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an
on the Chinese than the British side. Since important foreign
affairs issues and particularly questions concerning sovereignty
that may affect the Taiwan problem tend to require decision
taking at the highest level the relatively low status of the Hong
and Macau Office and of its leaders has tended to have
unfortunate effect upon the negotiations. Those responsible for
day to day negotiations have no incentive to make new suggestions
or to take decisions, for they will be assuredly blamed for any
mistakes and their superiors will take the credit for any
achievements. On the contrary they have every incentive to find
fault with the British side and, as we have seen, they have been
encouraged by Deng himself to keep an eye out for any crafty move
by the British to grab capital from Hong Kong. The effect on the
British side of having had the negotiations conducted on the
whole by a small Foreign Office team has been to have great
professionalism at the cost of suspicion of outsiders. Members
of the team have tended to resent what they regard as ill-founded
criticism from within Britain and Hong Kong and have sometimes
seemed to feel beleaguered and non-communicative. This too has
its problems in a democracy especially when an important
component of the British negotiating position (that is not well
understood in China) is the moral commitment to the well-being
of the Hong Kong people and the attachment to democratic values
and the rule of law.
In China there is a paradox between the growing importance
of Hong Kong in economic matters and the limited bureaucratic
weight given to the actual conduct of the negotiations and the