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Abstract
This article examines Thatcher’s 1982 visit to China concerning Hong Kong’s future. The visit occurred at the critical historical junctures of the rise of Thatcherism in post-Falklands Britain and of the growth of Deng Xiaoping’s nationalist sensitivities. With her strong belief in capitalism, Thatcher aimed to convince Deng that Hong Kong’s prosperity depended on confidence, which in turn rested on the continuation of British administration beyond 1997. With his nationalist feelings towards Taiwan stirred by America, Deng regarded Hong Kong’s return to China as a non-negotiable principle. Thatcher’s project of ‘educating’ Deng in capitalism was doomed to failure.
Notes
1. Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (London: Harper Press, 2011), 388–91.
2. Percy Cradock, Experiences of China (London: John Murray, 1994), 179.
3. To save Thatcher’s “face”, the mainland Chinese media was ordered not to show the footage of her slip. Zhang Chunsheng and Xu Yu, eds., Zhou Nan jiemi GangAo huigui – ZhongYing ji ZhongPu tanpan taiqian muhou [Zhou Nan’s Leaks about the Return of Hong Kong and Macao to their Motherland – Sino-British and Sino-Portuguese Talks and their Background] (Xianggang: Zhonghua chubanshe, 2012), 123-24.
4. On Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong between 1979 and 1984, see Cradock, Experiences of China; Robert Cottrell, The End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat (London: John Murray, 1993); Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong: China’s Triumph and Britain’s Betrayal (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996); Steve Tsang, Hong Kong: An Appointment with China (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997); Qi Pengfei, Deng Xiaoping yu Xianggang huigui [Deng Xiaoping and the Return of Hong Kong] (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 2004); and Chen Dunde, Xianggang wenti tanpan shimo [Negotiations for the Hong Kong Question From Beginning to End] (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book (HK) Company, 2009). Also see the memoirs of former Chinese officials dealing with Hong Kong quoted later.
5. Jin Yaoru. Zhonggong Xianggang zhengce miwen shilu [A Secret Record of the Chinese Communist Party’s Hong Kong Policy] (Xianggang: Tianyuan shuwu, 1998), 2-6; Nan Shan and Nan Zhu, Zhou Enlai shangping [The Life of Zhou Enlai] (Changchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 1997), 812-14.
6. ‘A Comment on The Statement of The Communist Party of the U.S.A.’, Renmin Ribao Editorial, 8 March 1963 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1963), 13.
7. Cui Qi, Wo suo qinli de ZhongSu dalunzhan [My Experience of the Sino-Soviet Great Polemics] (Beijing: Renmin ribao chubanshe, 2009), 145-48.
8. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong Manuscripts since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China], vol. 13 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1998), 390.
9. Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 490.
10. Memorandum by Stewart for Ministerial Committee on Hong Kong, K (69)1, ‘Hong Kong: Long Term Study’, 28 March 1969, CAB 134/2945, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Kew, Surrey, United Kingdom; Chi-kwan Mark, ‘Development without Decolonisation? Hong Kong’s Future and Relations with Britain and China, 1967-1972’, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24, no. 2 (2014): 315-35.
11. Cradock, Experiences of China, 168.
12. Beijing to FCO, nos. 345 and 346, 30 March 1979, FCO 21/1735 FEH021/1 Part B, TNA; Qi, Deng Xiaoping yu Xianggang huigui, 60-63.
13. Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping], vol. 2 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1994), 185-188, 239-73.
14. Zhonggong renmin jiefangjun junshi kexueyuan, ed., Ye Jianying nianpu, 1897-1986 [The Chronicle of Ye Jianying, 1897-1986], vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2007), 1200-1202.
15. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Deng Xiaoping nianpu, 1975-1997 [The Chronicle of Deng Xiaoping, 1975-1997], vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2004), 797. As early as November 1978, Deng had talked of the concept of ‘one country, two systems’ in its embryonic form. See Deng Xiaoping nianpu, 1975-1997, vol. 1, 442; Cheng Linsheng, Deng Xiaoping ‘Yiguo liangzhi’ sixiang yanjiu [A Study of Deng Xiaoping’s Thinking on ‘One Country, Two Systems’] (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 1992), 142-43.
16. Wong Man Fong, China’s Resumption of Sovereignty over Hong Kong (Hong Kong: The David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 1997), 12, 27.
17. Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 791; Qi, Deng Xiaoping yu Xianggang huigui, 250.
18. Lu Ping (with the collaboration of Qian Yijiao), Lu Ping koushu Xianggang huigui [Lu Ping Speaks on the Return of Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd., 2009), 17-21; Wong, China’s Resumption of Sovereignty over Hong Kong, 17-19. The preliminary plan suggested that Hong Kong’s capitalist system and free port status should be maintained.
19. Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 805; Lu, Lu Ping koushu Xianggang huigui, 17.
20. Wong, China’s Resumption of Sovereignty over Hong Kong, 22-3; Qi, Deng Xiaoping yu Xianggang huigui, 77-78.
21. Li Hou, Huigui de lichen (The Journey of Retrocession) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd., 1997), 88; Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 849; Chen, Xianggang wenti tanpan shimo, 94-98.
22. Lyne to Alexander, 9 July 1981, Margaret Thatcher Foundation (hereafter MTF), document no. 122659 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org); Minute, Alexander to Lyne, 13 July 1981, ibid.
23. Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Responsibility (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 283, 287.
24. Minute, Carrington to Thatcher, 15 December 1981, MTF, Document no. 122661.
25. Beijing to FCO, no. 18, 8 January 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
26. Minute, Carrington to Thatcher, 9 March 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
27. Minute, Coles to Holmes, 15 March 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
28. Deng Xiaoping ji waiguo shounao huitan lu [A Record of Deng Xiaoping’s Meetings with Foreign Heads] (Beijing: Taihai chubanshe, 2011), 93-99.
29. Beijing to FCO, no. 202, 6 April 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA; Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 812-13.
30. Beijing to FCO, no. 209, 7 April 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
31. Fall to Coles, 21 July 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
32. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 495-97.
33. Acland to Armstrong, 7 July 1982, PREM 19/788, TNA.
34. Beijing to FCO, no. 22, 12 January 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
35. James L. Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
36. Hopson to de la Mare, 31 January 1966, FO 371/187052 FC2251/4, TNA.
37. Note of meeting, 28 July 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
38. Minute, Coles to Thatcher, 29 July 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1, TNA.
39. See ‘The Future of Hong Kong: A Special Study’ by FCO, August 1982, PREM 19/792, TNA.
40. Minute, Pym to Thatcher, 3 September 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1; Minute, Coles to Thatcher, 6 September 1982, ibid.
41. Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, vol. 1, Not for Turning (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 681.
42. Holmes to Coles, 6 September 1982, PREM 19/789 Part 1; Record of discussion, 8 September 1982, enclosed in Minute, Coles to Holmes, 8 September 1982, PREM 19/790 Part 2, TNA.
43. Minute, Coles to Holmes, 13 September 1982, PREM 19/790 Part 2, TNA.
44. A dossier of briefing materials on China and Hong Kong can be found in CAB 133/528; PREM 19/792 Part 2, TNA.
45. See Note of meeting, 22 September 1982, PREM 19/962 Part 2, TNA.
46. Thatcher’s speech, 22 September 1982, MTF, Document no. 105022.
47. Hong Kong to Beijing, no. 469, 23 September 1982, PREM 19/962 Part 2, TNA.
48. Record of conversation, 23 September 1982, PREM 19/962 Part 2, TNA.
49. Record of meeting, 24 September 1982, PREM 19/962 Part 2, TNA; Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1993), 12-15.
50. Record of conversation, September 23, 1982, PREM 19/962 Part 2; Record of meeting, September 27, 1982, ibid., TNA.
51. Record of meeting, September 26, 1982, MTF, Document no. 122625.
52. Record of meeting, September 27, 1982, MTF, Document no. 122627.
53. CC(82)42nd Conclusions, Minute 2, 30 September 1982, CAB 128/75, MTF, Document no. 123921.
54. Cradock, Experiences of China, 182.
55. See Brian Harrison, Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 42-44.
56. Robin Harris, Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher (London: Bantam Press, 2013), 222.
57. Stephen Howe, ‘Decolonisation and Imperial Aftershocks: The Thatcher Years’, in Making Thatcher’s Britain, eds. Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 236-39 (quotation on 237).
58. Harris, Not for Turning, 192; Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s (London: Pocket Books, 2010), 220.
59. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 259.
60. John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 2, The Iron Lady (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), 316, 318; Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain, 221; Harris, Not for Turning, 222.
61. Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, 424.
62. Robert Saunders, ‘“Crisis? What Crisis?” Thatcherism and the Seventies’, in Making Thatcher’s Britain, eds. Jackson and Saunders, 25–42.
63. Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, 315.
64. Deng never intended to bring ‘capitalism’ to the ‘Special Economic Zones’. Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 1025-1026; Li Lanqing, Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s Opening-up Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 150–51.
65. Annex I ‘Currency and Finance’; Annex L ‘Legal System on Hong Kong’; and Annex M ‘External Trade’, in ‘The Future of Hong Kong: A Special Study’ by FCO, August 1982, PREM 19/792, TNA.
66. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 262.
67. Coles to Holmes, 4 October 1982, PREM 19/790 Part 2; Bone to Coles, 11 October 1982, PREM 19/791 Part 3, TNA.
68. Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992), 112–15.
69. Deng Xiaoping nianpu, vol. 2, 812-13.
70. Harding, A Fragile Relationship, 383–85.
71. David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972-1990 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991), 265.
72. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 3, 1982-1992 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994), 13–16.
73. In early 1984, Cradock was appointed as the prime minister’s foreign policy advisor, while continuing to oversee the Hong Kong negotiations.
74. Yun-Wing Sung, The China-Hong Kong Connection: The Key to China’s Open-Door Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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Chi-kwan Mark
Dr Chi-kwan Mark is Senior Lecturer in International History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of China and the World since 1945: An International History (London, 2012) and Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949-1957 (Oxford, 2004). He has published articles in Diplomatic History, The International History Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, and Modern Asian Studies, among other journals. Email: [email protected]