‘Alien’ Colonial Law, Anglo–Chinese Power Relations, and the End of the Hong Kong Refugee Regime

This article examines the end of the ‘Hong Kong refugee regime’, a by-product of the open borders between Hong Kong and China agreed in several nineteenth-century trade treaties between the British Empire and the Qing Empire. From 1854 to 1950, this refugee regime enabled the British colonial government of Hong Kong to extract human and material resources from China without establishing indisputable legal ‘rights’ of entry and settlement for all refugees. Nevertheless, these ‘rights’ were asserted by an embattled Chinese Nationalist government when the colonial government twice legislated to enforce ‘alien’ law to deny admission and settlement to the poorer refugees of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949). In 1943, the same Chinese Nationalist government repelled the trade treaties themselves, undermining the legal foundations of British economic imperialism in China. After 1949, its Communist successor went further, rejecting British diplomatic overtures, forcing British businesses out of China, and refusing to cooperate in regulating cross-border refugee mobility. The ensuing British decision to terminate the Hong Kong refugee regime reflects these shifting Anglo–Chinese political and economic power relations. More broadly, it also marked Hong Kong's belated adoption of anti-Chinese and anti-refugee border controls and immigration policies widespread in the British Empire.