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ly but leave an independent Hong Kong would be to accept the legal approach, China to reclaim the area of the New Territories and leave the rest, pushing the border far south. At the same time, the border, which some already believe is starting to weaken and might disappear, would melt further as the two economies inter- mingled and the Shenzhen economic zone might effectively push south. The gains for China would be to be seen as acting legally, a weak point since China does not recognize the treaties and ac- quire a strong economic area, while leaving enough of Hong Kong for the dynamism to continue. The gains for Hong Kong would be survival and a reasonable anticipation of a firm economic future. A disadvantage could be an internal migration on a vast scale. from the New Territories into the remainder of Hong Kong, with attendant social and economic problems plus a political black mark for China when the world watches this. A more extreme version of this would be for China to include Kowloon and leave the Island to survive, under such terms as are negotiable.
The third option would be to increase the size of Hong Kong. One version of this might be to simply hand over to the Hong Kong authorities an additional part of Guangdong province and let them run it for a defined number of years, and then the whole area, including the Island, reverts to China's control. The gain to Hong Kong is clear. It grows and develops further and has a set life into the future, depending upon the agreement that could be reached. At first sight there would seem to be a large economic gain for China, with the creation of a lusty area in the south, as a result of investment, technology and skills. It would, however, bring in the lifestyle and rather freebooting atmosphere of Hong Kong which would be very strange for the local Chinese. They may not respond as well as Hong Kong Chinese have done, for to a large extent the latter are a pre-selected group, having chosen to move or else are the children of such people, and almost certainly they form a group which is more likely to succeed. It may prove much harder to duplicate Hong Kong's success merely by handing over an area plus the people in it. A cogent objection for China would be the difficulty, for ideological as well as domestic and international political reasons, of such a course. Inside China the government might look little better than the despised Qing dynasty of the 19th century, and externally one could imagine there would be a highly critical response from the U.S.S.R., the other socialist countries and some developing countries.