A HISTORICAL humiliation would be "rehabilitated" when China took back Hong Kong in less than six months' time, Mr Chen Ligang, first secretary off the Chinese embassy in Dublin, told the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday.
The present social and economic systems which had effectively created Hong Kong's prosperity would not change for the next 50 years, he said. The continuity of China's openness, social stability and rapid economic development had become a powerful force backing Hong Kong's long term stability and prosperity.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries China had gradually become a colony and then a semi colony of foreign imperial powers. This was directly linked to the ceding and later the leasing of Hong Kong to Britain. "Now as we are going to take back Hong Kong, the historical humiliation is to be rehabilitated."