TNAG-2702-FCO40-3908-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 192

their view contravened earlier Sino-British understandings

expressed in the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and the

exchanges of letters on directly elected seats of 1989-

1990. They rejected the right of Legco, to them a purely

advisory body, to pronounce on the future of their

territory. To them the reforms and the manner of their

promulgation represented a 180 degree turn in British

policy on cooperation and convergence. They went further

and detected a conspiracy to enhance Hong Kong's

independence and spread the virus of democracy to the

mainland. The Governor's visits to the United States,

Canada and Australia and those governments' endorsements

of his constitutional plans confirmed Peking in

in the

instinctive suspicion that there was international backing

for such a plot.

A confrontation rapidly developed. On the Chinese

side there was sustained invective and threats of

abolishing the legislature in 1997 if the new arrangements

were implemented and setting up before that date a "second

kitchen", that is an alternative centre of authority for

the territory. There could be little doubt of the

seriousness of these warnings; which would mean that the

reforms could at best bring two years of improved

democracy, after the 1995 elections, to be followed by an

indefinite period of a more repressive system. To this had

to be added the effect of divided authority in the remaining

years of British rule and, most worrying of all, the strain

on the Chinese

the Joint

commitment to

Declaration

X

itself.

^)