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PROGRESS IN IMPLEMENTING THE SINO-BRITISH JOINT DECLARATION OF 1984
ON HONG KONG (FCO/FAC/3/89)
SUBMITTED BY THE FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
HKB 011/3
I. Background to the negotiation of the Joint Declaration
1.
Under the Treaty of Nanking (1842) and the Convention of Peking (1860), Hong Kong Island, the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island were ceded to Britain in perpetuity. The rest of the territory of Hong Kong (comprising 92% of the total land area) was leased to Britain for 99 years from 1 July 1898 under a further Convention signed in Peking in that year. This leased area, consisting of the area north of Kowloon up to the Shenzhen River and 235 adjacent islands, is known as the New Territories.
2. The Chinese Government has consistently taken the view that the whole of Hong Kong is Chinese territory. For many years its position was that the treaties relating to Hong Kong were unequal ones left over from history; that the question should be settled peacefully through negotiation when the time was ripe; and that pending a settlement the status quo should be maintained.
It made
it clear that in its view the settlement of the question of Hong Kong was a matter of China's sovereign right.
3.
The expiry of the New Territories' lease on 30 June 1997 made it necessary to tackle the question of the future as soon as possible after China's emergence from the Cultural Revolution.
It was clear
that the remaining 8% of Hong Kong's land area would not be viable without the New Territories, which contain most of the territory's agriculture and industry, its power stations, and its airport and container port. Moreover, by the late 1970s, concern about Hong Kong's future, both locally and amongst foreign investors, began to grow. The inability of the Hong Kong Government to grant new land leases in the New Territories extending beyond 1997 was a particular problem which was becoming progressively more serious. Simply to have ignored the 1997 deadline was not an option: the legal
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