The Recovery of Hong Kong } 603
postreversion arrangements as specified by the Basic Law, and that this
was required by the Joint Declaration and the Qian-Hurd correspondence.
McLaren rejected the proposition that Patten’s reforms violated any agree-
ments between Beijing and London, and insisted that China should coop-
erate with Britain. Beijing added pressure mid-1993 by openly publishing
for the first time in the text of Deng’s September 1982 talk with Thatcher
in which he had clearly warned the British leader that China was prepared
to act unilaterally to handle any adverse situation in Hong Kong created by
British-inspired disturbances there. Aside from underlining for London the
possibility of unilateral Chinese recovery of Hong Kong and the possibility
of humiliation of British “honor,” Deng’s 1982 comments made Patten’s de-
mocratization program seem imprudent and unrealistic. It also reassured
public opinion in Hong Kong that China was quite serious about not altering
Hong Kong’s economic and social systems after reversion, at least in Qian
Qichen’s v iew.^58
By November 1993, there remained a wide and apparently unbridgeable
gap between Beijing and London over issues having to do with Hong Kong
elections: the size of functional constituencies, the makeup of the election
committee, the voting method (one or two votes per elector) for geographic
constituencies, and so on. Decision on these matters by December was essen-
tial, British representatives informed the Chinese side in November, if LegCo
was to debate these proposals and translate them into law in time to guide
the 1995 elections. When no further agreement was forthcoming, the talks
reached an impasse and were suspended.^59 Each side blamed the other for
termination of talks.
Early the next year, Patten submitted his reform proposals to LegCo for
debate. As Sino-British cooperation evaporated, Beijing began unilateral
preparations for reversion. In December 1996, China used the Selection
Committee set up to select Hong Kong’s chief executive under the Basic Law
to select, as well, a “provisional legislative assembly” for the territory. Britain
refused to allow that body to meet in Hong Kong, so it met in Shenzhen.
Beijing declared that the portion of Hong Kong’s political institutions con-
stituted under exclusively British authority would cease to exist with the end
of British authority on July 1, 1997, and that new political structures consti-
tuted according to the provisions of the Basic Law would be established.
The LegCo elected in 1995 under British authority and on the basis of
Patten’s election democratization effort was the first wholly elected LegCo
(with both functional and geographic constituencies) in Hong Kong history,
with a full one-third of its members directly elected. That body ceased to
function at midnight on June 30, 1997, when it was replaced by what had been
the Provisional Legislative Council. China and Britain were, however, able to
agree on an intricate protocol regarding the actual conduct of the transition
ceremony on June 30–July 1, 1997. That ceremony took place without major