TNAG-1985-FCO40-2818-Presentation-of-UK-policy-on-Hong-Kong-to-the-media-1989 — Page 154

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HKD 301/1

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DRAFT ARTICLE FOR COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY ASSOCIATION

[In

IND:

ithe

In giving evidence recently to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs

Committee, I compared the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong

from Britain to the

the People's Republic of China to a relay race. in

which the team players were China and ourselves and the baton was

the Ming vase of Hong Kong. Immense skill and sensitivity will be

required by both players if we are to effect a smooth transfer of the baton.]

The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong is a unique event in the

history of the Commonwealth. Unlike most other British dependent territories and former colonies, Hong Kong never had the prospect of

moving towards independence or of retaining its present status more

or less indefinitely. In 1982, when we started addressing the

question of Hong Kong's future, the question was not whether Hong

Kong would revert to China but on what terms. The nineteenth

century lease by which Britain held virtually all the territory of

Hong Kong was due to expire in 1997, whereupon

in

the absence of

other arrangements the territory would simply have reverted

world's largest communist society without any safeguards or

assurances at all. Few people imagined then that Britain would

manage to secure arrangements for Hong Kong to continue to exist

beyond 1997 as a distinct, capitalist, free enterprise society with

its laws and liberties intact. And Hong Kong's poor economic

performance reflected that lack of confidence.

-

When the draft of the Sino-British Joint Declaration was published

in September 1984 it was greeted in Hong Kong and the UK and indeed

worldwide as a major achievement. China had signed up to an international agreement guaranteeing that communism would not be imposed on Hong Kong after 1997, that Hong Kong people would govern

themselves and that Hong Kong's way of life its freedoms, its

international connections, its stock markets, its foreign

investments would carry

-

on as

before.