SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret
Secret
Confidential
Restricted
Unclassified
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
5.
DSR 11C (Revised 5/87)
The foundation of that work is the Sino-British Joint
Declaration of 1984, which was the result of two years
intensive, and often difficult, negotiations between the
British and Chinese Governments. It was no easy task to
negotiate with an undemocratic, Marxist government an
agreement which would preserve Hong Kong's way of life,
its freedoms and its economic prosperity. We succeeded
against the odds. When the draft of that Agreement was
published, it was widely welcomed internationally and in
Hong Kong as the best that could have been achieved in
the circumstances.
6. Before that agreement, Hong Kong had faced an
uncertain future. Under the nineteenth century treaties
by which Britain had acquired Hong Kong, 92 per cent of
the territory had been due to be returned to China in
1997, without guarantees of any kind (and the remaining
eight per cent would have been unviable on its own). The
prospect had therefore been that China would simply
re-absorb Hong Kong, and that Hong Kong's distinct way of
life would come to an end.
7. What Britain achieved in the negotiations was
agreement on very specific guarantees that Hong Kong
would continue to function after 1997, for at least 50
years, as a separate entity and in almost every way just
as it does now.
There was never any question of independence for Hong
Kong. The Chinese had always made this clear and the
8.