China–Hong Kong football rivalry China–Hong Kong football rivalry The China–Hong Kong football rivalry is a sports rivalry between the national association football teams of the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong. The rivalry has been exacerbated by Hong Kong's status as a Special Administrative Region of China, which means that it does not practise communism as on the mainland, a legacy of having been under British rule until the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. China and Hong Kong have been playing each other in football matches since a friendly in Hong Kong in 1978. In 1985, Hong Kong, then a British dependent territory,
Young Plan (Hong Kong) 1980s during the Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong's sovereignty. The demand and attempts for constitutional reform in Hong Kong had occurred from time to time, but it had been an intractable problem for the Colonial Government due to the overwhelmingly majority of the Chinese population. Until during the Second World War when Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation, the collapse of the British imperial power in East Asia in the face of Japanese onslaught and also the emergence of a demand form the Chinese Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek for the retrocession of Hong Kong during the war, forced the