MAXABT
нко
HKD 301/1
RECE
DRAFT ARTICLE FOR COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY ASSOCIATION
[In
IND:
ithe
In giving evidence recently to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs
Committee, I compared the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong
from Britain to the
the People's Republic of China to a relay race. in
which the team players were China and ourselves and the baton was
the Ming vase of Hong Kong. Immense skill and sensitivity will be
required by both players if we are to effect a smooth transfer of the baton.]
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong is a unique event in the
history of the Commonwealth. Unlike most other British dependent territories and former colonies, Hong Kong never had the prospect of
moving towards independence or of retaining its present status more
or less indefinitely. In 1982, when we started addressing the
question of Hong Kong's future, the question was not whether Hong
Kong would revert to China but on what terms. The nineteenth
century lease by which Britain held virtually all the territory of
Hong Kong was due to expire in 1997, whereupon
in
the absence of
other arrangements the territory would simply have reverted
world's largest communist society without any safeguards or
assurances at all. Few people imagined then that Britain would
manage to secure arrangements for Hong Kong to continue to exist
beyond 1997 as a distinct, capitalist, free enterprise society with
its laws and liberties intact. And Hong Kong's poor economic
performance reflected that lack of confidence.
-
When the draft of the Sino-British Joint Declaration was published
in September 1984 it was greeted in Hong Kong and the UK and indeed
worldwide as a major achievement. China had signed up to an international agreement guaranteeing that communism would not be imposed on Hong Kong after 1997, that Hong Kong people would govern
themselves and that Hong Kong's way of life its freedoms, its
international connections, its stock markets, its foreign
investments would carry
-
on as
before.