destructive and indefensible, given our responsibility for
Hong Kong. We were therefore negotiating throughout for the
best We could get, pressing very hard, but avoiding a
breakdown, for which Hong Kong would have to pay. The same
reasoning informed our dealings with Peking after 1984,
particularly in the exchanges over directly elected seats
in the Hong Kong legislature.
On the Chinese side, the arguments for
negotiation were less compelling: they were in a position
to dictate. But they sought the benefits which a peaceful
and agreed transfer of power offered in terms of economic
gain, China's international standing and, above all, the
prospects for reunification with Taiwan. Overt use of force
or blackmail over Hong Kong would destroy the hopes, which,
happily, they still entertained, of recovering the most
important piece of
of lost national territory. For these
reasons they were ready to treat, to offer reasonable terms
and to honour their new obligations as they interpreted
them.
But in Britain the 1984 agreement, however
successful and skilfully accomplished, left among many an
uneasy feeling, an ill-defined sense of guilt. I recall
being asked by Peter Hennessy, in an interview in 1984,
whether there was not a parallel with Yalta and the transfer
then of large numbers of Russians to Stalin's mercies. I
thought it was a bad analogy and said so: there might have
been some relevance if we had done nothing; as it was, we had
provided the most detailed protection possible. But the
fact that such a question could be posed, and by a well