Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China is a rather sui generis political event given its symbolism. It is a landmark of the fall of the British Empire, one of the most powerful of mankind. However, its end isn’t merely a defeat for the West, but also one of the most definite initial moments of the reaffirmation of Eastern powers, in which China figures as, at once, the protagonist of Britain’s (and, thus, the West’s) decline and of its own ascension as a major political power. Furthermore, it can also be interpreted as an axiological battle, in which the West’s prevailing values and standpoints are severely challenged by the rising Eastern tradition — aside from the eminent challenges that the event poses to the traditional and modern notions of sovereignty.

The handover, thus, represents a prelude of our path to a Post-western world (Stuenkel, 2018), in which there’s significant rearrangement of powers — politically, culturally, socially and axiologically — from the West to the Eastern axis, whose leader, undeniably, is China. Hong Kong’s turbulent and fascinating redefinition of sovereignty is, in essence, an early miniature of the bigger international movement that would be observed in later years, with an institutional, political, diplomatic, military, and especially economic, expansion that is still developing and whose revolutionary results have yet to be fully comprehended. The modern history of China, encapsulated.