TNAG-2703-FCO40-3909-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 21

destructive and indefensible, given our responsibility for

Hong Kong. We were therefore negotiating throughout for the

best We could get, pressing very hard, but avoiding a

breakdown, for which Hong Kong would have to pay. The same

reasoning informed our dealings with Peking after 1984,

particularly in the exchanges over directly elected seats

in the Hong Kong legislature.

On the Chinese side, the arguments for

negotiation were less compelling: they were in a position

to dictate. But they sought the benefits which a peaceful

and agreed transfer of power offered in terms of economic

gain, China's international standing and, above all, the

prospects for reunification with Taiwan. Overt use of force

or blackmail over Hong Kong would destroy the hopes, which,

happily, they still entertained, of recovering the most

important piece of

of lost national territory. For these

reasons they were ready to treat, to offer reasonable terms

and to honour their new obligations as they interpreted

them.

But in Britain the 1984 agreement, however

successful and skilfully accomplished, left among many an

uneasy feeling, an ill-defined sense of guilt. I recall

being asked by Peter Hennessy, in an interview in 1984,

whether there was not a parallel with Yalta and the transfer

then of large numbers of Russians to Stalin's mercies. I

thought it was a bad analogy and said so: there might have

been some relevance if we had done nothing; as it was, we had

provided the most detailed protection possible. But the

fact that such a question could be posed, and by a well