On July 1, 1997, the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to the People’s Republic of China, ending London’s rule over the Chinese territory, which started with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.

For China, the return of the territory to its own sovereign rule signified the correction of a historical injustice. Britain had utilized military force, in the name of commercial imperialism, to force China to succumb to its terms and conditions and established the territory as an outpost of its own influence in Asia, which commenced what China understands as the “century of humiliation”.

The 1997 handover of Hong Kong was subsequently seen as the end of that painful legacy, manifest through the “unequal treaties”, the righting of a wrong, and the return of what was rightful Chinese territory to China. Britain, on the other hand, held a completely different view. For them, it marked the formal end of an empire and the demise of something they held to be great.

There was little sense of contemplation or self-reflection concerning the agony and trauma these historical events had imposed on China; only the self-pervading belief that the UK was “a force for good” throughout all history and that Hong Kong was a triumph of capitalism, success, and liberty. Indeed, it would be foolish to deny the immense achievements of Hong Kong, becoming one of the largest financial and free trade hubs in the world, but that does not change the fact it was a Chinese city, one which ultimately existed for the benefit of Britain’s elite.

As a result, when the handover took place 28 years ago, this wasn’t a point of reckoning for the British consciousness, but rather a belief crystalized that China “owed” something to Britain, as if the return were not a “correction” and a “rightful return” but a gift, a privilege, dismissive of the context that the event itself was triggered by the realism among its leaders that its loss was inevitable. Thus, Britain immediately assumed a “guardianship” mentality over Hong Kong, a kind of post-colonial mindset whereby the former colonizer assumes itself the righteous overseer and “savior” of the city, and which must protect it from the country of which it is lawfully part.

Because of this the handover was not conducted on equal terms and conditions; this was not a simple transfer of governance from one party to the next, but essentially another unequal agreement whereby China was implicitly expected to have no true “say” or “influence” over the city, which by strategic design was idealized to remain an outpost of Western influence. Hong Kong, as it had been before, was intended to shape China according to Western preferences and interests, and not the other way round.

In other words, the way the Sino-British Joint Declaration is interpreted on the Western side is that Hong Kong is China’s in “name” only, a distinction and mindset which far exceeds the designated high-degree autonomous systems the region has. Thus, they have sought to deny the city a right to national security protection and a right to follow China’s preferences on foreign policy (despite the Basic Law mandating such), among other things. The West’s mindset on post-handover Hong Kong does not think in terms of China’s lawful sovereign rights over the city, but the idea that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is separated from China and despite the handover, the city does not truly belong to China. Hence, the British and other Western parties were supportive of the 2019-20 unrest in Hong Kong, and subsequently tried to weaponize the British National Overseas program in response to the implementation of national security laws in the city. Even as Britain is banning an activist group as a terrorist organization outright over Palestine issues, it continues to deny Hong Kong the right to its own national security provisions and frames similar moves in the city as “oppression”.

However, for China, this discussion over sovereignty ended the day the handover was completed. While Beijing accepts Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and unique qualities as beneficial, it has never accepted this external mindset that the city is anything less than its own, or that somehow seeking to uphold its own interests in this city is illegitimate. Hong Kong continues to thrive, despite these challenges, but Britain must learn to accept history as it is, objectively, rather than chasing after past glories of its empire. The city that the UK cultivated is respected, but it is not definitive to the identity and fate of Hong Kong as something Chinese.

The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.