TNAG-2791-FCO40-4030-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China.-With-maps-1993 — Page 124

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The negotiations themselves could have been expected to hold

a great deal of interest for academics. There is much about them

that is unprecedented in the long annals of British colonial and

diplomatic history especially as they involve the transfer of the

territory and people concerned to another authority rather than

preparing them for independence. Consider, for example, some of

the implications of the Joint Declaration of 1984 which is

generally regarded as a great achievement and as providing a good

basis for safeguarding the future of Hong Kong. It involved

British acceptance of the vague and untested formula of 'one

country two systems' as a basis for a legal commitment to uphold

in the future 'a high degree of autonomy' for a former colony

under the authority of a Communist regime which has an unenviable

record of continually violating its own constitutional norms as

was to be shown again in the 1989 Tiananmen events less than five

years later. Although the contrast in the negotiating styles of

Britain and China has attracted some attention, little has been

devoted to the extraordinary implications of the Joint

Declaration of 1984: The Chinese Communist side entrusted the

British to continue to administer Hong Kong and to have exclusive

responsibility in preparing the territory for autonomy; and

second, at Chinese insistence, Hong Kong representation was

specifically excluded from the negotiating process and yet by the

terms of the negotiations the people of the territory would be

developing representative institutions.

institutions. But perhaps the most

striking novelty of the negotiating process was the undertaking