RT MOY
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Faced with a choice she would always have opted for national reunification at the expense of continued prosperity and
never the reverse.
15. The Chinese were not bound to negotiate with us. They
could, as they sometimes reminded us, have decided to recover
Hong Kong and resume the exercise of sovereignty over it by
unilateral action. Why then did they decide to negotiate?
There were, I think, three reasons. First, they judged that a negotiated recovery of Hong Kong would increase the chances in the long term of peaceful reunification with Taiwan. Secondly,
they calculated that a negotiated recovery was far more likely
to ensure the territory's continued prosperity (and with it
China's very sizeable foreign exchange earnings from Hong Kong).
Thirdly, they wanted to build up the international reputation
of China as a country which favoured the negotiated settlement
of territorial problems.
16. But the commitment to negotiate, even if it became stronger
over time, was never absolute. There were fruits which a
negotiation would have to yield: a commitment by us to "restore"
Hong Kong; and, once this seemed attainable, a commitment by us
to consult the Chinese within a formal framework and from an
early date about the smooth transfer of government. Without these fruits, unilateral action (by which I mean in the first
instance the public declaration by China of her policies in relation to Hong Kong) would have been preferred.
Shape of the Negotiation
17. The shape of the process of discussion and negotiation
was determined by several factors, political and technical.
One of the political factors was the attitude of the Chinese
towards the participation of Hong Kong. There were two related
elements in this: that Hong Kong could not be a party to the
process and that Hong Kong could not be represented by the
British Government. What this attitude meant in practice was
that the Governor and his Political Adviser had to be members
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