This book begins with the origins and negotiation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration then turns to the immediate aftermath following its signature on 19 December 1984 and entry into force on 27 May 1985. That aftermath was a period during which the colonial administration pushed actively for democratic reform, following the conclusion of the Sino-British Joint Declaration but before Hong Kong was handed over on 1 July 1997. I have endeavoured to let recently declassified files speak for themselves. The result is not always as focused as one might like. There is a higgledy-piggledy quality which is common in any protracted treaty negotiation. Plans had to change, new makeshift plans enacted and adaptation became both frequent and necessary. In all this, China’s negotiators might come across as certain and confident but this is only because, but for the occasional speaking role granted to them in the UK records, the files show little other than the silent, gleaming splendour of the national emblem above the Zhongnanhai’s South Gate. In stark contrast, doubt and frailty, even occasional bigotry at the rag end of colonialism, is laid bare in the files from the National Archives.

The repercussions of the passage and promulgation in Hong Kong of the 2020 National Security Law (NSL) have been global in reach. Hong Kong featured prominently as the Trump Administration in the United States and Beijing teetered on the brink of a new Cold War. The National Security Law marked also a downward spiral in Sino-British relations amidst a wider backlash from, amongst others, the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance nations, comprising the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This chapter describes the controversy over the 2020 law and the Sino-British exchanges which took place around it, both before and after its passage.

The chapter summarizes the salient patterns of China’s major-power diplomacy under President Xi Jinping and highlights how it differs from the development-driven, low-profile strategy of the previous era under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. It then discusses how Chinese diplomacy struggles to balance a policy of seeking change within the global order and a revionisim risking a cold or a hot war. The next section addresses how the COVID-19 pandemic tested China’s strategic opportunity. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of the study.

The PRC’s foreign affairs power had, briefly, been described in the previous chapter, together with the power in the realm of defence. These powers impose together important and at times anxious limitations on Hong Kong’s autonomy, not just on Hong Kong’s external affairs and foreign treaty relations but also on the judicial function of the courts. In the ‘Twelve Points’ which became the Joint Declaration, the sixth was that Hong Kong will manage its own affairs except in defence and foreign affairs. That qualification is often forgotten or dismissed, but it cannot be so easily brushed aside.

Central to the ‘West Kowloon terminus’ issue was whether Hong Kong’s guarantee of rights would still apply, notwithstanding the application of Mainland law. Mr. Rimsky Yuen, then Secretary for Justice, had adopted the legal position that a lease not of property but of territory would be involved and that apparently would have avoided the issue of Hong Kong rights superimposed upon the application of Mainland laws. A very similar issue was to emerge albeit in different guise, in 2019, in connection with the prospect of renditions to the Mainland. Would Hong Kong’s rights regime apply to requests for rendition? Unlike the earlier 2014 protests, 2019 was marked by a degree of violence which initially the world outside was perhaps slow to recognise.

There was, first of all, the PRC State Council’s 2014 white paper, which is said to have contributed in turn to the 2014 protests, then there was the peculiar ‘missing booksellers’ affair in late 2015, and after that the extension of Mainland Chinese Law, in 2017, to the Kowloon terminus of a newly constructed rail link. In addition, there was the ‘article 22’ issue and it may on reflection be best to begin with that.

‘In the first place it is instructive to ask how a poet could meet the challenge of representing the population of a city on stage; in the second, this exercise is likely to shed light on the political function of Greek tragedy. More specifically it will shed light on the relationship between tragedy and democracy ? a vexed question in recent years ? for no consideration of democracy in drama can neglect the role of democracy’s central player.’ The issue of having a fully–fledged democratic system in Hong Kong goes close to the heart of the whole Hong Kong issue today.

The PRC appears to hold the Joint Declaration which it does treat as a valid treaty to have become fully executed, meaning that all its terms have been performed. Hong Kong has been handed over and much of the substance of the document is to be found in its first annex (Annex I) which is – and the PRC emphasises this aspect – entitled an ‘Elaboration by the Government of the People's Republic of China of its basic policies regarding Hong Kong’. The UK takes a different view, treating as substantive treaty commitments the PRC’s (own) elaboration of Chinese policies in the third paragraph and in Annex I. The roots of this controversy run deep and have their origin in the treaty negotiations.

Beginning in 2014 there was a series of controversies before violent protests erupted in connection with the Hong Kong Government’s 2019 Extradition Bill, which in turn led to the National Security Law of 2020. Often discrete events do not suggest a larger catastrophe until it is too late. The controversy over the State Council’s 2014 white paper, even the ‘Occupy’ Protests of that year, the strange ‘missing booksellers’ controversy in late 2015 and the 2017 West Kowloon Terminus issue each did not in themselves suggest the sweeping legislative changes that would take place by 2020.

The negotiations following Margaret Thatcher’s visit had commenced on 12 July in the former Austro–Hungarian Legation Building in Beijing. As we saw, Cradock may have taken the view that China's leaders were incorrigible, ineducable, and blinkered by dogma and nationalistic pride, but to the Chinese side, Britain’s negotiators demonstrated a ‘colonialist and imperialist attitude’, one which was ‘outmoded, lacking in reality and would get nowhere’. Mid–way through the formal negotiations in July and August of 1983, between the second round in late July and the third round in early August, the Chinese delegation was to present publicly its position on the indivisibility of sovereignty and administration, i.e. that there is no resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong if Britain were to continue to administer it. China also unveiled the 12 principles (or ‘Twelve Point Plan’) for Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong S.A.R. enjoys delegated treaty powers and relations and has in this sense ‘its own’ treaty regime; it retains on top of that certain colonial treaty features which were present before the handover, such as the continued application of the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or ‘ICCPR’ notwithstanding that the PRC is not party to the ICCPR; finally, certain PRC treaties nonetheless apply to Hong Kong while Hong Kong is at the same time exempt or excluded from other PRC treaties. That at least was what the PRC and the UK agreed. Insofar as the application of PRC multilateral treaties to Hong Kong is concerned, these have been notified to third countries through a letter by the PRC to the United Nations Secretary–General as treaty depository.

Clearly the PRC would be – and was – against any significant moves by the UK in the meantime. Unlike the usual colonial template for the emergence of independent entities, whereby self–government was introduced on the way to formal independence, Hong Kong was no Malaya or Nigeria. By the terms of the Declaration itself, even from the UK’s perspective, what was involved was the ‘restoration’ to China of Hong Kong, which now was to be accompanied by nothing far short of a calculated provocation. The Joint Declaration had not provided, or promised, democratic reform. It was to be promised subsequently in China’s Basic Law for post–handover Hong Kong. Equally the Joint Declaration did not prevent explicitly the UK from commencing democratic reforms once Hong Kong was lost to it. That was the door wherein Britain went.

Building on the discussion of the Belt and Road Initiative, the chapter offers a comprehensive inquiry into China’s economic statecraft. It first argues that the analogy often drawn between the BRI and the Marshall Plan misconstrues contemporary China’s economic statecraft. It then examines how the interest communities and partnership diplomacy serve as mechanisms for China’s economic influence. The next section considers how, with Chinese economic ascendancy in Asia, a semblance of Chinese centrality in Asia is emerging. The following section looks at China’s global influence effect in terms of the international discourse on its great-power standing as well as its drive for technical standard-setting in key industries. Lastly, the chapter discusses the built-in limits of the BRI and broad limitations of the Chinese economic statecraft in the twenty-first century.