'hand-over of six million people' and of 'betrayal' and
'appeasement'. The whole process of dealing with Peking in
a constructive way became suspect.
The criticism flowed easily, but practical
alternative prescriptions were hard to come by. Reviewing
the Joint Declaration, or, worse still, denouncing it, as
was advocated in the press in 1989, would achieve nothing,
apart from terminal damage to Hong Kong. There was never a
clear answer to the question: What
to the question: What would you have done
differently in 1983 and 1984, ΟΙ, for that matter, in
1989?
When pinned down, most critics would admit that
they perhaps did not want defiance and breakdown in Sino-
British dealings over Hong Kong. But they felt that the
negotiations had been conducted in too flexible, not to say
supine, a fashion, that passes, always unspecified, had
been sold, and that there had been a general failure to
'stand up to Peking'. And here appeared the phantom of an
alternative line, tougher with China, kinder to Hong Kong,
which haunted popular criticism of official policy in the
post-Tiananmen years. It was aided by revisionist history
in Hong Kong, asserting that the territory would have fared
much better had it listened to its
own tough instincts and
not allowed itself to be beguiled by the Foreign Office
experts in London.
These experts, the 'mandarins' or, more exactly,
the Foreign Office sinologists, came to occupy a leading
role in the demonology of the time. They were alleged to be
so besotted with things Chinese,
alternatively,
or,
SO
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