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iplomatic, trading and technological aims. Their status as outsiders in the decisions about their future and their status as outsiders in British nationality law are the two pincers between which many people in the territory feel themselves caught.
Few people in Hong Kong argue with the reality of a return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997; many positively welcome it as an assertion of their Chinese, non-colonial identity and an opportunity for change and movement away from being a western outpost to becoming an integral, though distinctive, part of China. Yet a large number of people to whom we spoke, whatever their political beliefs and position, distrust the process by which their future was decided and are looking for some firm base upon which to assert and protect the interests of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong took no part in the negotiations about its future; there is therefore understandably some cynicism about how hard Britain, which urgently wanted an agreement, was prepared to fight for the best interests of Hong Kong, which had to live with the results of that agreement. Nor was there, in reality, much choice about whether to accept what was negotiated. The White Paper which set out the terms of the Agreement stated candidly: 'Her Majesty's Government have a duty to make it clear beyond any possibility of misunderstanding the alternative to acceptance of the agreement. . . In their view, there is no possibility of an amended agreement. The alternative to acceptance of the present agreement is to have no agreement. In this case, the Chinese government has made it plain that negotiations could not be re-opened and that it would publish its own plan for Hong Kong'. This was the background to the Assessment team's finding that the Agreement was generally 'acceptable' to Hong Kong.
There is a similar realism about Britain's role as guarantor of the Agreement. Already there are signs that promises made in Parliament cannot wholly be kept: the Foreign Secretary assured the House several times in the debates about Hong Kong's future that the Joint Liaison Group (set up to oversee the implementation of the Agreement) would certainly include officials from the Hong Kong government": yet when the group was set up, China flatly refused Hong Kong participation and the one Hong Kong member, Eric Ho, had hurriedly to be made a British citizen before he could participate. Sir Geoffrey Howe also firmly promised that self-government for Hong Kong would follow a period of democratic development'1o: following the combined opposition of the People's Republic of China and of vested interests in Hong Kong, direct representative
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