BANKERS TRUST SECURITIES RESEARCH
Tiananmen Square did
not break good
promises; it kept bad
ones.
One positive aspect of the record is clear. The ups and downs of Chinese domestic politics have rarely interfered with the honoring of international agreements. The principal exception was behavior toward diplomats at the height of the Cultural Revolution. This must be reassuring to those concerned about Hong Kong's fate given the periodic power struggles in Beijing. And the reassurance is overwhelmingly strengthened by Beijing's enduring consensus that Hong Kong should continue in roughly its present form minus the British.
Beijing made no international promises about its handling of domestic crises like Tiananmen Square. When Deng Xiaoping made promises about domestic political behavior, those promises focused on his commitment to the Four Principles, ensuring the persistence of socialist economics and communist politics in China. His oft-repeated oaths on this subject were widely ignored before Tiananmen Square. Afterward, the real problem would seem to be not that he broke his promises but that he kept them.
More negatively, the Joint Declaration contains exactly the kinds of central ambiguity noted above with respect to Tibet. On one hand, the Joint Declaration says that the British govern Hong Kong until July 1997 and then Hong Kong will have the same system for another 50 years. Most liberal journalists took this to mean that the British could do whatever they liked in restructuring Hong Kong's politics toward democracy and that China was stuck with the results. On the other hand, the Joint Declaration also says that Hong Kong would be governed by a Basic Law, which was to be written by China.
To the surprise of most Western editorial writers, China has emphasized the latter clause. It has, moreover, instructed the British on the necessity of "convergence," namely that what the British do before 1997 should fit the Basic Law. Most Western commentary has treated all of this as Chinese treachery over their promises, compounded by British betrayal of their principles.
It is better understood as a typical diplomatic agreement, where differences of view that cannot be resolved are papered over by including in the agreement crucial ambiguities or even euphemistically worded contradictions which have to be resolved later. In the later resolution, the Chinese held all the power, while the British held little aside from the ability to destroy Hong Kong before they left. What China and Britain did was neither treachery nor betrayal, but diplomacy. Anyone who ever parsed a SALT Treaty would understand.
Beijing's actions in Tiananmen Square were murderous, incompetent, and uncivilized, but they broke no promises and they have no implications for promises made to Hong Kong. Moreover, those actions were not a break
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