4
- We could not ignore that legal obligation.
But nor did we simply accept that nothing
could be done to secure the preservation of
Hong Kong's economic prospects and capitalist
way of life. Far from it. We went for the
difficult option. With almost no cards in our
hand, we negotiated, over two years, an
international agreement to enable Hong Kong to
continue essentially unchanged for fifty years
beyond 1997.
1982
When I started the negotiations in 1983, there
was precious little to be optimistic about.
The Chinese had made it clear, publicly and
privately, that they intended to recover