CONFIDENTIAL
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autonomy and preservation of the essentials of Hong Kong's way of life promised in the agreement.
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Chinese acceptance was not achieved without further drama. The Chinese drafts were designed to bind the British to surrender their authority over Hong Kong, but failed to include any corresponding obligation on the Chinese to respect the undertakings in the agreement. A second problem was that in the negotiations during the spring the Chinese insisted that there should be a Sino-British Joint Liaison Group in Hong Kong in the transitional period between the signing of the Declaration and 1997. This was strongly resisted by the Hong Kong Executive Council and caused much anxiety in the Hong Kong community generally. It was feared that this would result in a form of "creeping condominium". Resistance to the establishment of the Joint Liaison Group nearly brought the negotiations to the brink of collapse. It was only during an action-packed visit by you, sir, to Peking in early August, during which momentous, on-the-spot decisions were required, that the bargain was struck. The Chinese accepted provisions clearly indicating that the Joint Declaration would be a legally binding international agreement; that the Chinese policies recorded in the Declaration and all its Annexes would be incorporated in the future Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; and that the Joint Liaison Group would not be an organ of power nor would it play any part in the administration of Hong Kong or have any supervisory role over that administration. In return the United Kingdom accepted that the group could establish its main base in Hong Kong in July 1988. An announcement to this effect at the Secretary of State's press conference in Hong Kong on August 1 was reasonably well received: but Hong Kong still wished to see the full texts.
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