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sides.
4
The negotiations themselves could have been expected to hold
a great deal of interest for academics. There is much about them
that is unprecedented in the long annals of British colonial and
diplomatic history especially as they involve the transfer of the
territory and people concerned to another authority rather than
preparing them for independence. Consider, for example, some of
the implications of the Joint Declaration of 1984 which is
generally regarded as a great achievement and as providing a good
basis for safeguarding the future of Hong Kong. It involved
British acceptance of the vague and untested formula of 'one
country two systems' as a basis for a legal commitment to uphold
in the future 'a high degree of autonomy' for a former colony
under the authority of a Communist regime which has an unenviable
record of continually violating its own constitutional norms as
was to be shown again in the 1989 Tiananmen events less than five
years later. Although the contrast in the negotiating styles of
Britain and China has attracted some attention, little has been
devoted to the extraordinary implications of the Joint
Declaration of 1984: The Chinese Communist side entrusted the
British to continue to administer Hong Kong and to have exclusive
responsibility in preparing the territory for autonomy; and
second, at Chinese insistence, Hong Kong representation was
specifically excluded from the negotiating process and yet by the
terms of the negotiations the people of the territory would be
developing representative institutions.
institutions. But perhaps the most
striking novelty of the negotiating process was the undertaking