Liberalism in Hong Kong as the Chinese Language Movement, the anti-corruption movement, defend the Diaoyu Islands movement and so on, in which many of the student leaders became the backbones of the contemporary pro-democracy movement. In the early years of the 1980s, Hong Kong politics was dominated by the issue of the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of the Chinese Communist government insisted Chinese sovereignty of Hong Kong, while the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher insisted the legality of the Treaty of Nanking. Some Hong Kong liberal intellectuals see it as an opportunity to change the colonial status
British Hong Kong to China, even though there had been several upsurges of Chinese nationalism. He explained: In the 1920s, the working class Chinese of Hong Kong did not have a good reason to rally around the Hong Kong government, and they were more susceptible to appeals based on Chinese nationalism. Consequently, the call of the Communists was basically heeded by the working men, and their actions practically paralysed the colony for a year. By the [end of the] 1960s, however, the attempts by the Hong Kong government to maintain stability and good order which helped improve everyone's living conditions, and ... the