City BeatAs national security law nears, Hong Kong’s ‘second return’ to China will be easier said than done

Beijing finds nothing is so simple in reality after 1990s vow that ‘nothing will change but the flags’

Second-return concept raised amid Beijing urgency for national security law, but winning hearts and minds of Hongkongers will be no mean feat

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Beijing official Lu Ping famously said in the late 1990s that only the flags would change post-handover. Photo: Handout

Published: 2:30pm, 14 Jun 2020Updated: 10:49pm, 14 Jun 2020

“When July 1, 1997 comes, when you wake up and open your eyes, you’ll see nothing change except the flags – the British Union Jack will be lowered; replaced by the five-red-star Chinese flag and the Bauhinia flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It will be just that simple! No need to worry.”

That was Lu Ping’s assurance back in the early 1990s to Hong Kong reporters who covered the numerous rounds of Sino-British talks on the city’s transitional arrangements for the 1997 handover of sovereignty.

Lu, then Beijing’s top official looking after Hong Kong affairs, was the one who famously branded the city’s last colonial governor Chris Patten as “the sinner of a thousand years” for rolling out a radical political reform proposal.

The flags change at the handover ceremony on July 1, 1997. Photo: SCMP

As director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) at the time, Lu strongly believed that the fewer the changes, the better it would be for keeping post-1997 Hong Kong stable and prosperous.

Ironically, more than 23 years after that “nothing will change but the flags” promise, Beijing is worried now because nothing is that simple in reality.