The Politics of the Negotiations in China and Britain
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Curiously, in both Britain and China the bureaucracies
handling the Hong Kong negotiations have been rather insulated
from extensive interactions with other ministries and agencies
of the government. Arguably this has had more serious
consequences 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 an 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
of having had the negotiations
conducted on the whole by a small Foreign Office team has been
to have
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
especially when an important component of the British negotiating
position (that is not well understood in China) is the moral
democracy