Sino-British Joint Declaration: Encyclopedia II - Sino-British Joint Declaration - Commentaries

Sino-British Joint Declaration - Commentaries

The signing of the Joint Declaration by the Conservative Party government of Margaret Thatcher was a cause of controversy in Britain at the time: some were surprised that the right wing Prime Minister would agree to such an arrangement with the Communist government of China represented by Deng Xiaoping.

However, many commentaries pointed out that Britain was in an extremely weak negotiating position. Hong Kong was not militarily defensible and received most of its water and food supply from Guangdong province in mainland China. It was therefore considered economically infeasible to divide Hong Kong, with the UK retaining control for Hong Kong Island and Kowloon while returning the New Territories to the PRC in 1997, if no agreements could be reached by then. As mortgages for property in Hong Kong were typically 15 years, without reaching an agreement on the future of Hong Kong in the early 80's, it was feared that the property market would collapse, causing a collapse of the general economy in Hong Kong. Constraints in the land lease in the New Terrorities were also pressing problems at that time. In fact, while negotiation concerning the future of Hong Kong had started in the late 1970s, the final timing of the Declaration was related to the land and property factors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Commentaries", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki