From the Treaty of Nanking to the Joint Declaration: The Struggle for Equality through State Documents

Abstract

This article examines two state documents that signpost the colonial history of Hong Kong: the Treaty of Nanking (1842) ushered in the era of British control while the Sino-British Joint Declaration (1984) spelled the end of British colonial rule and inaugurated the handover process that concluded in 1997. Exploring these documents beyond a textual analysis of their content, this article extends the investigation to include the materiality of the original documents the two states exchanged. Signed 142 years apart, these documents showcase not only the two governments’ agreement over Hong Kong but also, more importantly, the challenges in resolving differences in the culture of documents and the problematic arrival at a common platform as “international standards” emerged. More than just a resolution of archaic confusions in interstate relationships, the changing protocols reflect the conflicts between two great powers. Shifting the focus from the content of the text to the materiality of the documents, this article highlights the state-to-state negotiation over the culture of documents that conventional textual exegesis often overlooks, and underscores the enduring legacy of the 19th-century encounter that continues to haunt Sino-British relations and Hong Kong today.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong
• Sino-Western relations
• treaties
• international law
• materiality of documents
• modern China

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks participants at the HKU–Yale Beijing Workshop in May 2017, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), FO 93/23/1B and FO 93/23/75.

2. The images of the original treaty produced by the National Palace Museum offer concurring evidence to the following analysis.

3. Lydia H. Liu and Judith T. Zeitlin, eds., Writing and Materiality in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), 2. See Deborah Cao, Translating Law (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2007), for a discussion of technical issues in translating legal documents. See Cynthia J. Brokaw, “On the History of the Book in China,” in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 3–54, for an overview of the history of the book in China.

4. George Borstein and Theresa Tinkle, eds., The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 1; Jerome J. McGann, The Textual Condition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 56.

5. Brokaw, “On the History of the Book in China,” 11–12.

6. On the impact of print on the circulation of court archival records of an earlier period, see Hilde De Weerdt, “Byways in the Imperial Chinese Information Order: The Dissemination and Commercial Publication of State Documents,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 66, no. 1 (2006): 145–88.

7. Xinhuashe Xianggang huigui baodaozu 新华社香港回归报道组, Xianggang huigui diyitian 香港回归第一天 (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1997).

8. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

9. Peter C. Perdue, “Boundaries and Trade in the Early Modern World: Negotiations at Nerchinsk and Beijing,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 3 [Special Issue: China and the Making of Global Modernity] (2010): 341–56.

10. 英/清文字有天地之懸; TNA, FO 682/1975/71. The characters 英 and 清 were written vertically side by side.

11. John D. Wong, Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 150–52.

12. Knight Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), ch. 2.

13. In the subsequent century, the sustained interactions between China and the rest of the world would highlight many issues of cultural particularities, and those who engaged in translingual practices would not only borrow and parrot Western terms but also invent in the Chinese language new words, meanings, and representations, in particular on the issue of translating modernity; Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture and Translated Modernity China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

14. Frederic Wakeman Jr., “The Canton Trade and the Opium War,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 210.

15. During its 40 years of existence in the late Qing period, from 1861 to 1901, the Zongli yama (總理衙門; full name Zongli geguo shiwu yamen 總理各國事務衙門, literally, Office in Charge of Affairs of All Nations) took on some of the foreign relations functions previously undertaken by the Board of Rites and the Lifan Yuan 理藩院 (Board for the Administration of Outlying Regions). Its introduction signaled a significant institutional reform as the Qing court pursued the Self-Strengthening Movement by adopting certain Western practices. For details on the Zongli yamen, see Wu Fuhuan 吳福環, Qingji Zongli yamen yanjiu 清季總理衙門研究 (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1995).

16. TNA, FO 682/1975/71.

17. TNA, FO 93/23/1B. I have preserved the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in the original.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. John K. Fairbank and Ssu-yü Teng, Ch'ing Administration: Three Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); Silas H. L. Wu, “The Memorial Systems of the Ch'ing Dynasty (1644–1911),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 27 (1967): 7–75; Silas H. L. Wu, Communication and Imperial Control in China: Evolution of the Palace Memorial System, 1693–1735 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Beatrice S. Bartlett, “Ch'ing Palace Memorials in the Archives of the National Palace Museum,” National Palace Museum Bulletin 13, no. 6 (1979): 1–21; Chuang Chi-fa 莊吉發, Qingdai zouzhe zhidu 清代奏摺制度 (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1979).

21. Yue haiguan zhi 粵海關志, juan 29:10.

22. Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: New Manual, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), 360–62.

23. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

24. Ibid. On capitalization, see Noel Osselton, “Spelling-Book Rules and the Capitalization of Nouns in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Modern English: For Johan Gerritsen, ed. Mary-Jo Arn and Hanneke Wirtjes (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985), 49–61.

25. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

26. TNA, FO 682/1975/71.

27. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

28. Constance Miller, Technical and Cultural Prerequisites for the Invention of Printing in China and the West (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1983), ch. 2.

29. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

30. Edward Martinique, Chinese Traditional Bookbinding: A Study of Its evolution and Techniques. Asian Library Series, Studies in East Asian Librarianship No. 19 (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1983), 38–43, 66–67; Anne Burkus-Chasson, “Visual Hermeneutics and Turning the Leaf,” in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 374. See also Liu Bing 劉冰, Zhongguo zhuangding jianshi 中國裝訂簡史 (Taipei: Hanhua wenhua shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1969); and Xiao Zhentang 肖振棠 and Ding Yu 丁瑜, Zhongguo guji zhuangding xiubu jishu 中国古籍装订修补技术 (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1980).

31. TNA, FO 1080/341 (also labeled FO 682/108/1).

32. The images of the original of the treaty produced by the National Palace Museum indicate that the copy held by China also bound the Chinese and English texts into a single volume between hard covers. The only feature of stitched binding that resonated in this copy is the four holes along the spine through which a heavy string loops to hold the pages together.

33. Burkus-Chasson, “Visual Hermeneutics and Turning the Leaf,” 372–73. A physical reproduction held in the National Palace Museum library, Taipei, separates the English and Chinese texts of the treaty into two accordion volumes. However, this reproduction does not follow the format of the original because the two accordions repeat identical copies of the signature-and-seal facing pages (similar to Figure 2).

34. TNA, FO 682/1975/69, FO 682/1975/71, FO 682/1975/89.

35. On the Chinese reading experience, see Burkus-Chasson, “Visual Hermeneutics and Turning the Leaf.”

36. TNA, FO 93/23/1B.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., left side of the facing pages marked “5.”

39. TNA, FO 93/23/6.

40. TNA, FO 93/23/18.

41. Alice De Jonge sees the possibility of renegotiation to remedy inequality; Alice De Jonge, “From Unequal Treaties to Differential Treatment: Is There a Role for Equality in Treaty Relations?,” Asian Journal of International Law 4, no. 1 (2014): 125–51. On extraterritoriality, see Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

42. Anthony Dicks, “Treaty, Grant, Usage or Sufferance? Some Legal Aspects of the Status of Hong Kong,” China Quarterly, no. 95 (1983): 427–55.

43. Wang Dong, China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

44. While this 1943 document is not a focus of this article, note that this treaty included a typeset English version as well as a Chinese version prepared in the new vernacular with classical allusion and format, handwritten vertically from right to left, with dates according to the Gregorian calendar and year counts specified as “1942 on the Western calendar”/“32nd year of the Republic of China”; Treaty Series No. 2 (1943) Treaty between His Majesty in Respect of the United Kingdom and India and His Excellency the President of the National Government of the Republic of China for the Relinquishment of Extra-Territorial Rights in China and the Regulation of Related Matters (with Exchange of Notes and Agreed Minute), Chungking, January 11, 1943 [ratifications were exchanged at Chungking, May 20, 1943] (London: HMSO, 1943).

45. Wang Dong, “The Discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China,” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 3 (2003): 399. In addition to the Kuomintang and CCP regimes, the puppet government of Wang Jingwei also worked with Japan to regain control over concessions and international settlements.

46. Ibid., 418.

47. Chiang had fought against the resumption of British control over Hong Kong, but his allies decided otherwise. Britain insisted on taking back Hong Kong, and the United States agreed.

48. John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), 176.

49. Phoenix Television offers a dramatic narration to accompany the video of Thatcher's fall; Phoenix Television, “Mrs. Thatcher Walks out of the Great Hall of the People after Meeting with Deng Xiaoping 撒切爾夫人和鄧小平會面後步出人民大會堂” (n.d.), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= dh1N1GIYxDw (accessed June 12, 2017).

50. Anthony Aust, Modern Treaty Law and Practice, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 24.

51. Treaties and international agreements registered or filed and recorded with the Secretariat of the United Nations, vol. 1399, No. 23391; Christopher S. Wren, “China and Britain Jointly Announce Hong Kong Accord,” New York Times, September 20, 1984.

52. TNA, FO 93/23/75. On the politics of multilingual treaties, see Liang Yuen-Li, “The Question of Revision of a Multilingual Treaty Text,” American Journal of International Law 47 (1953): 263–72.

53. TNA, FO 93/23/75.

54. Jerry Norman, Chinese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 133–38. Guoyu refers to the language used in the Republic of China pre-1949 and Taiwan post-1949, while Putonghua refers to the language in use in mainland China post-1949.

55. Brokaw, “On the History of the Book in China,” 11–12.

56. Andrea Bachner, Beyond Sinology: Chinese Writing and the Scripts of Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 147; Derk Bodde, “Punctuation: Its Use in China and Elsewhere,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 47, no. 2 (1991): 15–23.

57. See Beijing shifan xueyuan zhongwenxi Hanyu jiaoyanzu 北京师范学院中文系汉语敎硏组, Wusi yilai Hanyu shumian yuyan de bianqian he fazhan 五四以来汉语书面语言的变迁和发展 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1959), ch. 1, for a discussion of language reform as a revolutionary triumph.

58. Norman, Chinese, 80.

59. Some consider these physical documents as powerful sacred objects. Days before the 1997 handover, the then President of Taiwan claimed the sovereignty of Hong Kong should return to the Republic of China as Taiwan possessed the original of the Treaty of Nanking; Li Teng-hui 李登輝, “Nanjing tiaoyue de zhengben zai Taiwan. Xianggang de zhuquan shuyu Zhonghuaminguo 南京條約的正本在台灣 香港的主權屬於中華民國,” Green Party Taiwan News Release, 1997.

60. S. A. Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai 1895–1927 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John D. Wong

John D. Wong is an Assistant Professor in Hong Kong Studies at the Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.