compromises and accommodations
with China did not come
easily; and even when spectacular settlements were
achieved, as over the airport, the period of cooperation
and goodwill they engendered proved disappointingly brief.
The Chinese were always difficult; after 1989 they grew
even more antagonistic and demanding. As they saw it, they
were engaged in the final stage of struggle for Hong Kong,
facing all kinds of capitalist and colonialist wiles. The
task of British officials engaged regularly with them, as
in the Joint Liaison Group, called for superhuman patience.
Moreover, as the period of British rule dwindled, we were
being driven, on grounds of pure practicality, into wider
consultations with the successor regime and on terms which
progressively less favourable. This was
would grow
inherent in the fact of the transition and the ultimate
transfer.
Reduced to its most precise form, the charge of
the critics was that we had overestimated Chinese strength
and underestimated Chinese tolerance. All our experience,
both in the 1983-1984 period and later, argued stongly
against such a judgement. But there was no conclusive way of
prooof, except by trial. And in October 1992, probably more
by error than intention, Britain and Hong Kong embarked on
just such a course.
The story of the Patten reforms and the crisis
they provoked lies largely outside the scope of this book.
At the time of writing they are moreover still the subject
of negotiation. They require.
mention only as an epilogue
to the foregoing account of cooperation between Britain and
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