Probably with fascinated interest. America was pressuring the UK to decolonise, and had been since 41. HK was not as strategically significant as Berlin or Korea, besides Korea had both China and the USSR supporting the invasion.
I visualise something nearer Suez than Korea 2.
HK independence in the 50s would have been difficult as most of the land area - 100x smaller than Taiwan - was leased. Not sure how ignoring that lease would play out internationally, but I suspect more provocation to CCP China than solution. HK island is just a few square miles, the rest - the leased portion - is part of the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is a few tens of thousands of square km of defensible island.
Giving to ROC? I heavily suspect had that been an option at the time the US would have damn near insisted on picking it up, just as had happened with a number of the tiny naval and air bases. So it would probably have stayed as British territory, leased to the US.
Actually passing to ROC would have to wait until after Chiang Kai Shek achieved some measure of stability. The US spent much of the 50s expecting Taiwan and Chiang Kai Shek to fall. By the 60s HK is developing in its own right, but Eisenhower had started to support Taiwan militarily. Now it's getting trickier.
UK has nukes. PRC has nukes. Did PRC want a shooting war with another nuclear power?
> The only hope in hell for Britain would have been in Clinton. Given American optimism at the time, that would have been fruitless.
You are talking about the 1990s. If you read my original comment, I was talking about the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. If at the height of the Cold War, Communist China had attacked a British colony, how would America have responded?