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The return of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China in 1997 will be a unique event; nothing remotely like it has ever happened before. largely for this reason that the Hong Kong question has given rise to so much debate, with opinions ranging from confidence that the transition will be managed smoothly, to disbelief that such a thing is possible. I welcome this opportunity to explain something of the background, and the work that Britain and China are now doing to ensure that Hong Kong can look forward to a secure and prosperous future under its new constitutional arrangements.
The foundation of that work is the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, which was the result of two years of intensive, and often difficult, negotiation between the British and Chinese governments. When the draft of that agreement was published it was welcomed in the world's press as a major diplomatic achievement, and in Hong Kong with great relief. Before that agreement, Hong Kong had faced an future. Under the nineteenth century treaties by which Britain had acquired Hong Kong, 92% of the territory had been due in international law to be returned to China in 1997, without guarantees of any kind (and the remaining 8% would have been unviable on its own); the prospect had therefore been that China would simply reabsorb Hong Kong, and that Hong Kong's distinct way of life would come to an end. What Britain achieved in the negotiations was agreement on very specific guarantees that Hong Kong would continue to function after 1997, for at least fifty years, as a separate entity and in almost every way just as it does
now.
There was never any question of independence for Hong Kong. The Chinese had always made this clear and the Hong Kong people themselves had long accepted it. But, short of that, the Sino-British Joint Declaration provides for Hong Kong to enjoy a very high degree of autonomy after it becomes a Special Administrative Region of the People's
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