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The widespread confidence in Hong Kong which today
prevails springs very largely from that autonomy.
If confidence is to be maintained, the people of Hong
Kong, as well as governments and investors around
the world,need an assurance that this autonomy will
be preserved after 1997. That assurance can best
be provided by a detailed and binding agreement between
the British and Chinese Governments, an agreement
which plainly and fully sets out the arrangements
for the future.
I can understand the real concern in Hong Kong
about the idea that two distinct political and ecomonic
systems, the socialism of the People's Republic of
China and the free market system of Hong Kong, night
co-exist under a single sovereignty.
It is my
belief that the Chinese Government share the desire of
Her Majesty's Government to see the continuation im
Hong Kong of a society which enjoys its own economic
and social systems and distinct way of life. It is,
of course, the case that Hong Kong has not existed in
the past, could not indeed have survived over any
period, in a state of hostility with China. It is
in this context that the Chinese Government has evolved
the unique and imaginative concept, which Chairman
Deng Xiaoping himself described to me, of two systems
within one nation.