TNAG-2709-FCO40-3915-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-and-Par-1993 — Page 142

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This is the historical and geographical reality.

Any reasonable

future for Hong Kong must therefore depend on a mutually agreed

coexistence with China.

It was with all this in mind that the British Government

negotiated long and hard to ensure that Hong Kong reverted to

China in 1997 under an internationally recognised agreement, and

that this happened on the best possible terms for Hong Kong. That objective is now embodied in the Sino-British Joint

Declaration, signed in 1984, and described by the Parliamentary

Foreign Affairs Committee in 1989 as "the best and surest treaty

base for the future of Hong Kong."

It spells

The Joint Declaration is a remarkably good agreement.

out the kind of future we want for Hong Kong, ie the

continuation, for at least 50 years, of Hong Kong's capitalist

system and way of life, with all its human rights and freedoms,

its laws and legal system, its own freely convertible currency

and its free port. Hong Kong will also retain its separate

administration run by Hong Kong people, not people brought in

from outside.

China has a massive stake in Hong Kong's continuing success both economically and politically. And, through all political disagreements, Chinese leaders have repeatedly reaffirmed their

commitment to the Joint Declaration and to the concept of "one

country, two systems", which allows a high degree of autonomy to

Hong Kong after 1997.

ALASTAIR GOODLAD