Letters29 years since the handover, Hong Kong is charting its own course

Readers discuss the 29th anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty, Malaysia’s revision of child sexual abuse law, and Centra Asia’s complex ties with Russia

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Listen

People hold a Chinese national flag at Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour on July 1, to mark the 29th anniversary of the handover. Photo: EPA

Published: 11:30am, 6 Jul 2026

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at [email protected] or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words.

I am writing this from Zhuhai, just across the border from Hong Kong. Outside my window, the sky is cloudless and the July sun relentless. Twenty-nine years earlier, the weather could not have been more different.

I remember the rain that poured over Hong Kong on the night of June 30, 1997, as British rule ended and Chinese sovereignty began. Whether the rain foretold anything, I could not say. The weather became part of how I remembered the occasion.

I was not in Hong Kong at the time. By then, my family had moved to Australia. Missing the handover was not a decision; it was simply where life had taken us. Yet I never felt I had missed the story.

I had grown up in Hong Kong during the long approach to 1997. Through my father Roger Lobo, who served in both the Legislative and Executive Councils under the colonial government, I witnessed the years of discussion, uncertainty and preparation. While I watched the ceremony on television from Australia, my father sat among other Hong Kong officials inside the hall. We witnessed the same moment from different parts of the world.

To the world, the handover was a single evening of flags, speeches and ceremony. For many Hong Kong families, it had been unfolding for years beforehand, shaping conversations, careers and decisions about where to build a future.