TNAG-1169-FCO40-1449-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1982 — Page 54

consular duties of British representatives in China. The war had demonstrated that the colony's authorities were no longer able to take action

in its own or Britain's interests, but had had to rely on the outcome of exchanges between Peking and London. The Colony gradually ceased to be regarded as the sole headquarters of British trade and influence in the Far East. Although Hong Kong remained a strategic port for the Chinese coastal traffic, it came to develop a separate and distinct role from the increasing number of "treaty ports" opening on China's coast. To a greater and greater extent, Hong Kong was to assume an identity and a position outside of the "treaty system" that regulated relations between Britain and China for almost a century. The gradual separation of the fate of Hong Kong from that of the "treaty ports" was to contribute towards its being considered by China in a category apart; a distinction that became more significant in Chinese attitudes towards treaties. with Britain after the fall of the Manchu dynasty.

9 The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. Hong Kong continued to prosper during the final decades c the 19th century. However, the lucrative Chinese market had attracted considerable international attention. British interests in China began to feel the threat of Russian aggrandisement in the Far East; by the French acquisition of Tongking (North Vietnam) after the Sino-French war of 1884-5 and the French threat to control China's southern provinces; by the changes in the balance of power in the Far East after the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893; and by growing German claims for influence in the area. Fearing the possibility of other European encroachment more than any threat from the Chinese, Britain sought to improve the military and strategic protection of Hong Kong by extending the boundaries of the territory administered by the Colony, and creating a wider "buffer-zone" around it.

/10.