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TEN YEARS OF SINO-BRITISH NEGOTIATIONS OVER HONG KONG: PROBLEMS
AND PROSPECTS.1
BY MICHAEL YAHUDA
00011
September 1992 marked the tenth anniversary since formal
negotiations first began between Britain and China over the
future of Hong Kong. Despite having reached various agreements
that both sides proclaim to be highly satisfactory, the
negotiations themselves seem to have been marked all along by
distrust and by correct rather than friendly relations between
the two parties. Each side perceives the other with mistrust: The
Chinese suspect a British design to run away with the surplus
capital of Hong Kong and to leave the territory in disarray;
whereas the British perceive the Chinese leaders as ill- informed
and their negotiators as like street fighters. The negotiations
have also given rise to several paradoxes: Their success is
crucial to China, but of no consequence to Britain except for the
possible damaging effects if they were to fail. But the continued
evolution of Hong Kong as a major contributor to China's economic
modernization is of extreme importance especially to Deng
Xiaoping's strategy of retaining Communist power and accelerating
the country's economic development. His policy of "one country
1The research and interviewing on which this article is based was made possible by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.
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