Hong Kong after the handover: 2 decades of Chinese rule

Hong Kong marks the 20th anniversary of the end of British rule this Saturday. The Asian financial hub was handed over to mainland China on July 1, 1997, after spending more than 150 years as a British colony.

It has been a tumultuous two decades. Links to the mainland have brought economic benefits, but the semi-autonomous region has also seen increased inequality and large-scale protests against Beijing.

In the photo below, People's Liberation Army soldiers raise the Chinese flag to signal Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. Negotiations over Hong Kong's future took years. The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China finally signed a treaty in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong at midnight on June 30, 1997.

Xi Jinping visits Hong Kong

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at Hong Kong International Airport on June 29 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the handover. Pro-China supporters gathered to greet Xi when he arrived, but pro-democracy protests are also expected during his visit.

A financial crisis

The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, triggered by the devaluation of Thailand's currency, caused a major economic recession in the region. Here, an investor watches share prices inside a bank in Hong Kong in December 1998.

Together but separate

The hopes of many aspiring cross-border families were dashed in 1999 when Beijing overturned a ruling by Hong Kong's top court that granted broad residency rights to people from mainland China.

In the photo below, more than 100 mainland Chinese visitors protest outside Hong Kong's Legal Aid Department to demand immediate residency in the region in 1999.

"I will never forget this, nor forgive the government for what it did," Ho Hei-wah, a veteran family activist, later said. "It split many families and meant they couldn't live together."

In this 2001 photo, Falun Gong followers meditate in Hong Kong.

Beijing banned the group on the mainland in 1999, declaring it a "cult." But its members have been largely tolerated in Hong Kong, where they frequently hold protests against the ban.

Sixteen Falun Gong followers were convicted in 2002 for protesting outside Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong. Eight of those convictions, however, were overturned by Hong Kong's highest court.

The SARS virus

In 2003, a SARS outbreak caused 299 deaths before Hong Kong was declared free of the flu-like virus. Among them was Tse Yuen-man, a 35-year-old doctor who volunteered to care for SARS patients. Here, a mourner at Tse's funeral wears a mask to ward off the virus.

Protests and street fights

Demonstrators crowd a main street in a Hong Kong shopping district during a rally in 2004.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters hit the streets on the seventh anniversary of the handover, after China ruled out the possibility of universal suffrage in Hong Kong's 2007 and 2008 elections. Beijing also ruled that it must approve changes to Hong Kong's election laws, effectively vetoing moves toward greater democracy.

Large-scale protests calling for a fully democratic vote to choose Hong Kong's next leader then rocked the city for more than two months in 2014. The campaign was the most serious challenge to China's authority since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations and crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Umbrellas became a symbol of the campaign when protesters used them to fend off pepper spray attacks.

In the photo below, a protester raises his umbrellas after riot police fired tear gas to disperse protesters.

Street clashes erupted again in 2016 when authorities tried to move illegal street vendors from the working-class Hong Kong district of Mong Kok.

Memories of Tiananmen Square

Activists held a candlelight vigil in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Cradling candles, laying wreaths and clad in black or white, Hong Kong residents transformed a downtown park into a sea of flickering lights. They held the vigil in remembrance of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators killed by government troops near the square in 1989.

Wealth and poverty

Hong Kong's super-wealthy have enjoyed the benefits of increased investment from the mainland, especially in property. But the influx of money from the mainland has raised the costs of living for most people in the city, leading to a rise in income inequality.

Here, a man plays golf with the residential buildings of Hong Kong in the background.

Migrant workers take a break after dinner outside a rooftop hut in Hong Kong.

A man waits for dinner in a small cage in Hong Kong's Tai Kok Tsui district in this 2008 photo. As soaring property prices forced rents higher, thousands of Hong Kong residents moved into "cage homes" — four-and-a-half-square-metre wire cubicles often crammed eight per room. Currently, an estimated 200,000 people in Hong Kong are living in a wire cage or a single bed in a subdivided apartment.