TNAG-2791-FCO40-4030-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China.-With-maps-1993 — Page 149

The Politics of the Negotiations in China and Britain

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Curiously, in both Britain and China the bureaucracies

handling the Hong Kong negotiations have been rather insulated

from extensive interactions with other ministries and agencies

of the government. Arguably this has had more serious

consequences on the Chinese than the British side. Since

important foreign affairs issues and particularly questions

concerning sovereignty that may affect the Taiwan problem tend

to require decision taking at the highest level the relatively

low status of the Hong and Macau Office and of its leaders has

tended to have an unfortunate effect upon the negotiations. Those

responsible for day to day negotiations have no incentive to make

new suggestions or to take decisions, for they will be assuredly

blamed for any mistakes and their superiors will take the credit

for any achievements. On the contrary they have every incentive

to find fault with the British side and, as we have seen, they

have been encouraged by Deng himself to keep an eye out for any

crafty move by the British to grab capital from Hong Kong. The

effect on the British side of

of having had the negotiations

conducted on the whole by a small Foreign Office team has been

to have

have great professionalism at the cost of suspicion of

outsiders. Members of the team have tended to resent what they

regard as ill-founded criticism from within Britain and Hong Kong

and have sometimes seemed to feel beleaguered and non-

communicative. This too has its problems in a

especially when an important component of the British negotiating

position (that is not well understood in China) is the moral

democracy