In the case of Hong Kong, there was no urgency from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to call for immediate unification in the Cold War era. We often think of the CCP under Mao as an ideologically-driven party that called for revolution at home and abroad. However, the CCP’s foreign policy has always walked a fine line between realism and ideology. In regards to Hong Kong, a strongly pragmatic policy was upheld despite much criticism from China’s communist allies.

When the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) swept Guomindang remnants from Guangdong in early 1949, British colonial officials in Hong Kong and London were fearful that the PLA, with the force of momentum, would push into the British colony. This did not happen, and left-wing newspapers in Hong Kong as well as the CCP state-run Xinhua News Agency hinted that communist China was willing to preserve the status quo. Zhou En-lai, the Chinese Foreign Minister at the time was reported to say, in classic CCP doublespeak: “We are not taking Hong Kong back, but it does not mean that we are abandoning or retreating from Hong Kong.” Li Hou, former Vice-Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Office of the State Council (the Chinese administration responsible for facilitating cooperation between mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau) explained why China had no intention of reclaiming Hong Kong in the early days of the People’s Republic of China (PRC):

The decision of the Chinese leaders not to recover Hong Kong for a long time to come was based on the following considerations:

(1) In an international situation characterised by sharp confrontation between two political camps, it was not possible to resolve the Hong Kong problem through peaceful methods. Hong Kong could only be recovered by a resort to force. The British were well aware of the fact that they could not singly deal with China by their own power, so they would definitely bring the US along to jointly defend Hong Kong. This scenario was certainly not what China wanted to see. In the eyes of the Chinese government and its leaders, it was better for Hong Kong to be left in the hands of Britain than to allow Britain to enlist the help of the US to defend Hong Kong.

(2) New China was just established, it had no diplomatic relations with many countries. Western countries, led by the US, were imposing economic embargo on China. Under these circumstances, maintaining the status quo of Hong Kong would allow it to serve as China’s channel to the outside world, making it possible for China to obtain things which could not be obtained from other channels.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Great Britain was extremely bullish over retaining control of Hong Kong. Both Churchill and Attlee, the leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party respectively, rejected any talk of negotiations with either the Guomindang or the CCP over an early return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. British military and diplomatic posturing probably had some deterrence effect. However, the main consideration of the CCP seems to have been American intervention. Truman was an avowed anti-communist, and with the rise of the containment theory among American political circles, intervention was not out of the question, as seen only one year later in Korea. With the PLA mopping up Guomindang remnants in 1949, direct American military involvement would bolster the faltering Guomindang cause and tip the military scales. In any case, the PLA stopped at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong frontier and conducted no military action against Hong Kong in 1949.

Another consideration was, of course, Hong Kong’s economic value. With a trade embargo established by the United States against China, Hong Kong became an increasingly valuable entrepot for export-import trade. A paper published by the Hong Kong and Macao Office of the State Council had this to say:

In 1959, referring to the impatience of a minority of comrades over Hong Kong, Mao Zedong pointed out that from the perspective of overall global strategy, ‘it is better not to recover Hong Kong in the meantime. We are not in a hurry. The current [status of Hong Kong] is advantageous to us’. In 1960, the Chinese government, after drawing conclusions from experiences in the last decade, put forth the policy of ‘changqi dasuan, chongfen liyong’ (long-term consideration, full utilisation) to guide work on Hong Kong and Macao. This policy means that China would adopt long-term consideration as far as Hong Kong’s future was concerned. In the foreseeable future, China would not adopt policies which would drastically change Hong Kong’s status quo. At the same time, Hong Kong’s special status would be fully utilised to serve China’s socialist construction and diplomatic strategy.

One might notice a curious sentence at the start referring to the “impatience of comrades.” Indeed, Mao faced both internal and external criticism for his Hong Kong policy. Hard-line CCP members considered the existence of colonial Hong Kong and Macau to be a personal affront, a blight of imperialism right at China’s doorstep. Overseas, the Soviets taunted China for its failure to sweep away the vestiges of colonialism - in September 1964, Soviet delegates at a meeting in Moscow of the World Youth Forum deliberately included Hong Kong and Macau in a resolution on the elimination of colonies in Asia. Non-state communist allies were also critical, with the Communist Party of the United States attacking China over its inability to eliminate British imperialism. However, the triumvirate that dominated Chinese foreign policy from the 1950s to 1970s, consisting of Mao, Zhou En-lai and Chen Yi, resisted domestic and foreign pressure for a military takeover of the colonies. Instead, ‘long-term consideration, full utilisation’ was to be the party line for relationships with Hong Kong and Macau. In a response to foreign criticism in 1963, the People’s Daily (official newspaper of the CCP) replied:

With regard to the outstanding issues, which are a legacy from the past, we have always held that, when conditions are ripe, they should be settled peacefully through negotiations and that, pending a settlement, the status quo should be maintained. Within this category are the questions of Hong Kong, Kowloon and Macau...There is no need for the Chinese people to demonstrate force on the questions of Hong Kong and Macau in order to prove our courage and determination in the fight against imperialism.

I have answered a question relevant to Hong Kong prior in which i focused on the importance of Hong Kong as a politically independent port for both China and the West.

In the case of Hong Kong, Mao recognized that it was more useful as an independent territory than it would be a part of China. There were certain benefits that came from the existence of a British Hong Kong. First, as I state in that answer, up until about the 1970-80s, HK was almost entirely dependent on Chinese infrastructure for sanitation projects, electricity, etc. The basics. At that point in its history remember that HK was still rather underdeveloped just like Shenzhen, its gradual rise to economic prominence not taking place until the later 1970s when the West begins relying on the outsourcing of cheap labor. Through Hong Kong, Mao could engage in trade with Western nations without having to rescind his prior promises of banishing Western companies from China. And perhaps just as importantly, it was an important intelligence hub for China to gain insight on Western politics; HK became particularly important throughout the Vietnam War since it served as a connecting port for many American troops being funneled into Vietnam. For most of the Maoist period, Mao seemed satisfied to focus on paramilitary and intelligence operations in HK rather than open confrontation with Britain. There was no guarantee that when the lease ended in 1997 that Britain would choose the CCP over the KMT, but Mao understood that Taiwanese-Western relations during this time were bumpy to say the least. Of course Mao didn't live to see it, but soon after his death that question was quickly solved when Deng Xiaoping opened China to the West and the CCP was established as the legitimate Chinese government.

Mao was happy to use resources and finances to prop up various pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong. The Wen Wei Po is probably the best example. Although no longer popular at all in HK, it reached its zenith in the 1960s and exists to this day as an outlet for the CCP within HK, and was one of the agitators of the 1967-68 protests. It still acts as a sort of mouth-piece of CCP viewpoints inside of HK. Mao was quite active with involving himself in the inner workings of the Wen Wei Po as you can see here. British officials on the island turned a blind eye to such transgressions, also seeing the usefulness in using HK as a intelligence battleground against Mao, although this backfired in 1967-8.

Unlike Macau, HK's independence from China also continually served a useful propaganda purpose. Increasing tensions between China and the West in the early 1950s gave China reason to target HK in its anti-Western/Imperialist propaganda targeting the US and British-led UN response in Korea. Inciting nationalism is a useful tool in an extremist state, and HK helped serve this purpose up until the Cultural Revolution ended.

Macau

The issue of Macau was very similar to HK as you can imagine. Even prior to the CCP victory over the KMT, Mao met with Soviet agent Anastas Mikoyan (the two would meet many times throughout the 1950s regarding Mongolia as well) to discuss the issue of foreign imperialism. Mao wanted to maintain Macau along with HK as ports of access to trade with the West for two reasons. First, it would help appease the wealthy CCP clientele who owned business in both areas or would be affected by any such takeover. Second, it allowed Mao to reasonably expel all Westerners from the mainland while maintaining economic ties. This was a bit more troubling in Macau, however. In 1949, Mao established the Nam Kwong Trading Company (Sociedade Comercial Nam Kwong) with the goal of promoting trade between Portugal and China. Beyond that, the Nam Kwong Company also acted as a sort of shadow agency in which it would dispute the functions of Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the city as well as general harassment of any Kuomintang agents in the area. The issue was that unlike Britain, who turned a blind eye to CCP agents operating in HK, Salazar's regime initially refused to work with the CCP, rejecting proposals of open relations in both 1949 and 1955. Furthermore, the Portuguese were irritated by the Nam Kwong's shadow operations clearly taking place in Macau against the KMT.

Portugal's resistance to the CCP faltered during the 1950s for two major reasons. First, Portugal did not have the wide political backing that Britain enjoyed across the world, and should the CCP invade Macau, there was no guarantee they could either hold it or gain any international support. Second, the CCP spent a lot of time convincing local Portuguese governors and military officers about Mao's intentions. Captain Francisco da Costa Gomes, upon learning of a message Zhang Naiqi (member of the Board of Directors for the Bank of China) had sent Jose Maria Braga (a former British intelligence agent in Macau during WW2), reduced the garrison size of 6,000 troops to 3,000. If Mao wasn't to have any luck with convincing Salazar himself, then he'd bypass him and appeal to local authority; a gambit which ultimately paid off.

Ultimately, Macau ended up playing a very important role for China in ways HK couldn't. For example, it served as a useful port for "strategic material" imports after most Western nations (including the UK) embargoed China during the Korean War. This included steel, rubber, copper, car parts, etc. so not just materiel goods. Portugal had no political attachments to America or the other Western European democracies, giving it no incentive to participate. Furthermore, Portugal was very aware of the amount of illicit business that contributed to the Macau economy, and how it would weaken both Portugal and China. Now, America and other CHICOM powers were quite aware of what was happening in Macau, which prompted Portugal to allow Macau to apply for exemption from the organizations anti-CCP mission. It ultimately failed, but Portuguese diplomats deliberated for years; long enough to stop the US from actually making any progress on stopping the hole in the embargo they led. This tense relationship of Portugal serving as an intermediary caught in the middle of a bad relationship led Mao to drop any mention of Portugal as an imperialist state affronting China; in his Selected Works, after 1952 Mao never again mentions "that insignificant state Portugal," or the issue of Macau.

Conclusion

By 1950-52, HK and Macau were China's largest trading partners second to the USSR.* They both served as important economical bases for foreign trade. It was important for Mao to consolidate his control over China after so swiftly defeating the KMT, so he understood the importance of maintaining strong economic trade. Both territories served a useful conduit so that Mao could uphold his promise of expelling foreigners from China, while continuing to grow trade. Additionally, they also helped placate the business elite in southern China that the CCP had to reign in after the area was so abruptly abandoned by the KMT. Individually, from 1950-80, HK would come to serve as a more important intelligence base rather than economical, while in that same period, Macau served the opposite purpose. Only by the 1980s, as it became increasingly clear China did not need HK or Macau like they needed China, and upon the PRC joining the UN as a permanent security member, did the CCP begin to force the issue of unification with HK and Macau.

*PRC Trade partners by per-centage:

1950- USSR: 29.81% HK&M: 14.4%

1951- USSR: 41.35% HK&M: 31.93%

1952- USSR: 54.82% HK&M: 15.65%

Sources

How to Relate with a Colonial Power on its Shore: Macau in the Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949-1965, Moises Silva Fernandes

Hong Kong in the Cold War, Priscilla Roberts & John M. Carroll