590 { China’s Quest
would not assign officials to the HKSAR. Hong Kong would be run by Hong
Kong people—the latter to be selected in a manner yet to be specified. “We are
convinced that the people of Hong Kong are capable of running the affairs of
Hong Kong well and want an end to foreign rule,” Deng told the visiting Hong
Kong magnates. The main body of Hong Kong officials should be “patriots,”
Deng stipulated, who respected the Chinese nation and were sincere in their
support for the return of Hong Kong to the motherland. But they need not be
communists or believe in socialism. They could believe in capitalism, feudal-
ism, or even slavery, Deng suggested jocularly. “We don’t demand that they be
in favor of China’s socialist system. We only ask them to love the motherland
and Hong Kong,” Deng said. Since the HKSAR would be part of the PRC,
PLA forces would be stationed in Hong Kong, but only to “safeguard national
security,” not to interfere in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. This was a shrewd
appeal to Hong Kong’s business and governmental elites to keep ruling Hong
Kong as they had been for many decades, but now in partnership with Beijing
rather than in partnership with London. While many people in Hong Kong
would object to the undemocratic nature of these political arrangements, the
relative stability of Hong Kong before and after reversion in July 1997 suggests
that the proposal was realistic.
Sino-British negotiations began in mid-1983 and bore fruit by December
1984, when a Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in Beijing.^27 Britain
accepted Beijing’s framework: Hong Kong would become a special admin-
istrative region of the PRC with a high degree of autonomy, except in areas
of foreign and security affairs, where Beijing would have jurisdiction. The
government of the HKSAR was to be composed of Hong Kong people, with
the chief executive effectively appointed by Beijing and appointing, in turn,
the chief officials of the government. Hong Kong’s legislature, the Legislative
Council or LegCo, was to be “constituted by elections.” The meaning of this
clause would be the focus of intense differences a decade later. The Joint
Declaration also stipulated that “rights and freedoms” currently enjoyed
by Hong Kong residents were to remain unchanged for fifty years. These
“rights and freedoms” were spelled out in considerable detail in the text of
the Declaration, a fact that indicated the importance of these freedoms in
reassuring the people of Hong Kong. Enumerated “rights and freedoms” in-
cluded: “of the person, 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 ... private property, ownership of enterprises,
legitimate right of inheritance and foreign investment.” In 1984, these guar-
antees delineated the great differences between life in Hong Kong and life in
the rest of the PRC. By the early twenty-first century, those differences were
far less—except in the area of free political activity.
The Anglo-Chinese agreement of December 1984 succeeded in reassur-
ing people in Hong Kong. The danger of capital flight receded, and foreign