until 1991 that homosexual acts by consenting men over the age of 21 were legalised.

Timeline

Hong Kong and China

1983

Mar 8

First Urban Council geographical election

Sept 9

Typhoon Ellen hits Hong Kong; 22 killed

Oct 2

Carrian Investments closes in Hong Kong's biggest corporate collapse; boss George Tan charged with corruption

1984

Jan 12

Taxi drivers' strike brings city to standstill

Oct 31

China announces economic reforms

Dec 19

Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in Beijing

1985

Feb 5

Health Department declares Hong Kong's first Aids case in Hong Kong. The patient dies on Feb 17

May 31

MTR Island line starts operation

Sep 26

First Legco direct election held; 24 legislators chosen

1986

Apr 1

Regional Council set up

Dec 5

Governor Edward Youde dies in Beijing

1987

July 8

A bomb explodes in TaiKoo Plaza; 14 injured

Oct 20

Stock Exchange closes for four days after Hang Seng Index plummets 421 points

1988

Feb 10

605 cases of Hepatitis A reported since January 1

1989

May 28

More than a million people march through Central, in support of student pro-democracy movement in China

June 4

Chinese troops storm into Tiananmen Square to crush protestors

Oct 11

Governor Sir David Wilson puts forward plan for new airport

1990

Feb

Zhou Nan becomes director of Xinhua news agency

Jun 16

Lydia Dunn awarded life peerage

1991

Mar 3

Urban Council elections; more than 400,000 vote

Apr 18

Science Museum opens

1992

Mar 11

Hang Seng index reaches 5,000 points

July 9

28th governor Chris Pattern arrives in

Hong Kong

July 10

Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong founded

Around the world

1983

Aug 22

Philippines opposition leader Benigno Aquino murdered at Manila Airport

1984

May 8

USSR pulls out of Los Angeles Olympics

Oct 16

Desmond Tutu, black South African bishop, wins Nobel Peace Prize

1985

Mar 11

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Communist Party head and USSR premier

May 29

Riot during European Cup soccer final in Belgium, 35 die

Aug12

524 people die when JAL airliner hits mountain in Japan

1986

Jan 28

Space Shuttle Challenger explodes on take-off, all seven crew members die

Apr 26

Nuclear power plant explodes in Chernobyl, Ukraine; 31 die, millions exposed to radiation

1987

Oct 19

Black Monday stock market crash, the worst in history

Dec 8

Intifada uprising by Palestinians begins

1988

Feb 15

Soviet Union withdraws all troops from Afghanistan

Dec 21

270 die in sabotaged Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland

1989

Mar 26

Boris Yeltsin wins first free election in Soviet Union

Oct 1

11 homosexual couples marry in Copenhagen, Denmark

Nov 9

Fall of the Berlin Wall

May 20

Hubble space telescope sends back first pictures

Aug 2

Iraq invades Kuwait

1991

Jan 17

Operation Desert Storm launched to drive Iraq from Kuwait

Sep 5

Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa

1992

Mar 26

Mike Tyson sentenced to six years jail on rape charge

Nov 3

Bill Clinton elected 42nd US president