CONFIDENTIAL
12.
24. During the final stages of the negotiations there were two other vitally important tasks. The first was to hammer out with the Chinese the series of Annexes which would set out in detail those elements in Hong Kong society which were to be preserved, a task performed by, first, one working group led by Dr. David Wilson of the Foreign Office, to which was added a second led by Mr. Robin McLaren, Political Adviser to the Hong Kong Government, both working with increasing intensity as the September deadline approached. They were backed up by teams in Hong Kong working in the final stages right around the clock involving no less than 50 Heads of Departments and more than 150 Hong Kong Civil Servants working in cooperation with their London and Peking colleagues.
25.
The Annexes themselves were detailed and masterpieces of drafting. They encapsulated the essentials of the society which is Hong Kong, including the equivalent of a Bill of Rights. That when published they met so effectively the requirements of the business community, professional classes and population in general, is a tribute to those who worked on them so intensively and conscientiously. Even so they would not have been enough in themselves to obtain the confidence of the Hong Kong community in the agreement. The Chinese were adamant throughout that what happened in Hong Kong after 1997 was a sovereign domestic matter for them. Hence the unusual form of the agreement which appears largely as a declaration of the policies of the Chinese Government. The difficulty was to show that this was more than a unilateral declaration which might be changed at will: it had to be made internationally binding on China. HMG therefore put forward a draft in which in response to an undertaking by the United Kingdom that it would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from 1 July 1997 the Chinese Government would undertake an internationally binding commitment to bring into force the
/autonomy