UK made ‘Armageddon scenario' plan for mass Hong Kong exodus in handover run-up

The Star

3 days ago

The UK government prepared a secret contingency plan dubbed 'the Armageddon scenario' in the lead-up to the 1997 handover for the evacuation of millions of Hong Kong residents who might have wanted to flee the city, according to newly unsealed documents.
The British national archive documents date back to 1989 in the period immediately preceding and following the Tiananmen Square crackdown. A number of scenarios and recommendations for UK authorities were outlined in the event Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule triggered an exodus of people from the city.
The documents, which were made public on Tuesday UK time, stated that the United Kingdom could 'not handle a mass evacuation alone' and that other countries would need to help, highlighting the United States as 'particularly important'.
Repeated references were made to the 'Official Group on Contingency Planning for Hong Kong', which was said to have been formed following then prime minister Margaret Thatcher's meeting with the governor of Hong Kong on June 8, 1989.
The governor at the time was David Wilson.
The internal communications, labelled 'secret', categorised the plan into three scenarios – green, amber and red.
When the most serious red phase was reached, indicating a mass exodus was under way, the British government would launch an evacuation, reception and resettlement plan, according to the file.
In the contingency plan dated November in the released files, air and ship operators should be instructed to deploy earmarked aircraft and ships covered by dormant contracts immediately to Hong Kong in the red phase.
Planes were expected to reach Hong Kong within 24 to 48 hours, while cruise ships were likely to have taken at least a week.
The plan noted that the basic cost of moving 1 million people by sea to Taiwan would be around £165 million on the most favourable set of assumptions, while that of flying them to the island would have reached about £170 million.
It set out that civilian evacuation would require the use of cruise ships and 143 of the vessels were available from 21 different countries. Costs were estimated to reach £200,000 per ship every day.
The plan noted that efforts would need to be stepped up to get Southeast Asian governments to offer 'immediate, practical help', such as public appeals targeted at ethnic Chinese communities.
It added that military deployments 'might be necessary', including using aircraft and vessels to assist in evacuation, as well as the deployment of land, air and sea assets to 'deter or counter Chinese military action'.
But the plan noted that the capacity of military assistance in transporting a large number of people was 'small' compared with the size of the potential exodus and the capacity of the civil sector.
The document said the British Royal Air Force had a readily available maximum single lift capacity of about 5,000 people.
The team also drew up resettlement plans, in which the cost of reception centres would be about £5 million per 1,000 people and £5 billion per million based on past experience.
The figures assumed each refugee would stay in a reception centre for six months, where basic needs would be met with some minimal English language training.
The team said accommodation capacity would 'pose severe problems' in the event of an influx of arrivals.
It estimated that only 400,000 properties would be available in the UK for resettlement in the short term, of which 300,000 would have to be requisitioned from the private sector.
The internal documents outlined four scenarios that could trigger such an exodus, including two before and two after the 1997 handover.
The report outlined one potential situation in which there would be a 'steady ebbing away of confidence' among people in Hong Kong before the handover, leading to an outflow of capital and talent from the city.
Another pre-handover scenario referenced a 'panic provoked by further developments in China', such as the use of military force against Chinese civilians. It said Hong Kong people would be more sensitive than before to such developments.
The post-handover scenarios were predicted to play out largely similarly – one based on people losing confidence in whether the Sino-British Joint Declaration was working, and a second that outlined a 'greater' risk of Beijing directly interfering in the city's affairs after 1997.
The declaration is an agreement signed by Britain and China in 1984 to settle the future of Hong Kong. The two governments agreed China would reassume control of Hong Kong from July 1, 1997.
One document, signed off by a DG Manning in August, included an attachment to a report commissioned by the South China Morning Post in 1989 outlining 'best case scenarios' on the impact of 3 million arrivals in the UK from Hong Kong.
The report was produced by experts from well-known UK universities, who found that the economic costs were not 'dramatic', even in the extreme case of 3.2 million immigrants. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST