a-modern-history-of-hong-kong-steve-tsang-2007 — Page 2

At that stage, however, the Chinese had not worked out more than the basic framework for their Hong Kong policy. For the following nine months, Liao headed an interdepartmental task group to turn the general principle laid down by Deng into a clear policy. The Chinese appeared to wish to improve their understanding of Hong Kong by inviting a stream of prominent Hong Kong citizens to visit Beijing. In reality what they wanted was to persuade the Hong Kong visitors to help to ensure the continued prosperity of Hong Kong on the basis that it would be handed over to the PRC.37 Whatever most Hong Kong visitors had in mind when accepting the invitations, most lost their resolution to speak frankly in the presence of Chinese leaders who did not welcome negative comments about the prospect of a Chinese takeover.38
When three eminent members of Hong Kong��s Executive Council led by Sir Sze-yuen Chung spoke their minds at a later stage, Deng humiliated them.39 He dismissed their positions in Hong Kong society, told them they represented no one but themselves and stressed that the Chinese leadership knew what Hong Kong really wanted.40 This exercise of inviting influential Hong Kong figures to visit Beijing was standard practice in the Chinese Communist United Front.41 The PRC government sought to win them over and increase its influence in Hong Kong, which would strengthen its position in the forthcoming negotiations with the British.
By August 1982, a month before Thatcher��s planned visit, Liao��s group produced a draft paper and submitted it to the Politburo. The paper contained 12 points, mostly on arrangements to maintain Hong Kong��s stability and prosperity, but also included measures to uphold public confidence. It formed the basis for discussions among the top leaders. The paper��s final draft after Thatcher��s visit underlined the importance of protecting Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong.42 It also became the Chinese team��s basic brief for formal negotiations with Britain.43
The Sino-British negotiations (1982�V4)
Margaret Thatcher��s September 1982 visit to Beijing was originally meant to reciprocate Premier Hua Guofeng��s visit to London in 1979. It took on new significance after Atkins�� visit early in the year. Thatcher now toughened Britain��s position over Hong Kong, since she felt both her personal standing and Britain��s position in the world had been greatly enhanced as a result of the Falklands war.44
She planned to make a stand in the first instance on the grounds that treaties protected British sovereignty over Hong Kong island and the tip of the Kowloon peninsula.45 The foreign secretary of the day, Francis Pym, did not play a significant role, for he did not enjoy the prime minister��s confidence or respect.46
The debates among the British policymakers focused on what Britain could hope to achieve and the best way to approach the Chinese. The British based their position on the understanding that Hong Kong was militarily indefensible and that the permanently ceded territories were not viable without the New Territories.47 Thus, reverting the whole territory��s sovereignty in 1997, in exchange for terms most acceptable to the British government and to the people of Hong Kong, was a matter of a negotiated settlement. To Thatcher, it meant ��continued British ad-ministration of the entire Colony well into the future��.48 The British did not fully understand the strength of Chinese feelings about Hong Kong.
Deng Xiaoping defined the Chinese government��s position. To him there were three issues: the question of sovereignty; how China would administer Hong Kong after 1997 to maintain its prosperity; and how to ensure an undisturbed transition.49 He was absolutely rigid over the question of sovereignty. While he desired an agreement for cooperation with Britain and valued highly Hong Kong��s prosperity and stability, he refused to achieve them by making any concession over sovereignty. The old anti-imperialist jingoism of the Communist movement in its early days affected Deng. He was determined to use Hong Kong to wipe out China��s humiliation by the West in the preceding century.
To his mind, making any concession over Hong Kong��s sovereignty would put him in the same category as those he called traitors. Deng felt very strongly that if the PRC��s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong would bring about cataclysmic results, then the PRC ��would courageously face up to this catastrophe��.50 At heart, he did not believe Hong Kong��s prosperity could only continue under British administration, and was confident that the PRC could somehow successfully take it over even without British cooperation.51 Thatcher��s bottom line, which was a kind of leaseback arrangement, was unacceptable to Deng.
When Thatcher visited Beijing in September, she affirmed that Hong Kong��s prosperity depended on confidence, which in turn required continued British administration.52 She tried to entice the Chinese to accept her proposal. She did this by stressing that she would consider the question of sovereignty if they agreed to an arrangement that was acceptable to the British Parliament and to the people of Hong Kong.
The Chinese did not know enough about how Hong Kong worked to see the force of her argument, which they in any event did not accept. Deng stated the Chinese position, which was that the PRC would recover Hong Kong in 1997 and make suitable arrangements to assure its prosperity.53 He rejected the British position, particularly the validity of the treaties. He said that he would allow a year or two to reach an agreement with Britain but would then announce a unilateral solution should the negotiations prove fruitless.54
The PRC government under Deng was by then determined to have its way. It was so confident of its ability to force the British to accept its position that it leaked the gist of the 12-point policy paper to the Hong Kong media. This was even before formal discussions with Thatcher began.55 This public statement that sovereignty over Hong Kong belonged to China and was not negotiable demonstrated how rigidly the Chinese government held this position.
The main achievements of Thatcher��s visit were to open negotiations over Hong Kong��s future and to make known to each other their respective views. Apart from the common wish to maintain stability and prosperity in Hong Kong, a great gap separated the two. If there had been any illusion that subsequent negotiations would be anything but tough, it was shattered.
In Hong Kong the mood changed in 1982. Once it was clear that the Chinese government was devising a policy on Hong Kong��s future, an air of anxious anticipation prevailed. Sir Sze-yuen Chung, the Executive Council��s unofficial leader, greeted MacLehose��s successor as governor, Sir Edward Youde, with a clear request when he took office in May. Chung voiced the public wish that the new governor should put the future of Hong Kong on the top of his agenda, and maintain public confidence while he resolved the issue.56 The local people had very mixed views on the subject.
On the one hand, Chinese nationalist writings and Communist propaganda had made most local residents believe that the British acquired Hong Kong through the so-called ��opium wars�� and that colonialism was inherently bad. They felt they should be proud of being Chinese and should desire the early departure of the British ��imperialists��. On the other hand, the idea of being handed over to a Communist regime, whose atrocious record some had experienced first-hand and others knew of through relatives and friends, terrified them. The effect of having as good a government as possible in the Chinese tradition was being felt in Hong Kong. Most of them had seen the tremendous differences between the Hong Kong and the Chinese governments at work.
The economic miracle of post-war Hong Kong had also given them vested interests to protect. They had a way of life different from that in the PRC. Only a handful dared to say it publicly, but the overwhelming majority clearly did not want a PRC takeover. However, most were realistic enough to recognise that independence was not an option, for the PRC would never accept it. What they hoped for was similar to Thatcher��s bottom line �V a kind of leaseback arrangement. Instead of attempting to control their own destiny actively, they responded in the first instance as they had always done. They looked to the British and the Hong Kong governments to secure their future.
Most Hong Kong citizens naively thought that Deng��s pragmatism would prevent the Chinese leaders�� irrational reactions based on nationalism from destroying Hong Kong �V the goose that was laying the golden eggs. They were themselves affected by Chinese nationalism, but could not believe that the Chinese leaders would put nationalism above Hong Kong��s economic value. They therefore watched Thatcher��s visit with intense interest. They became very jittery about their future when they saw Thatcher failing to deliver an upbeat report, as MacLehose had done in 1979. The stock market, the property market and the value of the local currency reflected their hidden fears.57 Within ten days of Thatcher leaving China, Hong Kong��s stock market had lost 25 per cent of its value and, within a month, the Hong Kong dollar had depreciated by 12 per cent. Nevertheless, most people in Hong Kong continued to hope that a diplomatic miracle would somehow be possible and an acceptable agreement eventually reached. This latent sense of optimism or naivete was an important element of Hong Kong��s resilience as it entered a period of considerable uncertainty.
The so-called first phase of negotiations defined the basis on which to conduct the talks and set out the agenda.58 It lasted from October 1982 to June 1983. To the Chinese, the object of the exercise was to secure British cooperation to maintain stability and prosperity in Hong Kong. Since the Chinese refused to accept the validity of all three treaties that governed Hong Kong, they declined to discuss its sovereignty. They simply ignored the convention in international law by which a territorial cession implemented by a treaty remained valid unless and until superseded by a new one.59 Before getting down to serious negotiations, the Chinese demanded that the British acknowledge their sovereignty over Hong Kong. This was a precondition. The British resisted it. Ambassador Cradock debated repeatedly with Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Wenjin, and later with his successor, Yao Guang, but there was no real progress for eight months.60
In the meantime, the PRC��s policymaking establishment and propaganda machine shifted into high gear. Under Liao Chengzhi, Chinese officials revised the 12 points and, as part of their United Front work, released more and more details to the media of their blueprint for a post-1997 Hong Kong.61 In December 1982, the Chinese National People��s Congress (NPC) also passed a new constitution, which contained an article intended for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. Article 31 specifically provided for the establishment of ��special administrative regions when necessary��.62 Thus, as diplomatic talks ground to a halt, the Chinese seized the initiative to shape Hong Kong��s future. By spring 1983, Cradock had concluded that Britain was facing ��the danger that we could be locked out of meaningful discussion, while Hong Kong��s fate was decided, and promulgated, in Peking��.63
It took a series of what Cradock called ��finesses�� to overcome or set aside the many areas of major disagreement in the Sino-British talks, which lasted until September 1984. The first was a letter from Thatcher to Premier Zhao in which she slightly modified her previous position. She did not formally accept the PRC��s precondition of Chinese sovereignty, but wrote that if the people of Hong Kong accepted the outcome of the negotiations, she ��would be prepared to recommend to Parliament that sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong should revert to China��.64
From China��s point of view, Thatcher��s demarche �V delicate policy and diplomacy �V meant that the British had accepted the precondition in disguise.65 Since the negotiations were only about practical arrangements, the Chinese interpreted the British prime minister��s undertaking as implying that she no longer contested whether or not the precondition was acceptable.66 Given their own experiences of the rubber-stamping NPC, the Chinese leaders believed that the British Parliament would accept an agreement. The gap that originally separated the two sides appeared to have been bridged when Deng decided to use Thatcher��s letter to let the British climb down with a semblance of dignity. This was to secure their cooperation in transitional matters.67 To the British it was finesse, but to the Chinese it was British capitulation. As a result, the Chinese allowed the negotiations to enter a second phase in July 1983. Only then did detailed discussions on matters of substance start.
The two governments thus assembled their negotiating teams. The Chinese team consisted of diplomats from the Foreign Ministry��s Western European Department, a legal adviser, Lu Ping of HKMAO and Li Jusheng, a deputy director of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong. Its leader was Vice-Foreign Minister Yao Guang, who was later replaced by Assistant Foreign Minister Zhou Nan.
On the British side, Cradock headed the team until his retirement at the end of 1983, at which point Ambassador Sir Richard Evans took over from him. Governor Youde, Hong Kong��s political adviser Robin MacLaren, four diplomats from the embassy and the Hong Kong government��s main interpreter supported the British leader. There was an unspoken understanding in British and Hong Kong circles that Governor Youde would represent Hong Kong. However, when Youde confirmed this in a press interview, the Chinese government challenged his role. The Chinese Foreign Ministry then issued a repudiating statement saying that Youde did not represent Hong Kong and was acceptable to the PRC only as a member of the British delegation.68 The PRC government considered the negotiations to be strictly between itself and the British government.
The people of Hong Kong took no part in the negotiations: they had no elected representative to speak for them. Nonetheless, their views and concerns were constantly conveyed to the British team. Under the leadership of the highly conscientious and utterly incorruptible Sir Sze-yuen Chung, the unofficial members of the Hong Kong Executive Council tried to fill the void.69 The governor relied on Chung and his colleagues as confidential advisers. Although they were mostly from business or professional backgrounds, their fellow citizens basically shared their preferences for the outcome of the negotiations. Chung also felt a personal sense of responsibility to his fellow citizens and to his place in history. With Governor Youde��s support, they were briefed and consulted regularly in the course of the negotiations. They actively involved themselves in internal debates and played a significant role in working out Britain��s policy.70
Although the PRC government openly dismissed the idea of a ��three-legged stool��, and thus denied Hong Kong a direct role in the negotiations, it nevertheless claimed to represent the local people. Just as the talks were entering the second phase in July 1983, the Chinese government appointed Xu Jiatun to become its de facto representative in Hong Kong. He was a member of the CCP Central Committee and a ministerial rank cadre. In public, he was director of the local Xinhua News Agency. In private, he was the secretary of the party��s local branch. He was not only the most senior PRC cadre ever appointed to Hong Kong, but he was also an exceptional one.
Despite his own limited and sometimes faulty understanding of Hong Kong, Xu recognised that Beijing held a highly distorted picture of public opinion there. It was almost the exact opposite of the actual situation.71 In trying to rectify the misconception, he encouraged Chung and two of his Executive Council colleagues to call on Deng and speak their minds.72 Xu also thought the British were manipulating public opinion in Hong Kong, and took it upon himself to counter it. A great master in the art of the United Front, he tried to win over public opinion by mobilising the media and by meeting and talking to a wide spectrum of Hong Kong society.73 His United Front work was very successful and considerably reduced local antipathy towards the PRC.74 Though Xu improved the PRC��s understanding of Hong Kong, there were limits to his positive influence. These became apparent when he arranged for Chung and two other Executive councillors to visit Beijing, only to be rebuked and publicly humiliated by Deng for very politely speaking the truth.75 Deng insisted that he knew the Hong Kong people better than they did themselves and that he acted in their best interests.76 The Chinese government remained convinced that it and it alone represented the people of Hong Kong �V whatever the latter thought.
The rigidly structured formal negotiations were mainly conducted by the leaders of the two teams. In keeping with British tradition, a major input came from the person on the spot �V the forceful and sharp-minded Cradock. Evans carried less weight when he took over.77 Although Cradock had reached retirement age, his services were considered too valuable to lose. So, contrary to the usually strict Foreign Office retirement rules, the prime minister installed him as a deputy under-secretary in the Foreign Office and made him a special adviser on foreign affairs. He in effect became the supremo of officialdom and took charge of the negotiations on a daily basis.
The leader of the Chinese team had much less flexibility or influence than his British counterpart. In line with Chinese Communist negotiating practice, he spoke mainly from a prepared brief from which he rarely departed.78 The change from Yao Guang to Zhou Nan made no difference other than that Zhou argued the PRC��s case more forcefully. Although the Foreign Ministry was formally responsible, the CCP��s Central Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group headed by Li Xiannian, with Premier Zhao as his deputy, supervised the negotiations. Ultimate authority rested with Deng himself. In accordance with established practice, the Chinese also fully utilised the fact that they were hosting the negotiations.79 They selectively leaked the contents of the negotiations to the media to strengthen their negotiating position.
From the beginning, the second phase of the negotiations ran into serious difficulties. The stumbling block was Britain��s role in the administration of Hong Kong after 1997. The basic British position was not to retain sovereignty but to relinquish it in exchange for continuing to administer Hong Kong for as long as possible beyond 1997.80 The Chinese rejected the idea that it was possible to separate sovereignty and administration. As Zhou Nan saw it, to do so meant replacing ��an old unequal treaty with a new one��.81 His government was ��determined to recover complete sovereignty and administration of Hong Kong��.82
Hong Kong and its financial market reacted with mild panic to the impasse, which continued into the autumn of 1983. By late September, the Hong Kong dollar had fallen to a low of 9.5 to the US dollar, as compared with 5.9 in the previous year, before the negotiations had begun. Local residents started to stock up on essentials.
In October, with the help of the Bank of England, the British and Hong Kong governments finally came up with an arrangement to restore public confidence. They linked the local currency to the US dollar, and this did the trick.83 Though a major economic crisis was averted because nobody wanted it to happen and the British made the right gesture, the Chinese saw the near crisis as a result of deliberate British manipulation.84 They did not understand that Hong Kong��s government could not control its entirely open economy. The PRC government announced that, unless they reached an agreement within a year, it would impose a unilateral solution.85 It remained firm and unshakeable in its insistence on ending British administration in 1997.
In the face of Chinese intransigence, the British eventually accepted that they would be unable to administer Hong Kong after 1997. Since avoiding a breakdown in the negotiations then became their overriding objective,86 they authorised Cradock to attempt what he called ��the second finesse��. In November 1983, the British formally conceded that they ��intended no link of authority between Britain and Hong Kong after 1997��.87 While Cradock justifiably called the first British climbdown a finesse, this was much more like a major retreat, for Britain actually abandoned its previous bottom line. However, it created a breakthrough in the negotiations because it finally cleared the way for serious discussions that could lead to an agreement.
After their orderly retreat, the British regrouped and worked out a new strategy. This was aimed at ��extracting concessions of substance from Peking and enshrining them in a binding agreement�K within the Chinese timetable��.88 Cradock rightly believed that ��pressure of time would in the end work for us as well as for the opposition��. Otherwise, the British would have ��little chance of inserting our substance and details into the outline [of] Chinese principles��.89 Cradock was right because there were few if any details in the Chinese plan for post-1997 Hong Kong: the Chinese government did not in fact wish to have a detailed agreement.
The eventual compromise was a short agreement with three annexes; the longest of these, Annex I, sets out China��s policy towards Hong Kong after 1997. The British made a significant input by providing ideas and explaining how the Hong Kong system worked. As the deadline imposed by Deng approached in the summer of 1984, the Chinese negotiators acted as Cradock predicted. In order to meet the deadline, they became more willing to cooperate with the British in reaching agreements on what remained of the so-called matters of detail.90
Until the late summer of 1984, the negotiations continued to be very tough. The most difficult issue concerned the Chinese proposal to set up a joint commission in Hong Kong to oversee the transition.91 Deng suspected that the British would strip Hong Kong of its assets and create an undesirable political fait accompli before 1997 and it was he who suggested the proposal.92 Deng and most of his colleagues found the idea of British ��imperialists�� seeing it as a matter of honour and moral responsibility to run Hong Kong as well as possible too alien to take seriously. He wanted to create a special agency or commission to supervise the 13 years of the transition.93
Although the Chinese did not intend the commission to become a shadow government, when news of it leaked out most people in Hong Kong feared that this was exactly what would happen.94 Governor Youde himself found the creation of such an institution unacceptable: he thought it would make Hong Kong ungovernable.95 Hong Kong��s initial resistance softened as negotiations over the commission dragged on and the Chinese again proved adamant.
Hong Kong��s governor and Executive Council turned their attentions towards devising compromises to make the commission less object-ionable.96 In the end, Britain��s counterproposals amounted to setting up a Sino-British Joint Liaison Group (JLG), which would be an institution for consultation and not an organ of power. This was acceptable to the Chinese, as they had never planned to take over the administration of Hong Kong immediately. Xu Jiatun, who understood Hong Kong��s situation better than most of his colleagues, helped by explaining the need to neutralise Hong Kong��s anxiety.97 The final compromise was for it to come into existence when the Sino-British agreement came into force and to last until the year 2000. This was agreed when Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe visited Beijing at the end of July. With this major hurdle removed an agreement became possible.
Other details in the final agreement defined the scope of political developments in the period of transition and the basis for Hong Kong��s future: they were in fact important provisions. The main emphasis was on securing the territory��s prosperity and stability. The final agreement also settled any questions that touched on sovereignty, as defined by the Chinese in line with the PRC��s demands. The most notable example here was Deng��s decision to station a Chinese garrison in Hong Kong. He announced this in May, in front of a group of Hong Kong journalists, who immediately broadcast the news in Hong Kong. Not surprisingly, it had a very negative impact on public confidence.98
Though the Chinese government was keen to protect public confidence in Hong Kong, its top leader had little real understanding of what engendered confidence. There was more give and take over practical arrangements that did not involve sovereignty. The British persuaded the Chinese to abandon their original idea of making parallel announcements of their agreements and to opt for a joint declaration. Many of the details of the arrangements were agreed in the final months of the negotiations. In a few cases, these were written in language that later laid them open to different interpretations. In any event, the negotiators met Deng��s deadline and produced the final draft of an agreement towards the end of September.
The Joint Declaration
On 26 September 1984, Ambassador Evans and Zhou Nan initialled the agreement known as the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing. The relatively short Joint Declaration has three annexes, which are all as equally binding as the main document. Together they make up a formal international agreement registered at the UN. The Joint Declaration was formally signed in Beijing on 19 December by Prime Minister Thatcher and Premier Zhao Ziyang. After ratification in May 1985, the agreement came into force and the transitional period began.
Under the Joint Declaration, both sides agreed that sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong would be transferred from Britain to the PRC on 1 July 1997. It provided that, in the transitional period, Britain would be ��responsible for the administration of Hong Kong with the object of maintaining and preserving its economic prosperity and social stability�� to which the PRC would ��give its cooperation��.99
The Chinese government defined its basic policies towards Hong Kong, which were elaborated in Annex I. The Chinese government commited itself to establish ��a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [SAR] upon resuming the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong��. This would come ��directly under the authority of�� the Chinese government. The SAR would ��enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs��. It would be ��vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication��, where the ��laws currently in force in Hong Kong would remain basically unchanged��. Its government would ��be composed of local inhabitants�� and its chief executive would be appointed by the Chinese government ��on the basis of the results of elections or consultations to be held locally��.
The SAR��s principal officials would be ��nominated by the chief executive�K for appointment by�� the Chinese government. ��Foreign nationals previously working in the public and police services in the government departments of Hong Kong may remain in employment��. It would keep the existing social and economic systems as well as the existing lifestyle, whereby ��rights and freedom, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law��. Private property, ownership of enterprises, legitimate rights of inheritance and foreign investments would also be protected by law.
As an SAR, Hong Kong would remain ��a free port and a separate customs territory��. It would ��retain the status of an international financial centre, as well as its markets for foreign exchange, gold, securities and futures��. It would continue to enjoy the free flow of capital and a freely convertible currency. It would not be subject to taxation from China and would have independent finances. It would have the right to ��establish mutually beneficial economic relations with the United Kingdom and other countries��, and ��conclude relevant agreements with states, regions and relevant international organ-isations�� for economic and cultural purposes. Its government could ��on its own issue documents for entry into and exit from Hong Kong�� and would have responsibility for maintaining public order there. Finally, the Chinese government pledged to implement its commit-ments in a Basic Law for the SAR to be promulgated by its NPC, which would ��remain unchanged for 50 years��.100
As elaborated in Annex I, the Joint Declaration enshrined China��s blueprint for a post-1997 Hong Kong. It provided the future basis on which Hong Kong and its people would depend. Although the Joint Declaration contains specific provisions or omissions that are open to criticism, as a whole it was acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. This is so long as it is enforced honestly and in full, which was a responsibility both signatories were to share equally. However, implementation of the Chinese promises ultimately depended on the promulgation and enforcement of a PRC law, which Beijing saw as a domestic affair and permitted no foreign interference.
The intransigence the Chinese government demonstrated in the negotiations towards any issue remotely connected with sovereignty pointed to problems ahead. It implied a non-cooperative Chinese approach to any British attempt to enforce the Joint Declaration in the event of a major disagreement over interpretation. The British approach to the negotiations also revealed a harsh fact of reality. While the British government could be expected to try to enforce the agreement and to use every available negotiating means to do so, it did not have the will or might to require the Chinese to abide by the agreement should the latter deviate from it.
Implementation of the Joint Declaration ultimately depended on Chinese goodwill, sincerity and the ability to interpret its terms correctly. There is no need to doubt the first two factors. The Chinese government would not have gone into such lengthy and difficult negotiations only to reduce its final product to a worthless piece of paper. However, interpretation remains a major problem, not least because the Chinese did not understand what made Hong Kong tick when they signed the agreement. In an important sense, they did not really know what they had committed to maintain unchanged for 50 years. The Joint Declaration was supposed to assure Hong Kong��s future, but it has not �V at least not entirely or securely.
When, after two years of inordinate tension and uncertainty, the contents of the agreement were announced in the autumn of 1984, Hong Kong responded with relief. Though some individuals expressed reservations, the majority of local people accepted it �V after all, their only alternative was to have no agreement at all.101 One might have expected stronger expressions of doubt about the value of the Joint Declaration. After all, the nature of the Communist regime in the PRC, on which the enforcement of the document depended, had not changed. However, the citizens of Hong Kong wanted to look forward to a bright tomorrow rather than a future with a dark cloud hanging over their heads. Serious doubts and the re-emergence of uncertainty and fear belonged to a later time. The end of September 1984 was a time when most people in Hong Kong bravely looked forward to building a future on the basis of the Joint Declaration.
Chapter 16

The Beginning of the End
When the Joint Declaration came into effect in 1985, it opened a new chapter in Hong Kong��s history. This was the beginning of the transition leading to the retrocession in 1997 of this rich, successful British colony, deeply embedded in Western capitalism, to the PRC, one of the most powerful Communist states in the world.
There were two inherent contradictions in the arrangements for this transition agreed in the Joint Declaration. The first was its stipulation that Hong Kong��s existing non-elective Crown Colony system would be replaced by a government with its ��legislature�K constituted by elections�� by 1997, though the Joint Declaration was intended to keep Hong Kong��s system unchanged for fifty years.1 The second was that Britain would ��be responsible for the administration of Hong Kong with the object of maintaining and preserving its economic prosperity and social stability��, to which ��China [would] give its cooperation��.2
What this meant in practice was that democratic Britain was charged with reforming Hong Kong��s legislature, but only in a way that the Leninist regime in China could support. In light of their opposing political persuasions, the agreement in effect put the two on a collision course but forbade them from crashing into each other. The situation was further complicated by the fact that introducing elections to the legislature would involve handing over certain political power to the local people in Hong Kong. The politics of transition therefore involved a realignment of power between Britain, China and the people of Hong Kong.
Realignment of Power
As far as the Chinese government was concerned, the transitional period served only one purpose, which was to prepare Hong Kong to rejoin mother China undamaged. It was willing to exercise as much flexibility as possible and made considerable concessions in the agreement of 1984, because it was in its own interest to do so.3 It believed the proper role for the British government was to serve as its custodian in Hong Kong, which implied not attempting anything disapproved of by itself. The reality that the transition was to enable it to take over Hong Kong gave it
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
increasing weight in the local political scene. This steady tipping of the balance of power in the PRC��s favour was not foreseen, but it was welcomed by Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping himself.4
Once the Chinese realised the realignment of power underway would in effect give them a pocket veto over political developments in Hong Kong, they used it to force the British to converge to their position. Nevertheless, the PRC��s need and desire for a successful takeover, which could not be achieved without the cooperation of Britain, imposed a limit to its ascendancy in the power alignment. The same also applied to the local people, whose feelings the Chinese could not completely ignore. Most Hong Kong people were concerned that ��their freedom, way of life and standard of living�� would not be preserved and that the Chinese would not refrain from interfering in the territory��s domestic activities.5 The Chinese had to reassure the local people or win their hearts and minds in order to ensure a smooth transition. Since this was needed in order to further their own interests, it provided a powerful incentive to exercise self-restraint. This allowed scope for the people of Hong Kong to play a role in local politics, and for the British to direct political developments in Hong Kong.
When it signed the Joint Declaration, Britain did see its role as that of a custodian, but of its own and Hong Kong��s rather than Beijing��s interests.6 It recognised the need to secure the blessings of Beijing for its policies in Hong Kong during the transition but resisted being reduced to being the latter��s hatchet man. From London��s point of view, the agreement was intended to safeguard British interests and enable Britain to withdraw from Hong Kong with honour.7 As the sovereign power until 1997, Britain at first felt it had considerable latitude to run the territory as it saw fit through the colonial government. To the British, the transition was to ensure that the pieces would remain in place for the Chinese takeover. As far as they were concerned, the governor would not abdicate his authority, though he would have to be sensitive to the wishes and needs of China, the prospective new sovereign.
Indeed, the British government and parliament and the Hong Kong government engaged themselves in serious wishful thinking for a short time. In Hong Kong, a major political reform was being examined during the last stage of the negotiations. When the British parliament debated the draft agreement, a majority supported it on the understanding that democratisation would be introduced in Hong Kong as part of the deal.8 The British establishment proceeded on the basis that Britain would be able to reform the political system of Hong Kong within the framework defined by the Joint Declaration.9 It deluded itself by refusing to recognise that by signing the Joint Declaration the old alignment of power between Britain and China over Hong Kong had been changed fundamentally.
This remarkable display of British confidence did not last, however. Once the PRC had publicly challenged the British over the proposed Hong Kong reforms in late 1985, the Chinese had to be accommodated lest a public confrontation shatter the fragile public confidence. The reality was that Britain demonstrated it lacked the will and power to stay in Hong Kong when it signed the Joint Declaration. Despite the public rhetoric, backed up by an exercise ostensibly to assess public acceptability of the agreement, the British also admitted that there was ��no possibility of an amended agreement�� because the Chinese would not reopen negotiations.10 This implied that, while Britain had tried to secure the best deal it could, it had conceded British pre-eminence in the politics of Hong Kong was coming to an end when Prime Minister Thatcher put her name on the Joint Declaration. That it took the British a year to accept it did not mean the alignment of power had not shifted.
However, there was a limit to Britain��s decline as a political force in Hong Kong. This was mainly based on the fact that it was responsible for the administration until 1997 and was very good at it. The record of the colonial government had earned Britain admiration from the local people, though many of them also resented it for different reasons.11 The Chinese accepted the continuation of British rule because it was beneficial to them, since a premature end to British rule would gravely damage Hong Kong��s stability, good order and, above all, prosperity.12
In fact, the Sino-British negotiations of 1982�V4 epitomised the political impotence of the people of Hong Kong.13 Their future was decided without their direct input. This generated much frustration that gave rise to a new desire to have a say over their own future, though they were divided as to the best way forward. To some, democratisation was the obvious answer.14 Others preferred to cultivate the new prospective sovereign and seek to be co-opted into the power structure by the Chinese. Some of the establishment figures also tried to fight a rearguard operation to protect their vested interests. In this new changed political situation, the people of Hong Kong wanted to assert themselves as a force in local politics.
Their desire to take their fate in their own hands notwithstanding, the people of Hong Kong merely played a peripheral role in determining the direction of political development in the 1980s. This was out of step with the fact that Britain was willing to open the local political arena to public participation, and ��the colonial government had displayed tremendous ca-pacity to adapt its methods of government to social changes��.15 The reality was that the PRC, the rapidly rising political force in Hong Kong, would not tolerate any development that might allow Hong Kong to move to-wards independence.16 In Beijing��s conception, the ��high degree of au-tonomy�� it promised Hong Kong did not mean democratic self-govern-ment.17 However, it was willing to make some concessions if it would not feel threatened as a result. The absolute limit of China��s tolerance was not tested because Hong Kong did not have an indigenous leadership pushing for it. In the 1980s, Hong Kong had conspicuously failed to produce ��a group of popular and organised indigenous [italics original] leaders as the guardian of its interests, as confidence-boosters and as guarantors of the success of the vaunted ��one country, two systems�� approach to Hong Kong��s political future��.18 These two factors accounted for the limited role played by local people in the politics of the transition.
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The increasing importance of the PRC and the decline of Britain in Hong Kong politics were inherent in the logic of the transition. A triangular power alignment among Britain, the PRC and the politically active people of Hong Kong existed in practice. It was not a static relationship. This new alignment of power provided the context in which the British attempted to democratise the colonial administration.
Flirtation with democracy
The British embarked on democratisation in Hong Kong during the Sino-British negotiations, before they recognised a realignment of power would follow the reaching of an agreement. This was meant partly to build as strong a safeguard for Hong Kong��s way of life as possible when it eventually came under the jurisdiction of a Leninist regime.19 It was also because the nature of British politics was such that any agreement to hand over two to three million British subjects, albeit of Chinese origins, to a Communist state would be more acceptable to parliament if it included giving these people some kind of democratic future.20 The democratic experiment of the 1980s was, like the attempt of the 1940s, the result of an initiative from above, even though it coincided with the emergence of a modest public demand for democratisation locally.21
In July 1984, two months before the Joint Declaration was initialled, the Hong Kong government published a consultative document, a green paper on political reform.22 It made the boldest statement since Governor Young��s similar attempt 38 years earlier. It stated that the government aimed ��to develop progressively a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong��.23 The timing allowed the PRC an opportunity to see what the Hong Kong government was thinking before the negotiations for the Joint Declaration were completed.
This was meant to be a genuine review of ��how the central institutions of government in Hong Kong might be made more representative in a way which will make the Government more directly accountable to the people��.24 This document not only provided for the introduction of a substantial, albeit indirectly, elective element to the legislature, but also for the introduction of a quasi-ministerial system. Nevertheless, it kept to Hong Kong��s political tradition by proposing to move forward cautiously. The imperative of maintaining stability and prosperity was fully accepted.
The green paper set off lively debates on both the scope and pace of democratisation. There was broad public support for its main objective. On the basis of the consultation, the government published a policy document or white paper on the subject in November �V again, a month before the formal signing of the Joint Declaration. This document set out provisions for admitting 24 indirectly elected members to the 56-seat Legislative Council in 1985. It also committed the government to review, in 1987, the introduction of directly elected members in the following year, but sidetracked the idea of a ministerial system.25 The British tried to strike a balance between the desire for reform and the need to remain in control of the pace and scope of change. This was not least because of the need to dovetail the Basic Law for the SAR to be enacted by the PRC in due course.
Though the British presented their ideas about democratisation as openly as possible, Chinese cadres found it very difficult to grasp what they were attempting. Consequently, the PRC reserved its position on the subject and stressed that ��it was a matter for the British, for which it was not responsible��.26 By the Joint Declaration, and by their acts in the summer and autumn of 1984, the PRC government appeared to have passively endorsed Hong Kong��s democratisation scheme. This was provided it did not subvert the objectives and principles laid down in the Joint Declaration. However reasonable such an interpretation, it was emphatically not what the Chinese intended or understood.
In 1985, the Chinese came to see the democratisation attempt as an underhand British plot to regain what they had lost in the negotiations.27 From the PRC��s point of view, the British were trying to create a situation that would allow them to continue to run Hong Kong after 1997.28 Firmly convinced that this was the British objective, the PRC organised a counter-attack.
This came in November when Xu Jiatun, Beijing��s de facto representative in Hong Kong who enjoyed ministerial rank, held his first-ever press conference. On this occasion, he pointedly accused the British of violating the Joint Declaration. In effect, he demanded that they follow the still-undrafted Basic Law as the basis for political reform.29 Xu and his colleagues could not believe that the British had primarily intended democratisation to protect the existing way of life in Hong Kong and to secure parliamentary support for the Joint Declaration. They never explained how the British could hope to retain control by stealth after 1997 through introducing genuine democracy.
The Chinese also failed to see that much would have to change to preserve Hong Kong��s dynamic capitalist system and way of life.30 This was because its ��political, social, and economic arrangements depend for their efficacy both on strict legal rights and on legitimate expectations habitually upheld by the authorities in accordance with well-established and credible rules of self-restraint��.31
With the end of democratic Britain��s supervision in sight, introducing democratisation was the most effective way to ensure that the local government upheld the existing rules of self-restraint. This was too alien a concept to be comprehensible to the Chinese cadres. They took the accuracy of their own interpretation of Britain��s motive for granted. Once Xu��s initiative received Deng��s backing, the PRC was set on a new course. This was to oppose liberal democracy publicly and to restrict the scope and pace of democratisation in Hong Kong.32
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Convergence
China��s rejection of democratisation gave the word convergence a new meaning for Hong Kong.33 Previously, the British position had been that, while they planned for political developments, they would ��keep in mind the fact that the Chinese Government will be considering the future Basic Law for Hong Kong, and the provisions of the Sino-British agreement, which provides for an elected legislature by 1997 and an executive accountable to it��. They would therefore do ��nothing�K inconsistent with those aims��.34 In other words, convergence meant both sides would start on the basis of the Joint Declaration and meet each other halfway.
From the British point of view, their reform of Hong Kong��s authoritarian system would dovetail with China��s plan for the SAR as both would be guided by the Joint Declaration. It was like laying down new railway tracks from opposite ends and joining them up in the middle as they met. The Chinese demand of late 1985 was that the British should stop, or slow down drastically, their building work. They could recommence when the Chinese had rethought the plan for laying the track and had completed the groundwork on their own section.35
This Chinese view of convergence put the British in an awkward position. They had publicly stated that the Hong Kong government would review the progress of reform in 1987, particularly over introducing directly elected members to the Legislative Council in the following year. They could not break this promise without gravely undermining the Hong Kong government��s credibility. The British also recognised that convergence would only happen if their reform plans were acceptable to the Chinese.36
Once the Chinese government had formally reaffirmed Xu��s public position in January 1986, the British felt they had no choice but to accept the Chinese definition of convergence.37 They wanted to ensure that whatever was in place by 1997 would survive the handover. It was not, however, a complete capitulation. The British reached an understanding with the Chinese that there would be no major reform until the Basic Law was promulgated in 1990, and that nothing the British introduced would breach the Basic Law. The British also expected to have an input into drafting the Basic Law by offering their views as part of the Chinese consultation process. In return, they expected the Chinese to let the Hong Kong government, including its Legislative Council, be formed in line with the Basic Law in 1995, to continue to function after the handover in 1997. This became popularly known as the ��through train�� arrangement.
It was against such a background that the Hong Kong government proceeded with its political reform review in 1987. In contrast with 1984, when it boldly stated its objective was to develop a government that could authoritatively represent the local people, in 1987 it tried to obscure the issue and mentioned no objective in the green paper.38 As Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe admitted, the exercise was conducted to keep the government��s promise to have a review.39 It was not to explore the way forward for developing a representative government.
To satisfy members of the general public that their opinions were given due consideration in the review, for a period of four months the Hong Kong government set up the Survey Office to collect and collate public responses. The most important question was whether direct elections for the Legislative Council should be introduced in 1988 �V an option the PRC had rejected. The Survey Office eventually produced a report of over 1,500 full pages, but it misrepresented the thrust of the public view.
According to the report, there were 125,833 individual submissions on the question of whether to introduce direct elections in 1988.40 Of these, 84,202 (or 67 per cent) opposed them, even though most of them supported direct elections in principle. Included among these were 69,557 form letters, most of which were originally handed out to employees by the managements of PRC-owned banks and enterprises in Hong Kong. What the Survey Office did not count as submissions were the results of 21 different signature campaigns, for which individuals were asked to sign and write down their identity card numbers after reading various letters. In all, these contained 233,666 signatures, of which 233,371 supported and 295 opposed direct elections in 1988.41
By excluding the signature campaign submissions, but including the form letters, the Survey Office concluded that there was overwhelming support for introducing direct elections to the Legislative Council in principle, but not in 1988. It unjustifiably implied that the people of Hong Kong had changed their minds since 1984. In the white paper of 1984, the Hong Kong government actually correctly reported that ��with few exceptions the bulk of public response from all sources�� supported ��introducing a very small number of directly elected members in 1988 and building up to a significant number�K by 1997��.42
In the 1988 white paper, the government claimed on the basis of the survey report that public opinion on the subject was ��sharply divided��. However, it admitted that there was strong public support for introducing direct representation.43 On this basis, the document provided for the introduction of ten directly elected members to the 56-seat Legislative Council in 1991. By the time the white paper was published, it was already known that the PRC intended to allow at least ten directly elected members to be admitted to the SAR legislature. The whole exercise was blatantly based on the wish to make Hong Kong��s political system converge with the Basic Law, which would not be finalised until 1990.
Although it might seem improper for the Hong Kong government to have manipulated the results of the opinion assessment, its justification for doing so was on the grounds of Hong Kong��s best interests. As Foreign Secretary Howe explained, Britain��s key objective was ��to design a structure that will not be temporary or fallible but one that will endure beyond 1997��.44 Convergence �V as defined by the PRC �V had become the political imperative. In 1987 and 1988 the British government deemed manipulation the lesser of the two evils. The other was provoking the PRC to commit itself to dismantle whatever reforms the British might introduce. By slowing down the pace of democratisation, Britain hoped
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to persuade the PRC to include provisions in the Basic Law for limited direct representation at the legislature.
The British and Hong Kong governments could get away with manipulating the opinion survey results because the people of Hong Kong did not assert themselves strongly enough.45 Had the majority of those who supported holding direct elections in 1988 organised a campaign against the Survey Office report��s findings, it would have been gravely discredited. The British and Hong Kong governments would have had to respond. The reality was that there was still public ambivalence about democratisation. Not even those most in favour of it were prepared to work for it actively. Hong Kong had not produced leaders with sufficient political skills to force the government��s hand or to mobilise the general public to do so.46 No political party organised an effective campaign to press the British to stand by their 1984 commitment to democratise. Indeed, the first true political party, the United Democrats, was not founded until almost three years later, in April 1990.47
Because of Britain��s acceptance of China��s definition of convergence, the Hong Kong government acquired the public image of being a lame duck. This was remarkable for a government that still had a tenure of almost ten years guaranteed by an international agreement. It was particularly remarkable given that this was essentially the same government that had met the requirements of as good a government as possible in the Chinese political tradition only a few years earlier. What it really reflected was the new alignment of power after 1984.
The British relied on secret diplomacy to assure Chinese cooperation in securing the through train. This was widely misunderstood or not considered credible in Hong Kong. An increasing number of Hong Kong people felt that the British government was betraying them and that the Hong Kong government was letting them down. Their sense of frustration and powerlessness increased and their confidence in the future fell. As a result, an increasing number of Hong Kong residents planned and prepared to leave, or at least to seek the security of a foreign passport.
Convergence was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it harmed the credibility of and public confidence in the Hong Kong government and this reduced its vitality in facing the longer-term challenges of retrocession. On the other hand, convergence provided the best chance to minimise the impact of the Chinese takeover, given the attitude of the Chinese leaders, which is examined in detail below.
The alternative �V to democratise Hong Kong��s political system as permitted in the Joint Declaration �V would only have led to the PRC dismantling what it disapproved of in 1997. Obsessed with the idea of sovereignty and ��face��, Beijing would deem all political reforms introduced in Hong Kong without the PRC��s tacit approval as unacceptable. Ignoring the Chinese completely because their interpretation of the Joint Declaration was ill based would have been detrimental to Hong Kong��s long-term well-being. The Joint Declaration would be worth less than the paper on which it was printed if the Chinese should decide not to abide by it because of a difference in interpretation. The British adopted convergence as a policy not because they liked it but because they believed it was, on balance, the lesser of two evils.
In the period of transition, the Hong Kong government needed to steer a course and devise policies that would both be supported by the local people and be tolerable to Beijing. Up to 1989, it tried to find such a course, but erred more on the side of accommodating Beijing.
China��s Hong Kong Policy
Policy towards Hong Kong for the PRC combined elements of both foreign and domestic policies. Until 1997, it was partly a foreign policy matter, because it was under British rule and its status could not be altered without British cooperation. However, because it was regarded as Chinese territory, it also fell within the domain of domestic policy.48
As a matter that involved sovereignty, national dignity and the future of economic reform within the PRC, their Hong Kong policy was of great importance to Chinese leaders. There could therefore be no major policy decisions or changes without the top leaders�� approval. This meant when he was alive and physically fit, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping had the final say.49 The PRC��s basic policy towards Hong Kong rested on the principle of exercising maximum flexibility in practical matters but maintaining complete rigidity over sovereignty.50
Deng and his comrades had no love for condescending Hong Kong capitalists who profited as middlemen between the PRC and the rest of the world.51 However, they knew they ��needed those capitalists for their knowledge of business and technology, their access to finance, their skill in managing large projects, and their control of the transportation and telecommunication infrastructure��.52 Within the first decade of the opening of the Chinese economy, Hong Kong had become one of the most important drivers behind Deng��s ambitious economic reforms.
It was to reconcile the conflicting requirements of recovering sovereignty and utilising Hong Kong for the Communist Party��s own purposes that the PRC devised the policy popularised as ��one country, two systems��. The Chinese considered it an ingenious idea that would enable the PRC both to have its cake (reclaim sovereignty) and eat it too (retain Hong Kong��s economic utility).53 This was essentially a modification of and, from the PRC government��s point of view, an improvement on the policy that Mao had advocated after 1949.
The guiding principle behind it has, however, remained essentially the same. It is to further the interests of the PRC as defined by the Communist Party. This is the most powerful factor in inducing PRC leaders to adhere to the Joint Declaration. This also meant, in the words of senior cadre Lu Ping, that if Hong Kong should ��be of negative value instead of positive value to China��, it ��would be disastrous for Hong Kong��.54
This raises a basic problem, which is that capitalist Hong Kong can only run its own affairs with ��a high degree of autonomy�� within the framework of a socialist PRC if the latter feels confident enough to allow
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an imperium in imperio to practise a system fundamentally hostile to its survival. In the mid 1980s, Deng had the necessary confidence. He believed that the PRC��s Communist system was superior to Hong Kong��s capitalist system.55 However inherently self-contradictory this might sound, he also conceded that it would be advantageous to let Hong Kong capitalism supplement the superior PRC system. It was, in any event, for a limited period only. Deng never intended to let Hong Kong be the catalyst to set off a chain reaction to change, let alone subvert or supplant, the socialist system in the PRC.56
As will be explained in the next chapter, if or when the Communist leaders felt threatened, they would either pre-empt or eliminate such a threat, regardless of the cost. If Hong Kong were to be deemed the source of such a menace, it would be dealt with accordingly. Deng emphatically told Prime Minister Thatcher that if, in trying to protect its sovereignty over Hong Kong, the PRC should bring about catastrophic results, he would face them.57 But then Deng felt confident that the PRC would take over Hong Kong successfully.
The PRC��s approach to the recovery of sovereignty severely restricted whatever ��high degree of autonomy�� Hong Kong expected to enjoy. Deng himself told the drafters of the Hong Kong Basic Law that they ��should not think Hong Kong affairs should all be handled by Hong Kong people��: ��this was impossible, and such an idea was unrealistic��.58 He added that, should it become necessary for Beijing to interfere, ��it would in the first instance be done through the executive branch without involving the Chinese garrison��. This would only need to be called out in the event of disturbances.59 Behind its rhetoric about autonomy, the PRC��s policy was to allow the SAR government to run its own affairs only so long as the Communist Party or its leaders did not see its actions as contrary to their interests.
The very nature of the Communist system influences its Hong Kong policy. Organised along Leninist lines, the CCP is interventionist in its ethos. When he re-emerged from political oblivion after the Cultural Revolution, Deng reaffirmed the basic principle that the party must play a leading role in all matters.60 As he put it, ��one should never depart from the leadership of the party and praise the initiative of the masses��.61 Deng��s directive was very much in character with the party tradition that transformed ��what Sun Yat-sen described as a ��sheet of loose sand�� into one of the most highly organised societies in the world��.62
Deng then instructed his party to go against its tradition and make an exception of Hong Kong. While he was undoubtedly sincere, he gave the party a very tall order. The party was to keep the promises it had made in the Joint Declaration. In principle, this was an easy task to perform �V all it required was to do nothing and let the Hong Kong government continue as before after retrocession. In reality, the Communist Party was being asked to contradict its very nature �V the most difficult task for any individual or organisation.
The PRC��s Hong Kong policy was also influenced by a basic distrust of the British and of their supporters in the territory.63 This derived from China��s tendency to adopt a doctrinal and nationalistic view of the British colony. It coloured their judgement. PRC leaders and officials remained convinced that the British were engaged in a conspiracy, at the expense of the territory and its future sovereign, to spirit wealth from Hong Kong to Britain before 1997.64 They could not believe that the public tender system and the overseers of various public bodies, including the Legis-lative Council��s Finance Committee, would not allow Britain to do so.
Their view is partly explained by Hong Kong and the PRC having very different bureaucratic cultures and practices. PRC cadres assumed that British imperialists had always exploited Hong Kong and had done so with the cooperation of local civil servants. They did not realise that the Hong Kong civil service had developed a very strong commitment to the territory and had at times fought London in defence of local interests.65 They could not and did not accept that, by the 1980s, the colonial administration had become as good a government as possible in the Chinese political tradition. The PRC��s failure to grasp this is an indication that it really did not understand what made Hong Kong tick.66
The Basic Law
However important the Joint Declaration may have been as an international agreement to protect Hong Kong��s way of life, its im-plementation required the promulgation and enforcement of the Basic Law for the Hong Kong SAR.67 According to the terms of the Joint Declaration, this new constitutional instrument had simply to stipulate the terms of its Annex I in an appropriate legal form.68 Although the PRC leaders had no intention of breaching the Joint Declaration, they did not accept such an interpretation when they started to work on the Basic Law. They deemed the Basic Law a subsidiary of their own constitution and not of the Joint Declaration.69 To the Chinese leaders, the important issue was how to make the Basic Law serve their best interests rather than to dovetail with the Joint Declaration.
Both Hong Kong and the PRC regarded the drafting of the Basic Law as a matter of great importance. To the people of Hong Kong, for whom it was the litmus test of the PRC��s sincerity, it was about how to preserve their ��system�� and way of life for 50 years. To the PRC, it provided an opportunity to lay down the parameters of Hong Kong��s autonomy after retrocession. It was also pivotal to its United Front work among the local residents in order to win over their support and retain Hong Kong��s utilities.
The PRC leaders realised that, in the mid 1980s, the people of Hong Kong were sceptical about their sincerity and ability to take over Hong Kong and preserve its way of life. They were prepared to go a long way towards persuading the local people of their sincerity. To allow their cadres sufficient time to do the United Front work properly, they set aside a long period for drafting. They tried to enhance public confidence by arranging for the National People��s Congress (NPC) to appoint a committee of specially co-opted Hong Kong members to draft the Basic Law.70 The Basic Law Drafting Committee (BLDC) came into existence
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on 1 July 1985 with 59 members.71 To ensure that it would be seen as having been drawn up ��democratically��, the PRC also appointed a consultative committee of local residents.
The composition of the BLDC was carefully worked out. It had to contain a sufficiently large representation of Hong Kong residents to give it a democratic facade, but not large enough to oppose the PRC��s will. In accordance with usual CCP practice, the local party branch or the Hong Kong and Macao Work Committee compiled the list, which the top leaders approved before the individuals in question were invited to serve.72 On the Work Committee��s recommendation, 23 of the members, or just under 40 per cent, were selected from among Hong Kong��s residents. This gave what was deemed an appropriate representation from different sectors of the local community.
The PRC chose this percentage because it only just provided a two-thirds majority. This was what Hong Kong members would need to oppose the mainland members on important matters.73 However, at least two of the 23 Hong Kong members were under Communist Party control. They were the publisher of Ta Kung Pao and the deputy head of the Federation of Trade Unions.74 In other words, on matters of importance only 21 members could not always be counted on to vote for the Party. The members also disagreed with each other on many issues, which was partly why they were selected. In some cases, their backgrounds and political persuasions were so different that it was more difficult for them to work with each other than with PRC cadres.75
The PRC��s concern to sustain Hong Kong��s economic utilities also influenced its choice of local members. Ironically, of the 23 Hong Kong members only two were union leaders. The Communist Party preferred to give the business tycoons a stronger say. After all, it needed to secure their investments. Furthermore, in line with United Front practice, the party also offered membership to its most vocal local critic, Martin Lee. Xu Jiatun of the Work Committee was confident that including Lee would be preferable to excluding him.76 It would be easier to contain his criticisms inside than outside the BLDC��s confidential working atmosphere. Making Lee a party to the drafting process would also make it easier to persuade the rest of the Hong Kong community that the Basic Law was good for them.
Ultimate control of the BLDC rested in the hands of senior Chinese cadres normally responsible for Hong Kong policies. This was despite the fact that, strictly speaking, the BLDC was an NPC and not a State Council special committee. Ji Pengfei, the director of the HKMAO, chaired the committee and his deputy, Li Hou, headed the BLDC secretariat. The other members of the secretariat were also senior cadres from the HKMAO and the Work Committee. Not surprisingly, the head of the Work Committee, Xu Jiatun, was a deputy chairman of the BLDC. In other words, excepting the foreign minister, the other two ministerial-rank cadres, Ji and Xu, who were responsible for Hong Kong policy, occupied leading positions on the BLDC. Their dominance was unquestionable, however much they claimed to be willing to listen to other members. They were assured of the support of the numerically superior mainland drafters, who were mostly members of the CCP and, as such, had to observe party discipline. There was no danger of errant Hong Kong drafters violating them over matters that threatened the basic interests of the Party.
The guiding hand of PRC cadres was also behind the formation of the Basic Law Consultative Committee (BLCC). Like the BLDC, it too was intended to be a major instrument for United Front work. The Work Committee therefore carefully planned its size and composition.77 As a purely consultative body, the CCP could afford to fill its 180 seats with Hong Kong residents. The Work Committee even invited prominent local citizens it could not trust on the BLDC to join the BLCC. The BLCC also provided a means of reaching out to Hong Kong��s so-called pro-British and Kuomintang elements. Although the Work Committee��s attempt to neutralise their open opposition failed, those who were invited found it difficult not to soften their stand towards the BLCC.
Despite the Chinese cadres�� deliberate efforts to give the selection of the BLCC a democratic facade, the true nature of the exercise was revealed in December 1985. This occurred during a meeting to prepare for the inauguration of the committee. To counter the impression that Communist cadres ran the whole process, they entrusted the Hong Kong vice-chairman of the BLDC, Sir Y.K. Pao, to chair the preparatory meeting. Its purpose was to elect an executive board of 19 from among the members; they considered Pao to be sound. Their strategy backfired. To begin with, Pao was not a member of the BLCC and therefore, according to its charter, had no authority to chair the meeting.78 His high position in the BLDC was completely irrelevant because, as Ji Pengfei put it, ��there was no question of one [committee] being subordinate�� to the other.79 Furthermore, Pao ignored the agreed procedures and proceeded to read out a list of 19 names and directed the meeting to elect them with a round of applause.80
The process revealed the invisible hand of the Communist Party. The list had been agreed beforehand and, as was usual practice inside the PRC, those elected had already been consulted. They unwittingly ignored the due process because, as Xu Jiatun admitted in retrospect, those concerned, including himself, lacked any appreciation of the democratic procedure.81 They later tried to rectify the problem by holding another meeting during which they produced the same list and duly elected those whose names appeared on it. While this showed the PRC leadership��s willingness to respond to public outrage, it also demonstrated the extent of the Party��s influence. Once the Party had publicly invested its reputation, albeit unintentionally, in its choice of the BLCC Executive Board, members of the BLCC felt they had no choice but to acquiesce.
To ensure that the BLCC behaved responsibly and did not damage the vital task of recovering Hong Kong, the CCP kept it under its own guidance, though not always directly. The first instrument was the BLDC,
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despite Ji��s public statement that the BLCC was not subordinate to it. Notwithstanding its rhetoric, the PRC tried to ensure that leading BLDC figures would steer the BLCC towards supporting the Basic Law. Hence, six of them were appointed to the BLCC��s Executive Board, one of whom (Dr T.K. Ann) was even ��elected�� chairman.
The vital task of handling the paperwork was first entrusted to Mao Junnian, a member of the Work Committee and deputy secretary-general of the BLDC. The intention was clearly that the BLCC should support rather than be independent of the BLDC. Once the CCP felt more confident in its ability to direct the BLCC��s work, it allowed a non-Communist to replace Mao. Although the new secretary-general of the BLCC, Leung Chun-ying, was born in Hong Kong, he had by then built up a reputation as a staunch opponent of democratic change.82 Leung��s own political conviction was such that the Party regarded him as a safe pair of hands in which to entrust the Basic Law.
The principle behind the procedure for drafting the Basic Law, the so-called ��two ups and two downs�� approach, was based on Mao Zedong��s idea of ��from the masses to the masses��. The Maoist axiom requires the Party to:
take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action.
It then needs to repeat the process ��so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through��.83
By combining this principle with that of the United Front and adapt-ing the end product to Hong Kong��s circumstances, the PRC leaders devised a basic policy for drafting the Basic Law. This entailed having the local people conduct the drafting process with the invisible hand of the CCP guiding them. They would produce a draft for submission to Beijing, which the PRC would then send back to Hong Kong for public consultation. The local people would then complete the drafting work and resubmit the Basic Law to Beijing for formal promulgation.
The Communist cadres did, however, considerably adapt their work style to make the whole drafting process acceptable to their Hong Kong colleagues. In the early stages of the drafting process, the BLDC secretariat, which Communist cadres controlled, followed standard PRC procedure.84 They prepared an important document about the structure of the Basic Law and circulated it among leading BLDC members. When this came to the attention of a Hong Kong member (Dorothy Liu), who had no such privileged access, she openly criticised the practice as undemocratic. In response, the Communist cadres agreed to change the procedure and appoint two co-convenors to each of the BLDC task groups, one of whom would always be a Hong Kong person.85
This accommodation to the specific demands of Hong Kong members did not mean that the PRC cadres were prepared to relinquish control. What they did was give the impression that both co-convenors were equal. The Hong Kong convenors were encouraged to appear as the more dominant in public. The relationship between the two co-convenors was similar to that between a military commander and a political commissar in the PLA.86 In this analogy, the Hong Kong convenor is the military commander and the mainland convenor the commissar. While both have the same institutional status, the first is expected to ��command��, whereas the latter is there to ensure that political mistakes are not made.
For the actual drafting of the Basic Law, the BLDC was divided into five task groups. To the PRC, the two most important of these were the ones responsible for the political system and for working out relations between the central government and the SAR.87 The BLDC members alloc-ated to these specific task groups were also senior cadres. Li Hou, Lu Ping, Zhou Nan and Ke Zaishuo, who were of deputy ministerial or at least ambassadorial rank, were all assigned to these two groups and not to any of the others.88 The remaining three groups dealt respectively with the rights of the residents of the SAR; economic and financial matters; and education, science, technology, culture, sports and religion. These groups were also important, but since they did not deal with matters of sovereignty, the PRC leaders could afford to be more relaxed about them.
The task groups working on central government-SAR relations and on the political system had to define the exact scope of the autonomy Hong Kong was to enjoy. This was a testing task for all the Hong Kong members, who had to play the more active role. It was particularly demanding of the two Hong Kong co-convenors, Rayson Huang and Louis Cha. There was a tacit understanding that Hong Kong would have relatively little room for manoeuvre in relations between the central government and the SAR. There was no such understanding over the question of political developments. Thus, as co-convenor of the political system task group, Cha had the most difficult and sensitive job. He and his group had to function while the Hong Kong government was introducing an element of representative government and then reviewing the progress of its reforms. This was also a time when the rest of Hong Kong was openly debating democratisation. Cha and his group needed to balance local demands against what Beijing would actually tolerate.89
The torrent of public criticism levelled at Cha when he tried to steer the BLDC towards accepting a compromise illustrates how difficult his task really was. When the Hong Kong members of the BLDC were unable to resolve their differences over the pace and scope of democratisation in late 1988, Cha attempted to find a compromise solution. He did not aim to resolve the Hong Kong drafters�� differences. The compromise he sought was one that would give Hong Kong sufficient democratisation to sustain its existing way of life and yet prove acceptable to Beijing. As a realist, he saw the latter as being of primary importance, since Beijing would never permit the SAR to introduce a system of which it disapproved.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Consequently, he produced a set of proposals that included as many democratic elements as possible but just short of touching the PRC bottom line, which he ascertained from senior PRC cadres, including Xu Jiatun.90 His proposals would not give democracy to Hong Kong until at least 2011, when a referendum would be held to decide the matter.91 Meanwhile, they would allow Hong Kong��s existing system to become more representative and would commit the PRC to respect such a development. Although the BLDC adopted his proposals �V with an amendment to make the conditions for the referendum more restrictive
�V they provoked vehement attacks from the Hong Kong media.92 By the late 1980s there was already a strong undercurrent favouring democracy in Hong Kong.93
Though the majority of local people remained silent, they undoubtedly shared the broad sentiments of the media��s opinion leaders, who generally supported democracy. They felt that Cha had let them down. An important difference divided them from him. They saw democracy as a goal permitted in the Joint Declaration and were less sensitive to what Beijing would allow. They simply wanted democracy for Hong Kong and expected Beijing to tolerate it. Cha believed Hong Kong��s best interests lay less in developing full democracy (which he judged intolerable to Beijing) than in tying down the PRC to respect a political system in the SAR that would permit at least some democratic representation. The public��s criticism of Cha reflected the great gap that lay between the PRC leadership and Hong Kong people��s wishes.
The political crisis that erupted in Beijing in the spring and early summer of 1989 briefly interrupted and significantly affected the drafting process. The Tiananmen incident and its general ramifications for Hong Kong are examined in the next chapter. Suffice to stress here that it badly shook the PRC leadership��s previous confidence in the ��one country, two systems�� model. When Communist Party rule in China became threatened, the PRC expelled Martin Lee and Szeto Wah from the BLDC. These two men were the BLDC��s leading advocates for a faster pace of democrat-isation. The CCP responded to the blow to its confidence by tightening its control over the drafting process and by adding provisions to enhance the PRC��s control over the SAR in the Basic Law.94
The president of the PRC promulgated the Basic Law after the NPC had adopted it in April 1990. Its legality is based on Article 31 of the PRC constitution of 1982. This permits the state to ��establish special administrative regions when necessary�� and to do so ��by law enacted by the National People��s Congress in light of the specific conditions��.95 Strictly speaking, whether this can provide the necessary constitutional authority is doubtful. Article 1 of the constitution states that ��the People��s Republic of China is a socialist state�� and adds that ��sabotage of the socialist system by any organisation or individual is prohibited��.96 Article 5 further stipulates that ��the state upholds the uniformity and dignity of the socialist legal system�� and ��no law or administrative or local rules and regulations shall contravene the Constitution��.97
In the common-law tradition, the three articles together suggest that the NPC can establish an SAR, but that the SAR must nevertheless practise and uphold the socialist system. Article 4 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that ��the socialist system and policies shall not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region��, must therefore be unconstitutional. However, since the PRC is still a Communist party-state and considers the Hong Kong question above all a political issue, such a legalistic view is merely of academic importance. Indeed, none of the PRC��s four constitutions since 1949 contains an effective procedure for independent review of a law��s constitutionality.98 More important, the entire PRC establishment holds that the Basic Law is completely in line with the constitution.99 Since Hong Kong wishes to minimise interference from the PRC, it does not serve its interests by challenging the constitutionality of the Basic Law.
The Basic Law��s drafting process is a good illustration of how the PRC��s approach to allowing maximum flexibility within a rigid framework works in practice. While much of the thinking behind the PRC��s approach originated in Communist practices, these were adapted whenever possible to meet Hong Kong��s demands. This was done so skilfully that most people, including politicians and political analysts in Hong Kong, did not realise that the guiding principles behind the drafting process were based on Mao��s ideas of the mass line and the United Front. The PRC��s bottom line was that it could not allow its ultimate control to be undermined. Once it was satisfied on this front, the PRC was prepared to consider all other demands made by the local people.
By and large, the PRC has committed itself in the Basic Law to recreate in the SAR a Chinese version of the British Crown Colony system of government that existed in Hong Kong in the 1980s. This may have fallen short of public expectations, for by then the people of Hong Kong wanted a more democratic system of government. There are also specific provisions in the Basic Law that are problematic. However, the drafting process demonstrated the amount of flexibility Beijing was willing to exercise to ensure a successful takeover of Hong Kong.
Chapter 17

The Final Chapter
As Hong Kong was preparing its transition from British colony to Chinese SAR, its history came to be affected in a fundamental way by events in China. In 1989, Deng Xiaoping��s post-Mao reforms, encapsulated in the policy of the four modernisations �V agriculture, industry, science and technology and national defence �V stalled and entered a critical stage. This policy had always been meant to be a limited one, introducing ��economic improvement without systemic change��.1 In other words, it was to import capitalist methods to help enrich the PRC and entrench Party rule but not to allow Western ideas to infiltrate the PRC and challenge the Leninist system.2 However, China was an organic entity like any other country. It was impossible to modernise specific parts of it without this having some impact on the rest of the structure. By 1988, Deng��s economic reforms had already run out of steam and created serious imbalance. They produced high unemployment, high inflation, conspicuous inequalities and a demand for political changes. As 1989 dawned, the PRC was ��a tinderbox of suppressed anger, mounting despair and corrosive envy��.3 A crisis was in the making.
The death of Hu Yaobang in April 1989, Deng��s right-hand man until he was sacked as Party general secretary in 1987 and one of the very few top leaders who had a public reputation for not being corrupt, offered an opportunity for the disaffected, particularly university students, to use his funeral to test the Party��s reactions to a protest movement.4 They demonstrated at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the spring and were later joined by ordinary citizens who shared their discontent. The Communist leadership appeared restrained at first, as it was paralysed for a short time by an intense power struggle at the top.5 This paralysis unwittingly heartened the protesters and the whole process quickly escalated.6 In the meantime, the power struggle among the top leaders unfolded.
Although more than a million demonstrated in the streets and there was some dissent within the military leadership over the use of force against them, it was only a matter of time before the CCP would unleash the full force of its might against the protesters. Once he himself became a subject of protest, Deng took a hard line.7 He believed that the protesters ��had two objectives �V to overthrow the Communist Party and to topple the socialist system��.8 He and a powerful group of top leaders had come to see the protest movement as ��a life and death�� struggle for the Party.9 With Deng giving his backing to the hardliners, the relatively moderate general secretary of the Party, Zhao Ziyang, who resisted suppressing the demonstrators by force was ousted from power.10 A forceful suppression was in the making.
When the student movement erupted in Beijing, an increasing number of people in Hong Kong came to identify with what the local and Western media portrayed as a ��democracy movement��. They themselves were frustrated by the PRC sidetracking the Joint Declaration and restricting democratic developments after 1984. They were developing a sense that ��as long as freedom, human rights, and democracy cannot be guaranteed in the PRC, they cannot be protected in Hong Kong after 1997��.11 Consequently, an unspoken common front emerged between the people of Hong Kong and the Beijing demonstrators. Admiration and support, including generous donations, built up quickly. Many became so emotionally involved they could not see the reality. Others, like many foreign journalists in Beijing, chose to ignore the dark side or inadequacies of the student movement.12 They wanted to believe in a bright future for the PRC and thus for Hong Kong too.
When the movement in Beijing came under serious threat, the already strong support of the people of Hong Kong mushroomed. Premier Li Peng��s imposition of martial law on 20 May galvanised them into action. On the following day, they showed their solidarity with the Beijing protesters. They staged an unprecedentedly massive sympathy demon-stration of over 500,000 residents (out of a total population of fewer than 6 million at that time).13 Even Communist cadres and their close supporters in Hong Kong gave their backing to the protesters, seeing the unfolding events as a great patriotic movement.14 In Hong Kong, there was a general feeling that what was happening in Beijing would have major (though as yet not clearly defined) implications for its own future.
On the night of 3�V4 June 1989, the PLA executed the orders of the top Communist leaders led by Deng. It used excessive and indiscriminate force to suppress the protest movement centred on Tiananmen Square.15 The Communist leaders intended not only to disperse the demonstrators, but also to teach them and the rest of the nation a lesson. Their message was that the Party had the might to maintain power and the will to use it. This public and bloody suppression was designed to pre-empt any similar protest movement in the future.16
The PLA��s ferocity was captured on film and immediately relayed around the world. The whole world was stunned and dismayed by the massacre they saw on their television sets. The people of Hong Kong were utterly devastated. As soon as they recovered from the initial shock, horror and disbelief, over half a million people went on a march in Hong Kong to mourn the dead and to express their anger at the PRC regime. The spirit of the time was captured in the editorial of a local newspaper: In supporting the Beijing student movement, the people of Hong Kong had identified themselves completely with it. The recent marches, [fund-raising] concerts, sit-ins, and hunger-strikes have reflected the Hong Kong people��s yearning for liberal-democracy �V both for China and for Hong Kong.17
If the earlier successes of the Beijing students had given the people of Hong Kong a ray of hope for the future, the tanks that rolled into Tiananmen Square shattered it. The brutal military crackdown raised the spectre that what happened in Beijing could well be the future for Hong Kong in less than a decade, after the PRC��s resumption of sovereignty.
The Impact of the Tiananmen Incident
To understand Hong Kong people��s feelings about and reactions to the Tiananmen incident, they need to be put in the context of the local people��s changing sense of identity.18 This has a bearing on what they saw as Tiananmen��s implications for Hong Kong. When the peaceful demonstration in Beijing ended in a savage tragedy, it forced the people of Hong Kong to confront the problems of who they really were and what would be in store for them.
The process of reflecting on their sense of identity started with the signing of the Joint Declaration. The people of Hong Kong gradually accepted the prospect of retrocession. In 1997, all Hong Kong residents of Chinese origin would become Chinese nationals. Since only a very small number of them enjoyed the right of abode in the UK, after the coming into effect of the British Nationality Act in 1982, many began to feel they had no choice but to identify with China. The upshot was a new sense of a dual identity �V they belonged both to Hong Kong and to China.
This lack of clarity in their minds had important implications. On the one hand, as Hong Kong citizens, they wanted to preserve their own way of life under the ��one country, two systems�� formula. This should have implied non-intervention in each other��s affairs by both the PRC and Hong Kong. On the other hand, feeling that they were Chinese too, they believed they had a right to have a say in vital matters affecting the future of the nation, which in practice meant PRC politics. Few Hong Kong people could see the inherent contradiction between asserting their right to have a say in the politics of the PRC and their demand that the PRC should not interfere in Hong Kong��s domestic affairs.
The confused identity of most Hong Kong people and their resultant contradictory view of Sino-Hong Kong relations made it easy for them to make a vital transition in the first half of 1989. They swiftly shifted from a position of wanting to forestall PRC interference in Hong Kong affairs to wanting to play a meaningful though essentially supportive role in the Chinese ��democracy movement��. They became emotionally committed. When they stood behind the students they felt they were not just Hong Kong citizens, but Chinese ones as well. It made them feel righteous about demanding changes within the PRC in 1989.
Most Hong Kong people��s identification with the ��democracy movement�� turned them, in their own minds, into the student protesters�� instant comrades. When the PLA massacred protesters in Beijing, many in Hong Kong, watching on their televisions, saw their comrades fall. They felt just as anguished and outraged as Beijing citizens. They felt frustrated that there was little they could do to help. They could only watch in agony. However, they were also thankful that the Union flag flying over their heads in Hong Kong had saved them from their comrades�� fate. This security and protection, which they craved, also gave them what one may call survivor��s guilt. Consequently, they wanted to do something to ease their conscience. They overwhelmed collection centres in their scramble to donate blood in Hong Kong. They also tried to force a run on PRC-owned banks by withdrawing their deposits.19 None of these actions could help the hapless protesters in Beijing or save the movement from being ground to dust. However, to an extent, they eased the intense pain brought about by their own failure to stand by their comrades under fire.
Their emotional commitment and sense of guilt weakened their ability to put matters in perspective. Most people in Hong Kong found it difficult, if not impossible, to envisage that the PRC government could justifiably see their support for the ��democracy movement�� as subversive.20
For those living under the protection of the British flag, giving material support to people across the border to overthrow the legitimate PRC government was subversive. The latter could justifiably take it as an attempt to interfere in its domestic affairs and a clear violation of the principle of ��one country, two systems��.21 Technical definitions of ��subversion�� apart, self-interest should have encouraged the people of Hong Kong to insulate themselves from volatile PRC politics to avoid provoking the wrath of ��big brother��. The CCP had shown its true colours. Hong Kong��s best chance of maintaining its system after 1997 lay in persuading the Communist leadership that it neither intended nor would try to become such a menace. In the event, the people of Hong Kong were far too emotionally involved to consider such an option calmly.
The Tiananmen incident both brought the Hong Kong people��s identity problem to a head and destroyed their confidence in the future. As the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee observed, a visible collapse of public confidence had led to ��calls to tear up the agreement, reneging on the Joint Declaration and breaking off all negotiations with China��.22 To illustrate the scale of the crisis, 75 per cent of respondents to opinion surveys were optimistic about the future in January 1989, but this dropped to 52 per cent by September, three months after the massacre.23 Another survey conducted a month later suggested that 70 per cent of the respondents had no confidence in the PRC honouring its pledge not to interfere in Hong Kong affairs after 1997.24
Whatever happened around Tiananmen Square, the realignment of power after 1984 meant it was unrealistic to think that the PRC regime would make more concessions to Britain or Hong Kong if the Joint Declaration were to be annulled, especially so shortly after the military crackdown. This did not mean nothing could be done to prevent the crisis deepening. Indeed, three measures quickly came to be seen as essential for such a purpose.
The first and most important was for the local people to have an opportunity to leave should the Chinese takeover turn into a disaster.25 The idea was to provide the people of Hong Kong with a home of last resort in what came to be known as the ��Armageddon scenario��. This involved asking Britain to restore full citizenship, including the right of abode in the UK, to Hong Kong��s 3.25 million British subjects and to help the remaining 2.5 million secure a chance of settlement elsewhere if necessary.26 The thought was that with an escape route provided, those who did not really want to leave could have the confidence to stay and the exodus of individuals essential for the territory��s well-being could be reduced. This proposal was also meant to discourage the PRC government from importing Tiananmen-style solutions to Hong Kong.
Whatever the merits of this proposal, the British government rejected it firmly.27 This was due to the powerful resistance led by Norman Tebbit, a political heavyweight in Margaret Thatcher��s ruling Conservative Party, and opposition from the Labour Party.28 The upshot was a classic British compromise. It was to give UK citizenship to 50,000 key people holding essential positions in Hong Kong and their dependants to provide sufficient reassurance to persuade them to stay.29 The British government��s handling of the citizenship issue demonstrated the limit of its commitment to Hong Kong.
The second requirement, which the British adopted, was to revive and accelerate the process of democratisation.30 Over this matter, Hong Kong��s interests did not contradict those of Britain. The British hesitation before the Tiananmen incident was due to the perceived need to accommodate the PRC in exchange for the ��through train�� arrangement. The real obstacles to democratisation since 1984 had been the PRC��s attitude and the lack of a strongly expressed common view among the people of Hong Kong. This situation changed during the student movement in Beijing. The strong public emotions expressed in support of democracy left their marks. Any lingering doubt about whether the people of Hong Kong were ready for democracy was removed.31
The outburst of public emotion pushed unofficial members of the Legislative and Executive Councils to reach a consensus. They asked for direct elections for half the Legislative Council by 1997 and for the whole Council by 2003. They also asked for the chief executive of the SAR to be popularly elected no later than 2003.32 They hoped that the common front they had obtained might persuade the PRC government to revise the draft Basic Law to accommodate the strongly expressed public wish. Those who supported this consensus proposal did not intend to use it to confront the PRC authorities. However, the Chinese leadership viewed their firm stand, on a matter Beijing had already rejected, with suspicion.
With the swing of public opinion in Hong Kong and the British media putting pressure on it to give Hong Kong as much democracy as possible before handing Hong Kong over to the PRC, the British government raised the matter with the Chinese government. It did not, however, push very hard. While sympathetic, Thatcher thought instinctively ��that this was the wrong time��.33 Her government worked on the basis that a powerful push ��could have provoked a strong defensive reaction that might have undermined the Hong Kong Agreement��.34
Consequently, the British government tried to get the best deal possible within the framework of convergence. It pleaded for ��sufficient flexibility in the Basic Law to accommodate the new situation��. The Chinese were tough, unyielding and deeply mistrustful of the British. Nevertheless, an understanding was reached in February 1990. It was for the British ��to limit to 18 the number of directly elected seats to be introduced in 1991��. In return, China would agree to extend to ��20 directly elected seats in the SAR legislature in 1997, 24 in 1999, and 30 in 2003��. It would also ��observe the 1991 legislature in operation�� and on that basis consider a faster pace of democratisation.35 This understanding fell significantly short of the consensus reached among Hong Kong��s legislative and executive councillors, but represented a step forward. The net gain for Hong Kong was to increase the number of directly elected seats in the Legislative Council from 10 to 18 (out of a total membership of 60) in 1991. Its terms were duly incorporated into Annexe II of the Basic Law.
The third measure to restore confidence was to introduce a bill of rights to enhance the legal basis for the protection of human rights. The Joint Declaration requires the SAR government to ��protect the rights and freedoms of inhabitants and other persons in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region according to law��.36 However, the collapse of confidence meant that such a provision was no longer deemed adequate. The Hong Kong government therefore introduced a bill of rights ��to incorporate provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as applied to Hong Kong into the laws of Hong Kong��.37 As a safeguard against Tiananmen-style repression, the bill of rights is no more effective than a glazed door against a determined intruder. Nevertheless, the need to restore confidence was so acute that this was a welcome gesture in Hong Kong.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the PRC government also tried to stop Hong Kong��s confidence crisis deepening. HKMAO Director Ji Pengfei stated: ��I, on behalf of the Chinese government, solemnly declare that the Chinese government��s policies towards Hong Kong and Macao, which have been formulated in line with the conception of ��one country, two systems,�� will not change.��38
This public reaffirmation of its basic policy did not alter the fact that the PRC leadership was very angry at and resentful of the support the people of Hong Kong had given the student protesters. Thus, even when he tried to dispel the fear among the people of Hong Kong, Ji reminded his audience that they had ��done something that is impermissible by the state Constitution and law and has in fact added fuel to the flames of turmoil��.39 The PRC leadership believed the people of Hong Kong attempted to subvert it even though, in line with the United Front approach, it only accused a small group of ��reactionaries�� of having done so. After the massacre, it wanted to restore public confidence in Hong Kong, not because it thought the local residents there deserved help but because it was in the Communist Party��s interest to do so �V Hong Kong was still the goose laying badly needed golden eggs.
The Chinese leadership was also bitter about Britain being the first to impose sanctions in response to what it saw as a purely internal affair.40 It could not believe that Britain had not intended to let Hong Kong be used to subvert the PRC.41 It could not understand the feelings of the people of Hong Kong.42 Deng Xiaoping himself decided that the PRC should take a tough stand towards the British.43 The PRC leadership therefore only gave limited cooperation to British attempts to restore confidence in Hong Kong.
Two other basic problems dampened the PRC leadership��s willingness to cooperate. First, to endorse any of the three British confidence-boosting initiatives would have been an admission on its part that its actions in Tiananmen caused fear in Hong Kong. Second, and more funda-mentally, the popular challenge to its authority in Beijing gravely weakened its self-confidence, which was further undermined as Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in the winter of 1989�V90.44 Its tremendous faith in the superiority of its own system previously had enabled it to exercise maximum flexibility towards Hong Kong, albeit within a rigid framework. Now that this confidence was seriously undermined, it reduced the scope of flexibility and looked at Hong Kong with suspicion.
In policy terms, after the military crackdown, PRC leaders sought to neutralise anyone in Hong Kong who posed a challenge or appeared dis-loyal during the protest movement. Their first task was to purge the Com-munist organisations in Hong Kong, which had wavered in their support for the top leaders. This was on the whole carried out secretly. It involved, above all, the removal of Xu Jiatun as head of the Work Committee.45 Xu was seen as having been too soft during the Tiananmen incident and too close to Zhao Ziyang, the ousted Party general secretary.46
Another urgent task for the CCP was to destroy the main Hong Kong organisation that had supported the Beijing protesters. This was the Alliance in Support of the Patriotic and Democratic Movement in China founded by Szeto Wah and Martin Lee. The Chinese asked the Hong Kong government to proscribe it, but the latter politely refused on the grounds that there was no legal basis for such an action.47 They then tried to intimidate the organisation��s supporters into abandoning it and attempted to isolate Szeto and Lee by naming them as subversives.48 The two were also expelled from the BLDC. The intimidation backfired, for it actually encouraged many local people to rally around the two men and their organisation. Thus, when work on the Basic Law was resumed, the PRC leaders introduced new provisions, including a clause on subversion, Article 23, to strengthen their ability to control events in the SAR before they finalised the Basic Law.49 In the interests of maintaining confidence, the PRC authorities decided not to punish Hong Kong any harder for its involvement in the Tiananmen incident.
In terms of Sino-Hong Kong relations, the Tiananmen incident gave rise to more confrontational politics. The British confidence-boosting measures reminded everybody of the massacre. The PRC government responded by becoming more confrontational than at any time since 1984. It denounced the British scheme to give 50,000 Hong Kong families the right of abode in the UK, and opposed the introduction of a bill of rights.50
British officials handling Hong Kong affairs for their part tried to repair Sino-British relations once the dust had settled. Sir David Wilson, who had taken over as governor from Sir Edward Youde in 1987, stressed in his first post-Tiananmen state of the territory address that Hong Kong and the PRC ��need to restore mutual trust as the necessary cornerstone for the unprecedented political experiment that will begin in 1997��.51 However, the scars on the people of Hong Kong were too deep for them to accept a restoration of the status quo ante. Their true feelings were put to the test in the first-ever direct elections, for 18 of the 60 legislative councillors in September 1991.
The elections dissipated any hope of the Hong Kong people putting the Tiananmen incident behind them. The single most important electoral issue was candidates�� attitudes to the PRC and the Tiananmen incident.52 All the candidates who campaigned on a pro-PRC platform were defeated.53 The pro-democracy parties and groups won a landslide. They secured 58 per cent of the votes and 15 of the 18 seats.54 The United Democrats, which Martin Lee and Szeto Wah had organised into a political party only a little over a year earlier, did particularly well. It alone won 12 seats.
The message Hong Kong��s voters delivered was that they were still emotionally committed to the causes championed by the Tiananmen protesters. They had voted against the restoration of the status quo ante. While they dared not confront the PRC government publicly, their strong feelings were disclosed. The Chinese leadership emerged convinced that democratic developments in Hong Kong were against their own interests and should not be allowed to spread uncontrolled. The electoral fiasco of the pro-PRC forces had destroyed any hope of the PRC agreeing to any British proposal to quicken the pace of democratisation in Hong Kong after 1991.
The Tiananmen incident left another important legacy that made the idea of restoring the status quo ante meaningless. In October 1989, Governor Wilson announced the Hong Kong government��s plan to build a massive infrastructural project known as the Port and Airport Development Strategy (PADS). The entire project was scheduled to be completed in 2006 at a cost of $HK127 billion, but the first phase, including the building of a new airport, would be finished in 1997. Wilson stressed that it was ��to show clearly how, despite the shocks we have experienced during the year, your government is continuing to plan for the long-term future of Hong Kong��.55 Whatever the strength of the economic case, it was primarily intended to rebuild public confidence.56
Although the PRC government did not object to this at first, it became increasingly suspicious of the British intention. Since neither the proposed new airport nor the main port expansion would be completed much before the scheduled British departure in 1997, Chinese cadres could not understand the British rationale. They looked at PADS with the suspicion that Deng Xiaoping first expressed when the Joint Declaration was being agreed in 1984. He thought the British would conspire to use Hong Kong��s financial resources to buy goodwill from the local people, and to spirit Hong Kong��s wealth to Britain before the handover.57
As Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin saw it, PADS was a British plot to host a lavish dinner party and leave the Chinese to pay the bill.58 It is indicative of the PRC mentality that Jiang already considered that Hong Kong��s financial resources belonged to the PRC seven years before retrocession. When the Hong Kong government granted the contracts to build and run two of the four berthing places for a new container terminal to a leading British-Hong Kong company and not a PRC consortium, the PRC leadership found confirmation of their suspicions.59 Plagued by suspicion of corruption in their own bureaucracy, Chinese leaders doubted the integrity of Hong Kong��s pub-lic tender system. Driven by self-interest and a conviction that the British
�V being imperialists �V must have ulterior motives, the PRC blocked PADS. Since such a massive project required public borrowing on a large scale, the PRC��s hostility meant it could not be built without its blessing.
When the PRC government took a public and high profile stand to block PADS, it changed the nature of the dispute. The crux of the matter had become the assertion by the PRC of its ��right to be consulted on all matters that straddled 1997��.60 The PRC position in fact amounted to exacting the power to veto major Hong Kong economic policies or public projects if they should have significant implications for the SAR.61 Conceding this demand would have reduced the Hong Kong government to lame-duck status. The government therefore resisted it.62 It was not until June 1991 that the PRC finally indicated any willingness to compromise, because it was by then eager to break the diplomatic quarantine imposed by major Western powers following the Tiananmen incident.63 Premier Li Peng, whose reputation was particularly badly tarnished by the Tiananmen incident, was personally keen to have a summit meeting with the British prime minister in Beijing.64 For such a British concession, Li and the PRC government were willing to reach an agreement over building the proposed new Hong Kong airport.
John Major, who had taken over as prime minister from Thatcher less than a year earlier, duly visited Beijing in September 1991 and signed a memorandum of understanding over the airport. The British tried to limit the scope of the veto demanded by the PRC but this compromise created a precedent. It gave the PRC grounds to demand prior consultation on other major policy matters.65 By its actions over PADS, the PRC government actually acquired a far greater say over Hong Kong affairs than it had enjoyed prior to 1989.
The Last Governor
The countdown to Hong Kong��s handover to the PRC entered a new phase in 1992. The year started with an announcement that Governor Wilson would retire after the British general election later in the year for which no date had yet been set.66 No successor was named. Despite public disclaimers, Wilson, who was more than three years from the statutory retirement age of 60, was removed by being elevated to a life peerage. A few months later, Prime Minister Major also retired Percy Cradock, his most senior official adviser handling Hong Kong affairs. Although Cradock served beyond the normal call of duty by staying on for ten years after his retirement, this went unrecognised when he left office. The changing of the guard reflected Major��s dissatisfaction with the way policy towards Hong Kong and China was handled.67
Unlike his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, who demonstrated a commitment to Hong Kong, Major took very little personal interest in it.68 He lost faith in the old China hands after he reluctantly visited Beijing in 1991 on their advice that as ��the first Western leader to do so after the massacre�� in Tiananmen he would be able to resolve the dispute over the PADS, but achieved little.69 Consequently, he decided to stiffen Britain��s policy towards the PRC over Hong Kong. He did not, however, have a clear idea of what to do. All that was decided was that Wilson would be succeeded by a politician, and therefore the choice would have to wait until after the general election. When he announced Wilson��s retirement he had not thought through its implications. He had unwittingly reduced Governor Wilson to a lame duck.
The results of the British general election caught many by surprise. As chairman of the Conservative Party, Christopher Patten had played a crucial role in steering the Party from a widely expected defeat to victory. Ironically, he lost his own seat in Bath, which was ��a devastating shock�� to him.70 Fresh from his electoral triumph, Major showed his gratitude by trying to ��find a proper job for someone who had, in effect, laid down his constituency for the Party��. He offered Patten Hong Kong, after the latter turned down the options of returning to the Cabinet as a member of the House of Lords, or to fight a by-election in due course.71 Patten became the last governor of Hong Kong as an accident of history.
With no meaningful experience in dealing with Hong Kong or China, Patten prepared himself before heading east by talking to a range of China experts from the political, diplomatic and academic worlds.72 Among the many issues he explored was the question of what the PRC would do if Britain granted democracy to Hong Kong. He was advised on at least one occasion that, while the Communist leaders would prefer not to have to do it, they would undo any political reform in Hong Kong that challenged what the PRC saw as its sovereign authority.73 When he took up the governorship in July, Patten was aware of the delicate and difficult position in which Hong Kong found itself.
Patten wanted to better his diplomatic predecessor and to leave his own mark. Arriving in Hong Kong, where Wilson was unkindly but widely denigrated for his alleged readiness to yield to pressure from the PRC, Patten intended to restore credibility to the governorship in the eyes of the local people.74 He did not set out to antagonise the PRC, but he knew that his standing would be gravely undermined if he were to be seen to kowtow to Beijing, particularly in his early days. He had to balance the PRC leadership��s expectation that he would pay homage to it in Beijing and the wish of the Hong Kong people that he would represent them and stand up for them. A skilful politician, Patten tried to finesse a compromise between these requirements, but he placed greater emphasis on securing the support of the local people.
Patten was a political heavyweight. He was a friend and close political ally of Prime Minister Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. As Governor of Hong Kong, he enjoyed more leverage than any of his predecessors in the twentieth century.75 Though he had direct access to the top, the Foreign Office continued to handle most contacts between the Hong Kong and British governments through its normal channels of communication. He had a mandate from the prime minister to review Britain��s Hong Kong policy, and played a pivotal role in revamping it.76
Apart from his close personal and political links with the prime mini-ster, there was another reason for vesting so much power in him. There was a general feeling in British political circles that the last governor would need clout in Westminster and political skills in the final stage of the transition.77 This resulted in shifting the locus of policymaking from the old China hands or career diplomats versed in Chinese idiosyncrasies to the politician governor after the summer of 1992.78
In October, Patten announced his agenda in his first policy address to the Legislative Council. He produced a political reform package that would give the local people as much democratisation as possible without breaching the Basic Law. To sweeten the deal for the PRC, he adroitly removed a major political irritant to Beijing. He tried to finesse the irreconcilable demands the PRC government and the people of Hong Kong had put on the governor.
More than anything else, the people of Hong Kong expected their new governor to speed up the pace of democratisation.79 They included expanding the representative aspects of the Legislative Council and appointing a couple of directly elected legislative councillors to the Executive Council. The most popular candidates were Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, leaders of the United Democrats, which won most of the directly contested seats in the election the previous September.80 However, the PRC would not tolerate Lee or Szeto being appointed to the Executive Council.
Patten came up with an extremely cleverly devised set of proposals to reconcile the conflicting requirements. First, by claiming that the existing overlap of membership between the Executive and Legislative Councils would ��inhibit the effective development of the Legislature as an independent check on Government��, he proposed their separation.81 It was a masterstroke that diffused the intractable problem over the appointment of Lee or Szeto to the Executive Council. This also in fact did the PRC a favour by giving it what it wanted �V a strengthening of the executive branch at the expense of the legislature. (If Hong Kong had followed the more usual process of democratisation in a British colony, it would have developed towards a Westminster model with parliamentary supremacy.) To compensate for the severing of links between the two councils, the governor gave up the presidency of the legislature. Instead, he introduced a question time during which he would, as chief executive, answer questions from legislators.82 He supplemented this by establishing a ��Government-LegCo Committee�� through which to maintain ��an effective working relationship between�� the executive and the legislature.83 All the above proposals were deemed unlikely to be objectionable to Beijing and were implemented without delay.
Patten also suggested introducing changes to electoral arrangements for the Legislative Council in 1995. He stressed that, as far as possible, he wanted the ��reforms to be compatible with the Basic Law and, accord-ingly, to transcend 1997��.84 There were seven specific recommendations:
�E
to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18, which was the voting age in the PRC as well as in Britain;

�E
to increase the number of directly elected seats from 18 to 20, which was the number laid down in the Basic Law for the first SAR legislature in 1997;

�E
to change multiple-seat geographical constituencies into single-seat ones;

�E
to replace ��all forms of corporate voting�K by individual voters�� in the 21 existing functional constituencies.85 This meant giving a vote to the individuals working in professions or specified business sectors rather than their companies. It would make this archaic type of representation more in tune with modern times, and its voting less susceptible to manipulation;

�E
to add nine new functional constituencies so that people who did not belong to existing categories would be represented in the new functional constituencies. This was needed to enable the Legislative Council of 1995 to dovetail with the arrangements laid down in the Basic Law, which provided for 30 functional constituencies in the SAR legislature in 1997;86

�E
to devolve some power over local matters and give more financial resources to district boards. Also, direct elections would replace all appointments to these boards and to the municipal councils; and

�E
finally, he suggested that the Basic Law��s requirement for ten members to be elected by a selection committee of 400 should be chosen in a different way as a stopgap measure in 1995.87 In Patten��s conception, instead of having the governor appoint a similar committee �V the composition of which would probably be objectionable to Beijing �V he would ask all the directly elected members of the district boards to elect ten among themselves as a one-off arrangement.88


In making these proposals, Patten pushed the grey area in the Basic Law to its limit, but did not actually violate it. The Basic Law does not specifically prohibit anything in his scheme. This is in line with the common law tradition whereby anything not prohibited is permitted. In this sense, his scheme was a masterstroke. It did not contravene the constitutional position to which the PRC had committed itself in the Basic Law. Yet, it delivered to the people of Hong Kong the largest possible step in the direction of democracy. In reality, this step remained a modest one. However, Patten did a first-class job in packaging and marketing it as a major step forward. He played down the fact that, even if his scheme were implemented in toto, Hong Kong would still only have one-third of its legislature returned by direct elections. His scheme was seen as a major step forward because the people of Hong Kong and PRC cadres accepted his democratic rhetoric at face value.
While it was obviously important to persuade the people of Hong Kong, Patten should have also ensured that the Chinese government understood what his scheme really entailed. This was vitally important, for Chinese cadres were well known for their inability to understand how Western democracies work. A Chinese failure to understand his scheme would cause them to overreact.
Before finalising his plan, Patten became aware that the PRC government was unhappy about it. Two weeks before announcing his proposals, Foreign Secretary Hurd had given his Chinese counterpart an outline of the scheme when they met in New York.89 It took the Chinese a week to respond. Patten was asked to defer announcing his objectionable proposals until he had discussed the matter with the Chinese government.90 Patten must, therefore, have calculated that, despite its dissatisfaction the PRC would not jeopardise confidence and stability in Hong Kong over his proposals.91 He himself openly stated that he expected to hold ��serious discussions with Peking�� over them.92 For this purpose, he planned to visit Beijing shortly afterwards. He could not have expected the PRC to accept his proposals in full, but he must have intended to make the PRC justify the rejection of any of them in public. Had he been operating within the framework of British politics, this would have been a clever pre-emptive manoeuvre to seize the moral high ground and force his political opponent to negotiate publicly from a weak moral position. However, as a means of neutralising PRC objections, Patten��s adroit move turned out to be as clever as waving a red flag at a bull one is trying to induce to leave a china shop.
The PRC leaders looked on with suspicion at the appointment of this politician who, from the very beginning, expressed a wish to further Hong Kong��s freedom.93 They wondered whether the new man �V who had no understanding of Chinese thinking and was probably primarily concerned with British interests �V would introduce any basic changes to Britain��s policy. They reserved judgement at first. However, as the summer progressed, their original suspicions were confirmed. To begin with, unlike their ��old friend�� Wilson, who from a Chinese point of view duly paid his respects upon assuming the governorship five years earlier, Patten did not visit Beijing before announcing his political agenda. Furthermore, he did not get along with the top Chinese cadre in Hong Kong, Zhou Nan, which exacerbated their misunderstandings. To Beijing, it appeared that a sinister plot was being hatched, either by Patten personally or by the British as a whole.
The PRC found Britain��s handling of Patten��s plan at least as objectionable as its contents. The Chinese believed they had had an understanding with the British since late 1985 over the meaning of convergence. As they saw it, they would define the scope and pace of the democratisation in Hong Kong towards which the British would converge.94 As explained in the previous chapter, the Chinese made what they believed to be a major concession in allowing the number of directly elected seats to the Legislative Council to be increased from 10 to 18 after 1989.95 This was achieved by secret diplomacy, which to the Chinese meant their ��sovereign authority�� over Hong Kong was respected. Since the Patten plan was being hailed as a major political reform with implications beyond 1997, the Chinese expected the British to have consulted them first and to have provided them with an opportunity to reject any unacceptable elements. However, the British merely informed them on this occasion and, according to the director of HKMAO, Lu Ping, completely ignored the Chinese comments.96
The Chinese also believed that, by announcing the plan publicly, the British intended to present them with a fait accompli. They considered it at best a deliberate affront and at worst a sly move to undermine Chinese sovereignty. The Chinese also wondered whether this modified approach marked a fundamental change in British policy. Since convergence had worked well for their interests, they were eager to nip in the bud any change in British policy.97 Hence, they made a very strong and swift neg-ative response to warn the British to return to the policy of convergence.98
The skilful way in which Patten made his modest proposals look as if they were a major democratic reform also backfired. It so confused the Chinese cadres that they gave Patten much more credit than he deserved for ��democratising�� Hong Kong. The Chinese saw the plan to fill the ten Legislative Council seats by means of elections among elected municipal councillors and district board members as direct elections in disguise. They mistakenly equated them with the electoral colleges in US presidential elections. Following this logic, Patten would indeed have taken a major step towards democratisation through the back door, for half the Legislative Council seats would for all practical purposes be open to direct elections. The Chinese did not understand the subtle yet vital differences between Patten��s proposal and the US electoral college system. In the US, electoral colleges have no function other than to elect the president and each delegate is by convention returned on the basis of his or her declared choice of presidential candidate. In the Hong Kong case, the local-level elections would have to be contested on the whole range of issues handled by the municipal councils and district boards.
Furthermore, there would be a year between the local elections and the Legislative Council elections. During the 1994 local elections, no one could know who the candidates for the 1995 Legislative Council elections would be, and the latter therefore could not be an issue in the local elections. Hence, turning the municipal councils and district boards into an electorate for 1995 was not a direct election in disguise, but this was something the Chinese did not understand.
The Chinese further exaggerated the effect of Patten��s proposed reforms. They also counted the nine new functional seats as if they were direct election seats.99 They therefore wrongly thought that ��the number of directly and in effect directly elected legislative councillors would amount to 40 [sic]��. This was two-thirds of the council��s total membership
�V a percentage that could allow the United Democrats (the predecessors of the Democratic Party) to win a majority.100 They saw the Patten plan as ��an attempt to let the ��anti-Chinese democratic party�� which represents British interests to win, and enable it to take ��the through train�� into the first Legislative Council after the return of Hong Kong��s sovereignty in 1997��.101
The Chinese also raised serious objections to other aspects of the Patten proposals. These included:
�E
substituting corporate voting with individual voting in the functional constituencies;

�E
ending appointments to (or more realistically gubernatorial patronage in) municipal councils and district boards; and even

�E
ending overlapping membership in the Executive and Legislative


Councils.102 They failed to understand that the last proposal was a sweetener for them. They did not realise that it removed the public pressure on the Hong Kong government to appoint Martin Lee to the Executive Council. They also failed to understand that it took away the most powerful influence the Legislative Council traditionally exercised over the Executive Council. For more than a century, the Executive Council had tended not to push a controversial policy if its unofficial members, who also sat on the Legislative Council, could convince it that such a policy would be unacceptable to the legislature.
Patten��s uncoupling of the two councils therefore turned the Hong Kong system into a much more ��executive-led�� one.103 It was exactly what the PRC wanted, but the Chinese cadres failed to grasp it. It reflected their inadequate understanding of how the political system in Hong Kong actually worked. It was also because they started from the assumption that Patten had ulterior motives. By focusing on every conceivable negative implication, they overlooked those that were positive to the PRC. As Lu Ping saw it, because the Chinese had already set out their plan in the Basic Law, they even found Patten��s appeal to produce counter-proposals offensive.104 The PRC government��s basic objection to Patten��s plan lay in the belief that it intended to introduce democracy to Hong Kong in open defiance of its stated policy.
Since Chinese cadres misread the nature of Patten��s plan, their inaccurate assessments became the basis for decision-making. Seeing it essentially in terms of a British challenge to Chinese sovereign authority, the reaction was to take a tough stand.105 The old mistrust expressed by Deng was revived �V ��someone would not implement in full�� the Joint Declaration.106 Building on such a suspicion, the Chinese even saw it as part of a wider conspiracy.107 As Zhou Nan explained, the British mistakenly believed that ��after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, China would also face the same kind of changes��. They thus wanted to ��use proxies installed with their help to extend British colonial rule, turn Hong Kong into a semi-independent political entity, and unrealistically wish to influence political developments in China��.108 The PRC leadership thus decided to face this British challenge squarely and win at all costs.109
The PRC hardened its position after the Governor visited Beijing in October. This was the only occasion when Patten was received as Governor of Hong Kong by senior Chinese leaders like the foreign minister and the director of HKMAO. To Patten, it was an occasion when he could have serious talks with the Chinese about his proposals. To the PRC leaders it was an opportunity for Patten to admit his mistake and return to convergence.110 There was no meeting of minds.111 The PRC leaders felt they had confirmation that the British were attempting a volte-face and consequently prepared for confrontation. For months the Chinese ignored British demarche to open negotiations to resolve their differences over the Patten reforms.
The PRC leadership was still keen to make a success of the retrocession. It thus applied its well-tested United Front tactics to divide the British-Hong Kong camp and neutralise the Patten initiative. Used for this purpose, United Front tactics require one to isolate one��s principal antagonist and destroy it by rallying one��s supporters, winning over those wavering and neutralising the opponent��s natural supporters. Once this is completed, one moves on to the next target and repeats the exercise until one establishes full control. In the winter of 1992�V3, the Chinese saw Patten as the principal target. The people of Hong Kong were the wavering elements, and the British government and Hong Kong civil service were the opponent��s natural supporters. Hence, despite seeing the Patten plan as a wider British conspiracy, the PRC propaganda machine singled out Patten for attack. In public, the PRC argued that one person, who was the cause of all the troubles, was destroying Hong Kong��s interests and Sino-British cooperation. Its message to both the British government and Hong Kong was that once Patten had been removed, the status quo ante could be restored and Hong Kong would not have to see its stability and prosperity threatened.
This virulent attack on Patten provoked the British to close ranks. The British government felt that if it replaced Patten under overt heavy-handed PRC pressure, it would lose all credibility and authority in Hong Kong in the run-up to 1997. It was therefore not an option. The barrage of verbal abuse the Chinese heaped on Patten also made him appear like a great champion for democracy in Hong Kong. Some people there were intimidated and many wealthy capitalists asked the governor to defuse the crisis for the sake of stability and prosperity. The majority of ordinary folk, however, rallied around him for standing up for them. When the PRC propaganda campaign intensified in the winter, his popularity ratings rose to their highest point.112 To most Hong Kong people, strong Chinese hostility was sufficient proof that Patten��s plan must be a major democratic reform. The world media, which was still influenced by the legacy of the Tiananmen massacre, shared the same sentiment. Ironically, through the eyes of the international media, the high-profile PRC propaganda attacks quickly turned Patten into Hong Kong��s English hero. The PRC had badly miscalculated the reactions of Britain, the people of Hong Kong and the international media. Its United Front tactics had backfired.
The confrontation between Britain and the PRC over the Patten plan was a tragedy that neither side wanted. The changing of guards and the new team��s well-intentioned though naive wish to recover some of the lost ground on the British side, led to its failure to anticipate the likely responses from the Chinese side.
The End of Cooperation
In March 1993, the Chinese finally but reluctantly realised that the British would not replace Governor Patten.113 They therefore agreed to enter into negotiations with Britain, which started in earnest the following month. Deputy Foreign Minister Jiang Enzhu represented the Chinese in the talks with the British ambassador Sir Robin McLaren. Throughout the 17 rounds, the PRC kept up the pretence that the governor was not a party to the negotiations, though Patten remained the key figure behind the scenes on the British side. The negotiations were tough and progress was slow.114 Though both sides had entered the talks partly to secure popular support in Hong Kong, they also wanted to reach an agreement to ensure a successful transition. However, they remained suspicious of each other��s intentions.
The Chinese starting position was that the Patten plan violated the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and various understandings over political developments reached after the Tiananmen incident.115 General Secretary Jiang Zemin defined their basic stand. He said that the PRC ��would not make any concession on matters of principle��. It would be ��guided by the one country, two systems�� policy and would ��take into account the basic interests of the Chinese people, who include the Hong Kong and Macao compatriots��.116 In other words, he reaffirmed the policy of exercising maximum flexibility within a rigid framework.
An acceptable compromise would require considerable back-peddling on the part of the British to bring Patten��s plan into line with the PRC��s interpretation of the two documents and of various understandings. While Chinese sincerity was not in doubt, it was unclear whether they were keen to reach an agreement quickly. As the Chinese knew only too well, time was on their side. To introduce the changes proposed in the Patten plan, the Hong Kong government would need to pass one or more new laws. From Beijing��s point of view, this was largely a British problem, for it was they who had provoked the dispute in the first place. The Chinese were unsympathetic to the time pressures the British side faced.
Governor Patten essentially defined the British position. As he himself put it, the crux of the matter was ��not about the pace of democratic development��, which was ��set out in the Basic Law��.117 The British sought to secure two basic principles. The first was to ensure that ��election arrangements in Hong Kong should be fair, open and acceptable to the community��.118 The other ��was to agree on arrangements which would provide continuity through 1997��.119 The British were therefore willing to reach a compromise by revising the 1992 proposals. In October 1993, the governor publicly stated the main thrust of the concessions the British were willing to make:
First, we have devised a new proposal for the nine new functional constituencies, based on organisations as the Chinese have argued and with a total eligible electorate of about a third of that in my original proposal. We continue to insist that electors should vote individually, not corporately. Secondly, we have tried to meet China��s preference for a four-sector Election Committee of the kind set out in the Basic Law for the post-1997 Election Committee. We continue to argue that all members of the Election Committee should themselves be elected.120
The governor also made clear, however, that ��there is a point beyond which I do not believe that we could justifiably go, even in pursuit of an agreement to which we genuinely aspire��.121 The limits of the British concession were not only about the substance of the plan, but also about the timing for an agreement. The British had set a time limit because the necessary legislation had to be put in place to implement the proposed changes for the September 1994 local elections.
In Governor Patten��s judgement, time ran out in late November 1993. The British gave the PRC a few days�� warning before gazetting the draft bill they later introduced into the Legislative Council, though they also stressed their wish to continue negotiations.122 Patten appeared to have felt a sense of frustration and resentment over the PRC��s heavy-handed approach and verbal abuse of him personally. Because such a move would be so obviously against the PRC��s own interests, he seemed reluctant to believe that the PRC would honour its own threat to demolish his reforms. Patten��s assessment revealed his own ignorance and misunderstanding of the PRC��s policy. The point of no return was reached in June 1994 when the Legislative Council passed his remaining reform proposals of 1992 into law in full.
The Chinese acted on their previous warning and declared the talks terminated.123 They saw the British move as confirmation of their insincerity in the talks and held them fully responsible.124 They were only prepared to resume negotiations if the British discontinued their unilateral action. From their point of view, the British move amounted to a return to challenging their sovereign rights over Hong Kong. They could not back down and their reaction was predictable. Whether justifiable or not, their certainty that the Patten plan violated the Joint Declaration, seriously weakened their sense of commitment to it and ��provided a perfect pretext for tinkering�� with it.125
��Building a New Kitchen��
The breakdown of the talks marked the abandonment by the Chinese of the policy of a ��through train��.126 Instead they devoted themselves to an alternative policy described in terms of ��building a new kitchen��.127 The most important activity in a Chinese community is feeding the people and, in this respect, families function as the basic unit. The family kitchen is therefore the hub �V the vital place in which to turn raw materials into nutritious food to sustain the family and enable it to prosper. Building a new kitchen symbolises the splitting of a family or the assertion of independence. The implication was that, with a ��new kitchen�� in place, it would not need to rely on the existing one. As an analogy to Hong Kong, its existing ��kitchen��, or political system, would remain under British control, but the PRC would build a new one that would take over the functions of the British ��kitchen�� in 1997.
This threat to build a ��new kitchen�� was first made by HKMAO Director Lu Ping in October 1992 when Patten was visiting Beijing.128 Lu merely meant to warn Patten to abandon his scheme. Beijing had not yet committed itself to ��build a new kitchen��. The idea only developed after its initial attempts to force the removal of Governor Patten had failed. When the PRC opened negotiations over the Patten plan in April 1993, it also planned for the worst and strengthened its hand in the talks by preparing the ground for a ��new kitchen��. It announced its intention to set up a preliminary working committee (PWC) as a first step towards the eventual appointment of a preparatory committee for the Hong Kong SAR.129 This was a clever move and in a sense was in retaliation against Britain��s claim that the Patten plan had not breached the Basic Law. Although there is no provision for a PWC in the Basic Law, one of its appendices does require the forming of a preparatory committee sometime in 1996.130 Since the Basic Law does not prohibit the setting up of a PWC, its creation did not violate the terms of the law.
The PRC had two objectives in forming the PWC in July 1993. The first was to put pressure on the British to make concessions over the Patten plan. The possibility of the PWC becoming an alternative centre of authority generated a certain amount of concern in Hong Kong. Its creation by slow but steady steps gave the PRC a useful additional bargaining chip.131 Should the British decide to abandon the Patten plan, the PRC could then make a grand symbolic gesture. It could either suspend the appointment of the PWC or, if already formed, give it purely honorific functions. Such considerations lay behind the PRC��s decision, while talks were underway over the Patten plan, to allow a long interval �V three months �V between announcing its intention and actually naming the committee.
The other, and at first secondary, objective was to provide the infrastructure to ��build a new kitchen��. All its 57 members were either senior cadres from relevant departments within the PRC establishment or Hong Kong residents who had taken a pro-PRC stance over the Patten plan. If it should prove unnecessary to build a ��new kitchen�� the PWC could still serve as a useful interdepartmental coordinating body. Hence, it was headed by Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen. It was represented at the vice-ministerial level by the Ministry of Public Security, the PLA, the Communist Party��s United Front Department, and various economic, trade and financial ministries in addition to the Foreign Ministry and HKMAO. To make it non-offensive to Hong Kong opinion, 30 of its 57 members were carefully selected from among Hong Kong��s residents.132 With a membership on which the PRC leadership could count to safeguard its interests, it became a useful organisation in case a ��new kitchen�� really needed to be built.
Until the Sino-British talks collapsed in December 1993, the PRC kept its promise not to make the PWC into an ��alternative centre of authority or a shadow government��.133 On its inauguration earlier in July, the PRC gave the PWC rather general terms of reference, with no specific instructions to ��build a new kitchen��. It was only after the talks ended that the PRC asked the PWC to carry out serious and specific research into what could actually be done to prepare the PRC to resume sovereign authority.134 The originally secondary purpose of the PWC, which was to ��build a new kitchen��, had become the primary one. Once the Legislative Council passed into law the Patten reform plan, Jiang Zemin directed the PWC to ��rely on our own resources as the basis and staunchly follow the directive of upholding our interests to ensure the stable transition�� in Hong Kong.135 Construction work for a ��new kitchen�� started in earnest.136
This change in PRC policy in 1994 was very important. Marked by Jiang��s directive on self-reliance, the PRC acted as if the British had irretrievably abandoned convergence as a policy. It ceased to count on Sino-British cooperation to ensure a stable transition and minimised making public references to ��Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong��.137 Instead, it emphasised relying on itself to implement the ��one country, two systems�� policy. Beijing accepted that Patten��s reforms would be introduced, but was determined to reverse them. Furthermore, by preparing to nullify all legislative changes implemented through the bill of rights during Patten��s tenure, the PRC aimed to counteract the impression that he had improved Hong Kong��s human rights situation. Once conciliation failed, the PRC sought to destroy Patten��s reforms and to lay the blame entirely on him for causing the retrogression.
The British, for their part, had not abandoned convergence as a policy in 1994. They still wanted a smooth and successful transition and therefore continued to cooperate with the PRC over practical arrangements. After their spectacularly unsuccessful stand over the Patten plan, the British conceded that ��further contests with China�� on most other matters had become ��a thing of the past��.138 Although the British did not capitulate on all issues, they accepted that, by July 1997, the PRC would be able to do whatever it wanted. If they believed that the PRC was misguided over some issue, they were prepared to argue and try to persuade it otherwise. However, apart from the Patten plan, they did not take a stand on other issues. This even included the Court of Final Appeal �V vital for maintaining judicial independence. Patten faced great pressure from some of his former Cabinet colleagues who were more interested in promoting trade with the PRC.139 Since the PRC mistakenly thought the British had abandoned convergence and no longer expected almost automatic British cooperation, their public disputes became relatively less acrimonious. An ironic situation was thus created in which Sino-British cooperation appeared to improve after the talks over the Patten plan collapsed.
In September 1995, Hong Kong elected a new Legislative Council along the lines of the Patten plan. Although the elections proved beyond any reasonable doubt that it was possible for fair, open and democratic elections to flourish there, Hong Kong was not turned into a democracy. Martin Lee��s Democratic Party failed to gain power, despite its electoral successes. Contrary to the PRC��s understanding, there was simply no scope for such a development in the Patten plan. The PRC allowed its supporters to take part in the elections, but they did badly. They won only 16 seats from different types of constituencies in a council of 60. It was a slap in the face for the PRC. It removed what residue of hope there was that the Chinese leadership might allow the last Legislative Council to continue basically as it was after retrocession.140 This led to a difficult problem. Arrangements had to be made either for new elections in 1997 or for an interim measure to be taken.
In light of the shift in PRC policy from seeking Sino-British cooperation to relying on itself, and the electoral defeat of pro-PRC forces, the PRC leadership decided to keep a tighter rein over the first SAR legislature. It thus resolved not to hold new elections but to form a provisional Legislative Council by appointments. Such an arrangement breached the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration, both of which required the first SAR legislature to be elected. Justifying its creation on the grounds that this had become unavoidable following the British violation of these two documents by implementing the Patten plan, the PRC turned the provisional Legislative Council into a key feature of the ��new kitchen��.141
In the meantime, the PRC also proceeded to form a preparatory committee chaired by Qian Qichen in January 1996. This was ��responsible for preparing the establishment of the Selection Committee for the First Government�� of the SAR.142 The selection committee itself was duly con-stituted in November 1996. It was entrusted with selecting the provisional Legislative Council and with electing the chief executive for the SAR.
As the PRC had by then committed itself to ��build a new kitchen��, Britain had become irrelevant to its endeavours to set up the SAR��s political institutions. In its own way, however, the PRC did try to assuage public opinion in Hong Kong. The provisional Legislative Council finally appointed in December 1996 was constituted with this requirement in mind. Hence, of its 60 members, 33 were in the existing Legislative Council.143 Allocating more than half the seats to incumbent legislators was meant to suggest that, had the British not implemented the Patten plan, Hong Kong could have had a ��through train��. In other words, the 1995 legislature could have served out its four-year term until 1999.144 Though the 60 did not include anyone from Martin Lee��s Democratic Party, which condemned the selection process, four members of the Association for Democracy and People��s Livelihood, one of the smaller pro-democracy parties, were included.145 This was supposed to suggest a balanced representation of the local community��s different political persuasions.146
These two arrangements were designed to reassure the more sceptical elements of Hong Kong society. Seats were allocated both to reward groups closest to the PRC and to guarantee the PRC��s ability to dominate the council. Ten of those who campaigned (but were defeated) on pro-PRC platforms in the 1995 Legislative Council elections were appointed, and 85 per cent of all appointees were themselves members of the selection committee.147 With an appointed council making a mockery of the 1995 election results, the PRC had forced democratisation in Hong Kong to take a step back. Also, because Governor Patten was held to be responsible for derailing the ��through train��, it was he who was meant to get the blame.148 The composition of the provisional Legislative Council suggested that, for the PRC, the more important consideration had remained the safeguarding of its interests.
In December 1996, before the appointment of the provisional Legislative Council, Premier Li Peng appointed Tung Chee-hwa �V a local shipping magnate whose company was previously financially beholden to the PRC �V chief executive of the SAR. He was to take office formally on 1 July 1997.149 A chief executive would probably have been selected around this time even without the dispute over the Patten plan. Given the decision to ��build a new kitchen��, however, the PRC needed to handle the matter differently. When convergence was still in place, there was a general expectation that, to ensure continuity, the British would appoint the chief executive elect as a lieutenant-governor, or to a similar position, in the run-up to the handover. This prospect was removed when conciliation failed. In picking Tung, the PRC again ignored the British as a factor. This was in sharp contrast to the drafting of the Basic Law, when British comments were taken into account. In other words, although the idea of electing the chief executive pre-dated that of ��building a new kitchen��, Tung��s appointment turned him into the most important part of this new creation.
Once appointed, Tung proceeded to name his Executive Council in early 1997. In so doing, he had to defer to the PRC��s wish to reverse Patten��s 1992 initiative to separate the Executive Council from the legislature. Apart from two members of the SAR Executive Council being chosen from members of the provisional Legislative Council, the same rationale governing the formation of the provisional Legislative Council applied. Tung and the PRC government tried to appoint an Executive Council that would enjoy credibility among the people of Hong Kong, provide a degree of continuity and, most importantly, safeguard the PRC��s interests.
To satisfy the first two requirements, Tung nominated two members of Governor Patten��s Executive Council to serve on his 11-member SAR Executive Council. They would provide continuity. Furthermore, Tung appointed Sir Sze-yuen Chung as convenor of the SAR Executive Council. Chung had been the senior member of the Hong Kong Executive Council for much of the 1980s, particularly during the negotiations for the Joint Declaration. He had become acceptable to the PRC because he opposed Patten��s reforms. Although Chung has continued to put Hong Kong��s interests before all others, the PRC regards him as a repentant ��patriot��. As a respected elder statesman, his appointment was meant to lend credibility to the SAR Executive Council. To meet the requirement of safeguarding the PRC��s interests, Tung allowed the PRC��s invisible hand to guide him. He dropped two of his original choices and appointed a few whose names had been gently suggested to him.150 It was not purely accidental that four convenors of various subgroups in the preparatory committee were appointed. Three of the 11 members are believed to belong to the Chinese Communist Party.151 The composition of the SAR Executive Council reflected the PRC wish to strike a kind of balance between reassuring the local people and protecting its own interests.
By the spring of 1997, with the Chief Executive, his Executive Council and the provisional Legislative Council in place, the PRC had completed the ��new kitchen��. It had been built largely without taking British views into account. Now the PRC had an institution with which to take over Hong Kong on the appointed date, with or without British cooperation. The transition had reached a point at which the British had only limited room for manoeuvre. Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind admitted in early 1997 that ��both the British Government and Hong Kong people were realistic about the scope for action by Britain at this stage in the transition period��.152 Although the British government continued to discharge its responsibilities, it had accepted that the Patten reforms would not survive retrocession. The Chinese were convinced that the British would try to further their interests by seeking a confrontation over Hong Kong.
Conclusion

Full Circle?
At midnight on 30 June 1997, Hong Kong, the last great imperial possession of the British Empire, became the first Special Administrative Region of the PRC. In the context of modern Chinese history, this marked the completion of a full circle, from Hong Kong being ceded by the declining Chinese Empire in 1842 to its peaceful and successful retrocession to resurgent and powerful China 155 years later.
British rule, however, left indelible marks on Hong Kong. It had developed a history of its own, about which its people felt a sense of pride. It had transformed itself from a collection of sleepy fishing villages into a great modern metropolis. In the context of British imperial history, it had changed from an outpost of the Empire to its richest and most successful non-settlement colony.
British Hong Kong was handed back to the successor state of the Chinese Empire not because it had failed or its people had voted to do so, but for essentially the same reason that it had come under British rule in the first place. This was the result of the changing balance of power between Britain and China. The main difference being that this time this was recognised and acted on by its sovereign power, Britain, without fighting a war that it could not win. Both Britain and China accepted that Hong Kong had become too valuable to risk its destruction. In this sense the peaceful and successful transfer of its sovereignty represented the triumph of reason and responsible behaviour over emotion and dogma.
Hong Kong rejoining mother China was not a matter of putting the clock back. Both Hong Kong and China had changed fundamentally since the 1840s. Reintegrating modern Hong Kong into a rapidly modernising China was not a simple or straightforward process but a highly delicate affair. The adoption of the ��one country, two systems�� formula by the PRC government for reunification underlined its tacit admission that British Hong Kong was such a spectacular achievement that it would need to be preserved essentially as it was, despite the need to satisfy Chinese nationalism and irredentism, and to safeguard ��socialism with Chinese characteristics��.
Hong Kong had indeed acquired a sense of identity, way of life and value system in its British period that set it apart from those prevailing in mainland China. Hong Kong��s history under the British was, on the one hand, closely linked to developments in China. Economic imperatives, close social links, human ties and the sheer force of geography saw to that. British protection and values, on the other hand, insulated Hong Kong from the worst turbulence of modern Chinese history. The British presence kept Hong Kong out of great upheavals like the Taiping Uprising or the Boxer movement under the imperial dynasty, large-scale civil wars during the republican period and madness like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution under the Communists. The history of British Hong Kong was both an important history in its own right and, at the same time, part of the history of the British Empire and an extramural part of the history of modern China.
Handover
The lowering of the British flag at Government House on 30 June 1997 for the last time marked the end of an era. It was an emotional moment for all concerned.
To the departing British, Hong Kong was their last major imperial possession and its handover to the PRC effectively symbolised the end of the British Empire built up in the heyday of Queen Victoria.1 Had there been no appointment with China, Hong Kong would have been the greatest success story of modern British imperial rule. Britain was leaving behind a vibrant modern economy with a higher per capita GDP than that of the metropolitan country itself, a well-educated population admired for its resourcefulness and entrepreneurial drive, a law-abiding and human rights-respecting society, as well as a stable, liberal and efficient government. The transfer of power had worked so well that the British could claim that they left their last major colony with honour.2 A dignified and graceful departure and handover was intended.
For the PRC, the handover symbolised the end of what it calls a century of humiliation by Western imperialism. It represented a great triumph for the pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping��s approach in building ��socialism with Chinese characteristics��.3 Since Deng had died earlier in the year, it was President Jiang Zeming, finally the top leader in reality as well as in name, who presided over this historic event with the national flag metaphorically draped all over him.4 The retrocession of Hong Kong was a grand moment not only for the government, but also for a good number of Chinese who lived in big urban centres. Public emotion was high in the capital, Beijing, where a street party of gigantic scale was held to mark the occasion. For those Chinese who could afford the time to pursue an interest in either nationalism or Hong Kong, they by and large accepted the official Communist view of the history of Hong Kong and shared the sentiments of their leaders. To them, Hong Kong��s retrocession was the greatest occasion for a public celebration since the founding of the PRC in 1949.
The local Chinese in Hong Kong, in contrast, had mixed feelings. While many shared the nationalistic sentiments of their compatriots, others displayed emotional, even melancholic, attachment to the era that was ending. In public, most citizens of Hong Kong expressed their confidence in the future and welcomed the retrocession, but in private many held their breath about their future and hoped for the best. Bearing in mind the well-known but unspoken sensitivity of the PRC establishment and their emotional commitment to the handover, Hong Kong society as a whole was ready to play its part in the great celebration.
What the people of Hong Kong were celebrating was not as clear-cut as that for their compatriots in the PRC. They celebrated for different reasons in Hong Kong. Some did so because they believed in Chinese nationalism, others because it was a politically correct and astute move. Still others, probably the overwhelming majority, took the occasion in the spirit that had made British Hong Kong the miracle it was. It was the spirit of resourceful resilience. The transfer of sovereignty was a foregone conclusion and it was vital to the people of Hong Kong that it should succeed. For this they must secure the goodwill of the new sovereign power. Many in Hong Kong celebrated to ensure they would have a future worth celebrating.
On the day of the transfer of sovereignty, both the British and Chinese governments were represented by their top leaders. The British delegation was headed by the Prince of Wales, as the personal representative of Queen Elizabeth II. It was constituted, in order of precedence, by Prime Minister Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, Governor Patten and the Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Charles Guthrie.5 A long list of British dignitaries, including all the former prime ministers, foreign secretaries and ambassadors involved in the negotiations of Hong Kong��s future since 1979 were among the 4,000 guests from all over the world.
The PRC delegation was headed by President Jiang Zemin himself. It was also made up of Premier Li Peng, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen, Deputy Chairman of the Central Military Commission General Zhang Wannian and Chief Executive designate Tung Chee-hwa. The ranking of the Chief Executive designate below the senior PLA representative made a contrast to the British arrangement by which the Governor took precedence over the Chief of the Defence Staff. It reflected the difference in importance accorded to the offices concerned by Britain and the PRC.
The absence of the third ranking leader of the PRC, Chairman of the National People��s Congress Qiao Shi, on the Chinese side was noteworthy. In strict constitutional terms it is the NPC, not the Presidency or the Premiership, which took over from the British Crown as the ultimate source and arbiter of Hong Kong��s constitution as a Chinese SAR.6 Given that the SAR was founded on the authority of the NPC, his absence at the handover should have been a matter of significance; subsequent developments within the PRC suggest otherwise. Qiao��s absence was connected with the consolidation of President Jiang��s position as successor to Deng as paramount leader and Qiao��s being eased out of the centre of power. It was not meant to undermine the constitutional links between the SAR and the NPC. Nevertheless, this should remind everyone that in the context of the political reality of the PRC, the real holders of power, rather than the constitutional repository of authority, are the ultimate arbiters of the SAR��s scope of autonomy and future.
Whether Governor Patten, or for that matter anyone, represented the people of Hong Kong at the transfer of power was a moot point. The people of Hong Kong had previously been excluded specifically from the negotiations for their future in accordance with the PRC��s policy. They were also not represented in the handover. Their last governor effectively left office after the Union flag was lowered at Government House in the afternoon, though the formal transfer of sovereignty and his authority did not take place until midnight. The handover ceremony was officiated by the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne for the British, and President Jiang for the Chinese. At this, the most formal and important part of the proceedings, Governor Patten had no official role to play. The only public roles he did play in the day were at the British farewell ceremonies, not at the handover ceremony. By the time of the handover he was, for all practical purposes, merely a member of the British delegation. Hong Kong was handed over with its people reduced to spectators and providers of entertainment for the day��s celebrations.
Although the handover was treated by the two governments concerned as a bilateral issue, the world community and the international media devoted much attention to it. It is not clear whether such attention and high-level government representation primarily reflected a recognition of Hong Kong��s economic importance or underlined the international community��s support for the continued upholding of human rights and freedom in the SAR. The two considerations are in any event not mutually exclusive. As it turned out, the several thousand journalists from all over the world shared a moment of history and a grand party with one of the most spectacular firework displays in human history while the ceremonies of the day went largely as planned, except for the torrential rain.
When the PRC flag and the SAR flag were raised after the British had transferred sovereignty, Hong Kong was symbolically put in its place. With the SAR flag visibly smaller and raised half a pace slower than the PRC flag in the ceremony, the people of Hong Kong were shown quite clearly that the SAR was created with ��a high degree of autonomy�� by the grace of the PRC. It left no doubt that the ��one country, two systems�� policy was meant to further, first and foremost, the PRC��s national inter-ests. The existence of this new political imperative was acknowledged by the SAR��s Chief Executive, who said at the ceremony to found the SAR:
Our foremost task is to enhance Hong Kong��s economic vitality and sustain economic growth. Only through the creation of wealth can we improve the living of the people of Hong Kong, and continue to contribute to our country.7
Shortly after the formal handover ceremony, the new SAR government was sworn in by the new Chief Justice, Andrew Li. Tung Chee-hwa took office as Chief Executive of the SAR. Police and other uniformed officers kept their British-style uniforms but discreetly changed their cap badges and other insignia of the old colonial regime. Administrative power was transferred in an orderly, efficient and uneventful fashion.
Much as the transfer of sovereignty and power went smoothly, significant though subtle realignment of power also took place as Hong Kong started its first day as a Chinese SAR. This involved much more than introducing a series of measures required to put into legal effect the handover of power from Britain to the PRC.
As a reaction to the acrimonious disputes during the tenure of Patten as governor, the Chinese adhered to their policy of ��building a new kitchen��. As a result, the SAR introduced a wholly appointed provisional Legislative Council to replace the partially directly elected last British Legislative Council immediately after the handover ceremonies. In turn, this new Council promptly introduced and passed the Reunification Bill, which gave effect to 13 bills it had previously passed during sittings in Shenzhen, across the border.8 They had the effect of annulling some of the changes introduced by Governor Patten.9
This did not mean the PRC intended to claw back from the ��high degree of autonomy�� it promised the SAR. However, there was doubt at first whether the SAR government was prepared or able to exercise fully its ��high degree of autonomy��. In addition to the uncertainty inherent in a transfer of power of this nature, it was also because the PRC��s assumption of sovereignty meant the power relationship among authorities in Hong Kong, the PRC government and other power centres such as the PLA, the Communist Party and other regions in China were changed.10
The most immediately relevant aspect of this new power alignment was the relationship between the Chief Executive and the head of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Committee of the Communist Party. After 1949, the latter used to operate as the PRC��s de facto representative in colonial Hong Kong under the guise of the local Director of the Xinhua News Agency. The PRC government made a special effort to give the SAR government a good head start. The senior Party man Zhou Nan was retired. His multiple responsibilities were divided. His quasi-diplomatic duties were transferred to the Foreign Ministry��s Special Commissioner stationed in Hong Kong, a cadre at ambassadorial rather than ministerial rank. The office of the Director of Xinhua was kept. However, Beijing did not appoint Jiang Enzhu to this office immediately after the handover. It gave the SAR government a month to settle in before Jiang��s appoint-ment was announced. As Jiang was elevated to membership of the Central Committee in the Fifteenth Party Congress in September, he undoubtedly also took over as Secretary of the Work Committee. This office carried ministerial rank. After 1997, the importance of Hong Kong would be at least equal to that of Shanghai or Tianjian. The Party Secretary of these two special municipalities usually carried membership of the Politburo.
That Jiang was only given Central Committee membership and a bureaucratic rank below that of the Chief Executive could not have been accidental. It meant the PRC government really intended ��to let the Chief Executive have a freer hand in the management of domestic affairs��.11
Indeed, the PRC government gave the SAR Chief Executive an important lever to enable him to defend himself and his administration against other Chinese power centres. He was given a bureaucratic rank higher than that usually granted to a provincial governor or mayor of a special municipality. He was given more than ministerial rank. His specific rank has not been clarified, but it is equivalent to either a State Councillor or a Vice-Premier.12 This was meant to make him less susceptible to pressure from heads of provincial governments or heads of ministries. To reinforce this position, Jiang Zemin powerfully stressed at the founding ceremony of the SAR that ��no central department or locality may or will be allowed to interfere in the affairs�� of the SAR.13 Indeed, subsequent events and testimonies by top SAR officials confirm that senior PRC cadres visibly interfered less in the affairs of Hong Kong than they had before the transfer of sovereignty.
The continued adherence to a policy of exercising maximum flexibility within a rigid framework by the PRC government notwithstanding, the SAR government under Chief Executive Tung has not pressed for the widest scope of autonomy permissible since 1997. The most blatant example was over the dispute involving the right of abode of a large number of children of recent PRC migrants to Hong Kong.14 When the number of children involved appeared dauntingly large, the Chief Executive abandoned his public commitments to the rule of law and subverted the ruling of the Court of Final Appeal, which ruled in the children��s favour. In response, Tung invited the NPC Standing Committee to make an interpretation over such a matter that would be binding on the Court of Final Appeal, and thus forced the latter to reverse its ruling. Tung did not do so under pressure from the PRC. He took the initiative himself. In so doing he breached the terms of Article 158, the interpretation article in the Basic Law, which reserved the right to seek clarification or a ruling from the NPC to the Court of Final Appeal and not to the Chief Executive.15
British Legacies
By 1 July 1997, the British Empire had wound itself up in Hong Kong but its legacies live on, at least for the moment. The economic successes of modern Hong Kong should not be allowed to distort the real legacies of British administration for a century and a half. Although Hong Kong was transformed from a collection of fishing villages to a great metropolis and one of the world��s leading financial centres, this should not be attributed to the efforts of the British. In its first century of British rule, Hong Kong in fact lagged behind Shanghai as an economic centre. In any event, Hong Kong��s economic achievements owed more to its Chinese community than to its expatriate community after the first two or three decades of British administration. The greatest contribution of British rule in this regard was to provide the political framework and social stability that enabled Hong Kong��s economy to flourish. However, the vibrant and highly capitalistic economy of Hong Kong at the time of the handover was not an export from socialist Britain. The management of Hong Kong��s economy in the 1980s might have made it look like the only place where Thatcherism was applied in its purest form, but it was in place well before Margaret Thatcher came to power in Britain in 1979. The real legacies of the British Empire in Hong Kong need to be found elsewhere.
While the most significant British legacies are easy to identify, it is inherently controversial to rank their relative importance. However much one may try to be objective in a matter of judgement like this, one��s assessments cannot but reflect one��s personal values and background. To myself, an academic historian of the British liberal tradition who grew up in Hong Kong and witnessed first-hand its transformation from the 1960s, the most important inheritances the British passed on to the SAR are an independent judiciary and the rule of law. More than any other British legacies, they are not indigenous to the Chinese tradition and are fundamental for the protection and advancement of the rights and dignity of the individual.
In spite of the notable shortcomings inherent in the system, the integrity and standard of the judiciary in Hong Kong in 1997 was, in general terms, as high as most in British common law jurisdictions. The exorbitant charges of the legal profession in Hong Kong �V one of its shortcomings �V also ensured that Hong Kong��s judiciary regularly saw the service of the best common law lawyers. The regular import of lawyers and judicial officers, even if only for short duration in relation to specific cases, helped a small jurisdiction like Hong Kong to maintain a high standard in its legal profession and judiciary. A competent and entrenched judiciary whose independence enjoyed institutionalised protection was handed over to the SAR in 1997.16 Its independence has so far been upheld by the Court of Final Appeal since the transfer of sovereignty. Even in the controversial cases involving the right of abode for children of recent PRC immigrants, the Court of Final Appeal has maintained its own independence, though the SAR government improperly invited the Chinese NPC to change the law that became binding on the Courts.
The rule of law is more than an Anglo-Saxon political idea or legal concept. It is a way of life. It diverts completely from the Chinese legal tradition and remains an alien concept in the PRC, where it is routinely confused with ��rule by law��. It took Hong Kong a long time to understand and appreciate its value. By the 1990s, this idea had generally been accepted among the people of Hong Kong as a great gift from the British. They were proud that the rule of law prevailed in Hong Kong. In the first two years after the handover, commitment to it even appeared to have ��become an article of faith�� in the SAR. It was so much so that ��no major speech by its senior officials has seemed complete without a passage explaining the importance of this idea to the territory��s wellbeing��.17
Notwithstanding such value being put on it, whether the rule of law has really become an enduring part of the social and political fabric of Hong Kong remains to be tested. The first SAR government has so far, as revealed in the right of abode controversy, failed to show a real under-standing and acceptance of this concept. If it did it would have accepted the Court of Final Appeal��s ruling in January 1999, despite the economic costs for granting the right of abode to a large number of children of recent immigrants, and then sought to introduce new laws to rectify the situation. The acquiescence of the local community in the SAR government��s effort to subvert the decision of the Court of Final Appeal suggests it has not fully understood the true implications of the rule of law either. In the long term whether this particular British legacy will prove enduring will depend first and foremost on whether it will indeed become part of the social and political fabric of the SAR, though pressure from the PRC to violate it may also become an issue at a later stage.
Another important British legacy is the politically neutral professional civil service, which largely functioned like a meritocracy. Although the colonial civil service suffered from many of the problems common to large bureaucracies of 180,000 employees, it was by any standard a modern, efficient, effective and honest one. It was indeed the existence of such a civil service that enabled the colonial authorities to deliver as good a government as possible in the Chinese tradition by the early 1980s. Its being handed over to the SAR virtually intact was also a key factor underlying the viability of the ��one country, two systems�� policy. At the time of the transfer of sovereignty, the civil service had the trained human resources, structure, ethos and experience and sufficient public confidence to operate effectively on its own without political direction. If Hong Kong could be compared to a modern jumbo jet, its civil service would be the best autopilot or fly-by-wire system available. It worked so well that it could and did enable an inexperienced new captain to take over control smoothly.
In an important sense, the police force stands out as a particularly significant element of this British legacy. It is a critical instrument for maintaining social stability and good order, as Hong Kong has been highly susceptible to urban rioting since 1949. The SAR is one of the world��s most densely populated urban centres, where people living in high-rise buildings can congregate and take part in urban riots with virtually no advance warning. It needs and has inherited a police force that is not only very well drilled and equipped in suppressing riots but is also trained to disperse gathering crowds through the minimum use of force to pre-empt a minor disturbance from escalating into a major riot. The police can do so because it enjoys public confidence. This was, in turn, based largely on the removal of organised corruption and the introduction of community policing in the 1980s. The existence of a credible, efficient and honest police force is therefore an important instrument left behind by the British underpinning good public order.
An equally important element of this British legacy is the Independent Commission Against Corruption. While the general achievements of the ICAC in tackling corruption are notable and significant, its most important long-term contribution rests in being the symbol of a key basis of the local political culture. By the 1980s, the ICAC had managed to instil in the local population the value that corruption had no place in Hong Kong society though it in fact continued to exist, mostly on an individual basis. The change in general public attitude from tolerating corruption as a widespread ��ugly practice�� in old Hong Kong to an arrogant assertion that Hong Kong was above such a despicable practice rampant in the PRC or elsewhere in Asia in the 1980s is highly significant. Just as the dramatic breaking of syndicate corruption established the credibility of the colonial government in the 1970s, a visible failure of the SAR government to uphold the integrity of the public service or to support the ICAC at its work can have much greater impact than any immediate failing. The public hostility towards corruption within Hong Kong, symbolised by the general public support for the ICAC certainly represents one of the best parting gifts from the colonial government.
While the civil service as a whole is an invaluable British legacy, its value also needs to be put in context. The colonial administration was well regarded because it was essentially a small government and the general public did not expect much of it. The span of government activities in British Hong Kong had traditionally been confined to providing mainly the regulatory framework for businesses and individuals to maximise their own potential. The colonial government had, for example, a very modest social welfare programme for a society more wealthy than the UK on a per capita basis. It did not take it upon itself to attempt social engineering or to direct the economy. The small span of the colonial administration and its basically non-interventionist ethos enabled it to avoid a lot of controversial public debates and attacks by politicians commonplace in democratic countries. This worked well for the non-elected colonial government which was contented with being a small government.
Although the SAR government benefited tremendously from inheriting a well-oiled civil service machinery, the demands on governance in post-colonial Hong Kong in fact go beyond what the old civil service was prepared to do. As a government of the local people, as distinct from being a colonial administration, the SAR government is expected to take a more proactive role in dealing with Hong Kong��s economic and social problems. The inherited civil service, particularly at the policymaking level, was not used to taking a proactive approach over such matters. This problem is more pronounced as policies to direct the economy or to rectify social inequality, for example, are inherently political in nature. This is not an area in which the colonial civil service ever demonstrated any particular aptitude.
Furthermore, the end of colonialism also resulted in a basic change in attitude. One of the key factors that produced a non-interventionist gov-ernment in British Hong Kong was the existence of the inhibited political centre.18 After the handover, ��the paradox of maintaining a formal colonial regime in a world hostile to colonialism, which gave rise to the inhibited political centre effect, disappeared��, and the SAR government felt it had a ��much greater scope than its predecessor for bold policy initiatives��.19
Equally importantly, with top civil service positions reserved for local officers, senior SAR officials also became more confident, assertive and arrogant. This was partly a reaction to the end of colonialism. It was also partly the result of a steady rise in ��an exaggerated assessment of one��s ability�K and a kind of Hong Kong chauvinism�� that had become commonplace as Hong Kong achieved spectacular economic successes in the last decades of British rule.20
Moreover, the head of government was changed from the hands-off former British Cabinet Minister Patten to the former patriarchal head of a Chinese family business, Tung Chee-hwa, who was determined to show that the SAR could do better than the old British colony. They together caused a change in the ethos of the government, which shifted from the old ��positive non-interventionist�� approach into a positive policy of actively managing new economic or social developments.
This basic change in the ethos of the administration underlines the SAR government��s new willingness to support the property and equity markets and ��punish�� currency speculators during the Asian financial contagion, and to require the Courts to deny children of immigrant Chinese from poor backgrounds from gaining residency in Hong Kong. This new approach goes beyond the grounds familiar to the civil service the SAR inherited from the British.
Another significant British legacy in the socio-political area is related to the ways the last British governor discharged his responsibilities. Although most of Patten��s political reforms were undone after the handover, he did leave an indelible mark on the people and politicians of Hong Kong.
Although only a colonial governor, Patten continued to behave like a politician in a democracy. The way he handled Governor��s Question Time in the legislature, members of the Legislative Council, the media and the general public gave the people of Hong Kong first-hand experience of how senior politicians in a democracy actually behave. He gave ��the Hong Kong people a taste, albeit a limited one, of what politics was like in a democracy with a first rate politician in power��.21 He left a benchmark against which electoral and other politics has come to be measured in Hong Kong.
This applied even to the leading local political party set up with the blessings of the CCP, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong. It realised that it must become ��a full participant in conventional democratic politics�� in response to Patten��s impact on local politics.22 Although the dismantling of much of Patten��s reforms in 1997 set Hong Kong back in its democratic development, it did not destroy the local people��s faith in democracy.23 Patten��s record of behaving like an elected chief executive while he was governor was like forbidden fruit to the people of Hong Kong. They had tasted it. Whether its effect will prove endurable or not remains to be seen.
Ultimately, the durability of the British legacies depends on whether they have become part of the fabric of the society and politics of Hong Kong. The attitude and policy of the PRC government are also important, but its continued adherence to the principle of exercising maximum flexibility within a rigid framework implies that much still rests with the government and people of the SAR. Their continuation does not in any way infringe the PRC��s sovereignty over the SAR or challenge the continued domination of politics by the Communist Party in the country as a whole. The most important legacies from the British are all in fact essential for making Hong Kong the tremendously successful place it is, the raison d��etre behind the Chinese policy of ��one country, two systems��.
Notes
Chapter 1: War and Peace
1.
Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire, 48�V9.

2.
Stokesbury, Navy and Empire, 238.

3.
Swanson, Eight Voyage of the Dragon, 37�V8.

4.
Loewe, The Pride That is China, 152.

5.
Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, 312.

6.
Banister, China��s Changing Population, 3�V4.

7.
Peyrefitte, The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China in 1792�V4, 544�V5.

8.
Huang, China: A Macro History, 193.

9.
Schurmann and Schell (eds), Imperial China, 103.

10.
Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (4th ed.), 150�V1.

11.
Blake, Jardine Matheson: Traders of the Far East, 59.

12.
Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856�V1860) in China, 336. 13. Ibid. 346, 351.


14.
Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, 164�V5.

15.
Wong, Deadly Dreams, 406. 16. Ibid. 398.


17.
Blue, ��Opium for China: The British Connection��, 32; Spear, A History of India, vol.2, 113.

18.
Hamashita, ��Foreign Trade Finance in China, 1810�V50��, 387�V435; Blake, Jardine Matheson, 80�V1.

19.
Hamashita, op. cit., 398�V400.

20.
Polachek, The Inner Opium War, 104.

21.
Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 76.

22.
Waley, The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes, 25.

23.
Polachek, Inner Opium War, 109�V10. 24. Ibid. 1�V135.


25.
For Macartney��s embassy, see Peyrefitte, Collision of Two Civilisations.

26.
Waley, The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes, 35.

27.
Hsu, China��s Entrance into the Family of Nations, 5.

28.
Wong, The First Chinese Minister to Great Britain.

29.
Fay, The Opium War, 1840�V1842, 68�V79.

30.
Blake, Jardine Matheson, 78�V9.

31.
Chinese Repository, xi, no.4, 22 July 1836.

32.
Fay, The Opium War, 82.

33.
Huang, Civil Justice in China, 63.

34.
For a survey, see Keeton, The Development of Extraterritoriality in China, vol.1, 27�V88.

35.
Polachek, Inner Opium War, 123�V5. 36. Ibid. 128. 37. Ibid. 129, 134.


38.
Fay, Opium War, 193�V4.

39.
Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830�V1860, 113.

40.
Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 622 (Palmerston to Minister of Chinese Emperor, 20 February 1840).

41.
FO17/40, Elliot to Palmerston, 18 July 1840.

42.
Fay, Opium War, 195.

43.
Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833�V1860, 74.

44.
Spence, The Search for Modern China, 154. In this period, British warships were in general terms rated by the number of guns they carried. A first-rate man-of-war would carry about 120 guns. Each third-rate man-of-war used in the China campaign, except HMS Cornwallis, carried 74 guns.

45.
Hoe and Roebuck, The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters, 151.

46.
Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 650�V2 (Elliot to Auckland, 21 June 1841).

47.
Blake, Charles Elliot RN, 55.

48.
Ouchterlony, The Chinese War, 342�V3.

49.
CO129/1, Extract from Stanley to President of Board of Control, 31 December 1841.

50.
Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 648 (Elliot to Auckland, 21 June 1841).

51.
Fay, Opium War, 361.

52.
Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 658�V9 (Palmerston to Pottinger, 31 May 1841).

53.
Ibid. 668�V9 (Aberdeen to Pottinger, 4 January 1843).

54.
Ouchterlony, The Chinese War, 384�V93.

55.
Smith, China��s Cultural Heritage: The Ch��ing Dynasty, 1644�V1912, 41, 50�V1.

56.
Huang, Zhongguo gudai bingzhi, 161�V2.

57.
Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 642 (Palmerston to Elliot, 21 April 1841).

58.
CO129/1, Treaty between Her Majesty and the Emperor of China, 29 August 1842.

59.
Blake, Jardine Matheson, 104.

60.
Teng and Fairbank (eds), China��s Response to the West, 37�V40.

61.
Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate, 74�V80.


Chapter 2: Foundation of a Crown Colony
1.
Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Around the World, vol.ii, 147.

2.
Sayer, Hong Kong, 1841�V1862, Appendix II.

3.
Ibid. Appendix I (Elliot��s proclamation, 2 February 1841).

4.
CO129/1, Minute of conference among Elliot, Gough and Bremer in Macao, 27 March 1841.

5.
Bernard, The Nemesis in China, 205�V6.

6.
FO17/60, Chief Superintendent��s Establishment from 1 June 1842.

7.
Blake, Jardine Matheson, 110.

8.
Bernard, The Nemesis, 206.

9.
FO17/60, Pottinger to Aberdeen, 20 May 1842.

10.
Morse, International Relations, 642 (Palmerston to Elliot, 21 April 1841).

11.
Ibid. 663 (Aberdeen to Pottinger, 4 November 1841).

12.
Ibid. 650�V1 (Elliot to Auckland, 21 June 1841).

13.
Blake, Jardine Matheson, 111.

14.
Morse, International Relations, 657 (Palmerston to Pottinger, 31 May 1841).

15.
CO129/1, Treaty of Nanking.

16.
CO129/2, Aberdeen to Pottinger, 6 April 1843.

17.
Both documents are readily accessible in Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong, 19�V30.

18.
CO129/2, Stanley to Pottinger, despatch 11, 2 August 1843; Hamilton,


Government Departments in Hong Kong, 1841�V1969, 75. 19. CO129/2, Royal Instructions, 6 April 1843. 20. CO129/2, Letters Patent, 5 April 1843.
21.
CO129/2, Stanley to Pottinger 8, 3 June 1843.

22.
Ibid.

23.
Grantham, Via Ports, 105.

24.
CO129/2, Stanley to Pottinger 8, 3 June 1843.

25.
Morse, International Relations, 642 (Palmerston to Minister of Chinese Emperor, 20 February 1840).

26.
Ibid. 628 (Palmerston to George Elliot and Charles Elliot, despatch 1, 20 February 1840).

27.
CO129/55, Labouchere to Bowring 82, 29 July 1856.

28.
Morse, International Relations, 651 (Elliot to Auckland, 21 June 1841).

29.
CO129/13, Gladstone to Davis, 7 March 1848.

30.
Sayer, Hong Kong, 1841�V1862, additional notes 6 (Elliot��s circular to British subjects, 20 January 1841).

31.
CO129/3, Aberdeen to Pottinger, despatch 4, 4 January 1843.

32.
Morse, International Relations, 663 (Aberdeen to Pottinger, 4 November 1841).

33.
Bruce, Second to None, 4. 34. Ibid. 9.


35.
Richardson, The Royal Marines and Hong Kong, 1840�V1997, 4.

36.
The other major occasions when HK proved valuable to British forces as a base for operations in China were during the Boxer War (1900) and the Shanghai Crisis (1925).

37.
CO129/3, Aberdeen to Pottinger, despatch 4, 4 January 1843.

38.
Sayer, Hong Kong, 1841�V1862, 201 (Elliot��s proclamation of 2 February 1841).

39.
See Chapter 4.

40.
CO129/4, Treasury minutes of 19 December 1843.

41.
Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong, 144. 42. CO129/4, Treasury minutes, 19 December 1843.


43.
CO129/569, N.L. Smith to M. MacDonald 2, 13 September 1938.

44.
Income tax was not introduced in Hong Kong until the First World War.

45.
CO129/5, Pottinger to Stanley 11, 30 January 1844.

46.
Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong, 107.

47.
Hamilton, Government Departments in Hong Kong, 62.

48.
CO129/13, Memorial to Stanley from British mercantile community, 13 August 1845.

49.
CO129/13, Gladstone to Davis, 7 March 1848.

50.
CO129/274, Chamberlain to Robinson, despatch 119, 29 May 1896.

51.
CO129/222, Bowen to Stanley 348, 5 September 1885.

52.
CO129/209, Bowen to Derby 60, 14 May 1883.


53. CO129/80, ��Hong Kong Cadetship�� (paper submitted to Sir T. Roger, 2 July 1861).
54. Munn, ��Colonialism ��in a Chinese atmosphere��: the Caldwell affair and the perils of collaboration in early colonial Hong Kong��, 12�V37.
55. Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong,, 148�V60; Lethbridge, ��Hong Kong Cadets, 1862�V1941��, 36�V56.
56. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, 125.
57. CO129/55, Bowring to Labouchere 49, 26 March 1856.
58. CO129/55, Labouchere to Bowring 82, 29 July 1856.
59. CO129/187, Pope-Hennessy to Hicks Beech 4, 19 January 1880.
60. CO129/187, R. Meade��s minutes, undated (c. end of March 1880).
61. CO129/187, Herbert��s minutes, 2 April 1880 and Hicks Beech��s minutes, 3 April 1880.
62. CO129/187, Hicks Beech to Pope-Hennessy 39, 20 April 1880.
63. CO129/209, Derby to Bowen 158, 7 August 1883.
64. CO129/263, Petition (enclosure 1 from Robinson to Ripon 133, 5 June 1894).
65. CO129/263, Ripon to Robinson 135, 28 August 1894.
66. CO129/263, Enclosures 2 and 3 from Robinson to Ripon 133, 5 June 1894.
67. CO129/263, Ripon to Robinson, despatch 135, 28 August 1894.
68. Endacott, An Eastern Entrepot, 285 (Chamberlain to Robinson 119, 29 May 1896).
69. Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong,, 79�V80.
70. CO129/256, Robinson to Ripon, confidential despatch, 6 December 1892.
Chapter 3: Imperial Expansion
1. Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate, 71.
2. FO17/210, Clarendon to Bowring 2, 13 February 1854.
3. Morse, International Relations, 677 (Encl. from Bowring to Clarendon 164, 2 October 1854).
4. Wong, Deadly Dreams, 264�V5.
5. FO17/210, Clarendon to Bowring 2, 13 February 1854.
6. Morse, International Relations, 687 (Bowring to Clarendon 260, 21 August 1856).
7. Tong, United States Diplomacy in China, 1844�V60, 3, 174�V5. 8. Ibid. 177.
9. FO17/274, Clarendon to Elgin, draft 7, 20 April 1857.
10. Morse, International Relations, 684�V5 (Bowring to Clarendon 200, 1 July 1856).
11. Ibid. 688 (Bowring to Clarendon 260, 21 August 1856).
12. Wong, Deadly Dreams, 69�V70. 13. Ibid. 266�V75.
14. Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate, 73�V80.
15. Polachek, The Inner Opium War, 244.
16. Hurd, The Arrow War: An Anglo-Chinese Confusion, 1856�V60, 19.
17. Wong, Deadly Dreams, 121�V3. 18. Ibid. 123�V4.
19. Hurd, Arrow War, 16.
20. Wong, Yeh Ming-ch��en, 164.
21. Ibid.
22. Bonner-Smith and Lumby (eds), The Second China War, 1856�V1860, 7 (Parkes to Ye, 8 October 1856).
23. See Wong, Deadly Dreams.
24.
Bonner-Smith and Lumby, Second China War, 15 (Parkes to Bowring, 10 October 1856); 18 (Bowring to Parkes, 11 October 1856).

25.
Quoted in Hurd, Arrow War, 28.

26.
Bonner-Smith and Lumby, Second China War, 35�V6 (Yeh to Bowring, 21 October 1856).

27.
Hurd, Arrow War, 45�V6.

28.
Bonner-Smith and Lumby, Second China War, 190�V1 (Clarendon to Bowring, 25 March 1857).

29.
Tong, United States Diplomacy in China, 196�V8.

30.
Bonner-Smith and Lumby, Second China War, 195 (Clarendon to Elgin, 20 April 1857).

31.
Ibid. 210 (Elgin to Clarendon, 9 July 1857).

32.
Charles S. Leavenworth, The Arrow War with China, 67.

33.
Graham, The China Station, 327�V8.

34.
Hsu, China��s Entrance into the Family of Nations, 93.

35.
Morse, International Relations, 575.

36.
Graham, The China Station, 373�V7. 37. Mann, China, 1860, 5.


38.
Knollys, Incidents in the China War of 1860, 223�V5.

39.
Gregory, Great Britain and the Taipings, 156�V7.

40.
For the original exposition of this concept, see Gallagher and Robinson, ��The Imperialism of Free Trade��. An expanded and updated discussion can be found in their Africa and the Victorians.

41.
Liu, An Outline History of Hong Kong, 44.

42.
CO381/35, Royal Order in Council, 4 February 1861.

43.
Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong,, 32 (Russell to Elgin, secret despatch 11, 25 April 1860).

44.
Costin, Great Britain and China, 337.

45.
Quested, The Expansion of Russia in East Asia, 1857�V1860, 260�V1.

46.
Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 1897�V1997, 11.

47.
CO537/34, Encl. from Robinson to Ripon, secret despatch 23, 9 November 1894.

48.
CO537/34, Robinson to Ripon, secret despatch 23, 9 November 1894.

49.
Quoted in Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 17.

50.
Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 318.

51.
Quoted in ibid. 320.

52.
Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 23.

53.
Quoted in Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 320.

54.
Joseph, Foreign Diplomacy in China, 1894�V1900.

55.
Atwell, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, 215.

56.
Young, British Policy in China, 1895�V1902, 71.

57.
House of Lords Debates, 56 (1898), 165�V6.

58.
Words of Foreign Office Under-Secretary George Curzon. Quoted by Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 132.

59.
Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 28.

60.
Young, British Policy in China, 85�V7.

61.
FO17/1340, MacDonald to Salisbury 122, 4 April 1898.

62.
Anon (ed.), Xianggang yu Zhongguo, 181�V2 (Tsungli Yamen to Emperor Guangxu, 14 April 1898).

63.
Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 251.

64.
Yu and Liu (eds), Shijiu shiji de Xianggang, 115.

65.
Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 38.


66. Ibid. 41.
67.
Ibid. 44 (Minutes of Bertie).

68.
CO882/5, Chamberlain to Blake, confidential despatch, 6 January 1899.

69.
CO537/34, Enclosure from Robinson to Ripon, secret despatch 24, 14 November 1894.

70.
CO882/5, Report by Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony, 8 October 1898.

71.
CO19/494, Convention of Peking.

72.
Liang, Chengzhai yu zhongying waijiao, 4.

73.
CO19/494, Convention of Peking.

74.
CO882/5, Report by Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony, 8 October 1898.

75.
FO17/1334, MacDonald to Salisbury, despatch 102, 27 May 1898.

76.
Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 35.

77.
CO19/494, Convention of Peking.

78.
882/5, Royal Order in Council 1898.

79.
Ibid.

80.
Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, 33.


Chapter 4: Law and Justice
1.
Ng, New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region, 1�V2.

2.
Ibid. 52�V3; Ch��u, Local Government in China Under the Ch��ing, 1�V2.

3.
Hsiao, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, 316�V7.

4.
CO129/69, Note by Pauncefote, 3 August 1866.

5.
Sayer, Hong Kong,1841�V1862, 201 (Elliot��s proclamation of 2 February 1841).

6.
CO129/2, Stanley to Pottinger 8, 3 June 1843.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Ibid.

9.
Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, vol.1, 92�V4.

10.
See Munn, Anglo-China. This should be supplemented by Munn, ��The rule of law and criminal justice in the nineteenth century��, 19�V47.

11.
Wesley-Smith, ��Anti-Chinese Legislation in Hong Kong��, 91�V105.

12.
Godley, ��The End of the Queue: Hair as symbol in Chinese history��, 55�V7.

13.
Endacott, Government and People, 36.

14.
Norton-Kyshe, History of Law and Courts, vol.1, 92.

15.
Munn, ��The rule of law and criminal justice��, 40.

16.
Wesley-Smith, ��Anti-Chinese Legislation��, 97.

17.
Munn, Anglo-China, 184�V5.

18.
Wesley-Smith, ��Anti-Chinese Legislation��, 96�V7.

19.
Faure, Documentary History, vol.2, 47 (European District Reservation Ordinance, 1888).

20.
Sayer, Hong Kong, 1862�V1919, 129.

21.
Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Stability and Change, 176.

22.
For life in the Hotung family at the Peak, see Gittins, Eastern Windows �V Western Skies.

23.
Tsang, Democracy Shelved, 47.

24.
Munn, ��The rule of law and criminal justice��, 29.

25.
Munn, Anglo-China, 173.

26.
Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-Book of Early Hong Kong, 60�V5.

27.
Munn, Anglo-China, 173.

28.
Quoted in Norton-Kyshe, History of Laws and Courts, vol.1, 378.

29.
Munn, Anglo-China, 173.


30. Ibid. 207.
31.
CO129/5, Woosnam to D��Aguilar, 14 March 1844.

32.
CO129/5, Pottinger to Stanley 11, 30 January 1844.

33.
Munn, Anglo-China, 208.

34.
Eitel, Europe in China, 231�V3.

35.
Norton-Kyshe, History of Laws and Courts, vol.1, 327.

36.
Munn, Anglo-China, 244.

37.
CO129/55, Bowring to Labouchere 49, 26 March 1856. In the mid 1850s, there were only 113 names on the common jury list with 34 others on the special jury list.

38.
Munn, Anglo-China, 261. 39. Ibid. 268.


40.
Ibid.

41.
CO129/5, Pottinger��s minute of 24 January 1844.

42.
CO129/86, Robinson to Newcastle 86, 6 May 1862.

43.
Tsang, A Documentary History of Hong Kong,, vol.1, 163.

44.
CO129/126, MacDonnell to Buckingham 416, 14 December 1867.

45.
CO129/120, MacDonnell to Carnarvon 183, 7 January 1867.

46.
Welsh, History of Hong Kong, 213.

47.
Munn, Anglo-China, 439.