Lingnan, the southern region that includes the city today, was brought into China’s sphere of control by the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, in the third century B.C., after a series of brutal military campaigns. But barbarians aren’t easy to rule. So from the seventh century through the 10th century, emperors of the Tang Dynasty thought it best to administer these lands by relying on a somewhat informal quid pro quo: The elders of minority tribes, in exchange for bowing to the authority of the Chinese, would get the Chinese’s support to play local rulers. Jimi, this was called, or the tethering of livestock.

The arrangement was formalized during the 14th century, under the Yuan Dynasty. In the southwestern part of modern China, tribal elders were granted the new title of tusi — literally, earth lords — an official and heritable status recognized by the Chinese bureaucracy. It came with the obligation to obey the emperor and pay him tribute. But localities where tusi ruled were allowed to retain their distinct, traditional sociopolitical structures.

This, in effect, was the prototype for Deng Xiaoping’s “one country, two systems” principle. Aside from the fact that the title of chief executive, the highest office in Hong Kong today, is not heritable, Leung Chun-ying, the city’s outgoing leader, is a modern-day tusi.

Over the centuries, as the imperial center grew more powerful and expanded its direct rule, it started replacing local tusi with its own officials, known as liuguan, or movable officers. The replacement process often was protracted, and many tusi wound up sharing power with liuguan, playing first fiddle for a time, and then second. The formal tusi system ended in the early 18th century, after a bloody campaign of subjugation under Emperor Yongzheng. Yet vestiges of the practice long remained, and some still remain today.

Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive after the 1997 handover, was a tusi who acted like a liuguan. In a bid to please Beijing, in 2002 he attempted to pass draconian legislation that would have curtailed freedom of speech and association, among other things. But he was forced to back down when half a million Hong Kongers — out of a population of about seven million then — marched against the proposal.

Seeing this, the Chinese government concluded that “Hong Kongers’ hearts had not yet returned to the motherland,” and then set out to help them along. By 2008, the Central Liaison Office, Beijing’s outpost in Hong Kong, established what it called a “second governing team,” comprising party cadres from the mainland. Pro-Beijing candidates have since been spotted heading for the Central Liaison Office after winning elections in Hong Kong, presumably to say thank you. Tusi playing second fiddle to liuguan.

Hong Kong has become inundated with Chinese money in recent years, and many powerful officials in Beijing have family members who live, work, invest and accumulate wealth here. These factors mitigate against the probability of a blood bath occurring, even as 2047, the year that Hong Kong reverts to China, draws near. There are unmistakable signs that, instead, more power will simply be transferred from the Hong Kong government to the Central Liaison Office.