END OF
EMPIRE HONG KONG: SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIVERED
16 END OF EMPIRE
1982
1979
In May 1979, Governor Sir Murray MacLehose greeted Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma on a visit to Hong Kong. Having presided over arrangements for the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, Mountbatten was keen to learn at firsthand how Hong Kong would handle its own negotiations for the return of sovereignty to China.
Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with Governor Youde on her right, defended the necessity for the talks at a stormy press conference held in Hong Kong in September 1982.
1982
During her visit to Beijing in September 1982, Mrs Thatcher met with Zhou Nan, China’s chief representative during negotiations for the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. Zhou later recalled that Deng Xiaoping had set a deadline of two years for the negotiations. If no agreement was reached within that timeframe, China would have acted unilaterally.
1984
The landmark document that concluded the negotiations was signed in December 1984, in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, by the Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Zhao Ziyang, and Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
17 MILESTONES
1985
Governor Sir Edward Youde in March 1985 attends a farewell gathering for Ji Peng-fei, head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (on his left). Wearing glasses on Ji’s left is T.K. Ann, Executive Councillor and Chairman of the Joint Declaration Committee.
1990 1984
Sealing the fate of Hong Kong under the waxed imprimaturs of the chief signatories, the Joint Declaration effecting the transfer was dated 19 December 1984. By any reckoning, this was a remarkable document, in which China guaranteed the retention of laws, customs and social institutions very different from her own, together with the preservation of freedoms denied to all of her other citizens. Not only that, but the terms of the guarantee would endure for 50 years – to 30 June 2047.
A fluent Mandarin speaker, Governor Sir David Wilson was well received in Beijing in January 1990, by Premier Lu Ping, Secretary-General of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office. Lu Ping had earlier privately confided to his colleagues, “Do the British really believe that we are going to allow them to stay on in Hong Kong after 1997?”.
1997
Long after the agreement was signed, and Chris Patten was installed as Hong Kong’s last governor, Mrs Thatcher, with Patten at her side, went on a walkabout in the streets of Hong Kong, reassuring bystanders that Britain would keep a watching brief over Hong Kong affairs after the handover.
When Hong Kong’s last Governor, Chris Patten, visited Stonecutters Island to inspect the guard of honour for the decommissioning ceremonies, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jack Slater led the military party. Seen here (centre) with Admiral Slater are Commander British Forces, Major General Bryan Dutton and Chief of Staff, Commodore Peter Nelson.
39 STONECUTTERS
50 THE GARRISON
An advance party of the future People’s Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison arrived at the Prince of Wales Barracks in April 1997. Led by Major General Zhou Barong, this preparatory unarmed group of 40 men was greeted by Commander British Forces Major General Bryan Dutton.
75 OPENING OF THE ASSIZES
Sir Ti-liang Yang (left) was Chief Justice of Hong Kong from 1988 to 1996 and was the only ethnic Chinese to hold this office during British colonial rule. He was the presiding Chief Justice at the inauguration of Governor Patten in 1992 and a candidate for election in 1996 as his successor, in the newly created post of Hong Kong Chief Executive. He lost that election to his opponent Tung Chee Hwa but, after the transfer of sovereignty, was appointed by Tung as non-official member of the
Executive Council, retiring from that office in 2002. In retirement, Sir TL now spends his time writing and teaching English. Above: The Hon. Justice Power, Acting Chief Justice prior to the handover, inspects troops on parade outside City Hall on 13 January 1997, to mark the opening of the assizes.
107 THE LEGACY OF THE FALLEN
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.” The Royal British Legion Standard is lowered at the Stanley Cemetery as veterans and family members, many having returned to Hong Kong especially for this occasion, stand for a minute’s silence at ceremonies held throughout the colony prior to the handover.
139 MONUMENT OF MOURNING
Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918, when hostilities formally ended, “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month�, with the signing of the Armistice. The ceremony was routinely observed in Hong Kong until the handover, and in 1992, with the Judiciary in attendance, Prince Charles (right) laid the wreath in the course of one of his several visits to Hong Kong.
163 THE LAST SUPPER
Baroness Thatcher, in Hong Kong to open the Lantau Link, was guest-ofhonour and to her right was George Schultz, former United States Secretary of State, while on Governor Patten’s left was Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan.
190 END OF EMPIRE
LEAVING GOVERNMENT HOUSE
The process of packing up and leaving Government House was a protracted, painstaking and painful business. Uprooting and erasing all traces of 142 years of history involved a great deal of planning and preparation. One of the earliest references to the construction of this iconic building dates from 1852, when a general description of the still embryonic city of Victoria, contained in volume three of the English Encyclopedia, provided the following account:
There are in Victoria an English Episcopal church, a Roman Catholic church, and four places of worship for dissenters. The island contains also a Mohammedan mosque and three Chinese temples. The city contains regular streets and bazaars for the Chinese, numerous large storehouses, substantial wharfs and jetties, two European hotels and billiard rooms, and various public buildings. A new government house is in course of erection. In consequence of the limited space between the beach and the base of the mountains, the town necessarily stretches in a line, which extends about three miles in front of the harbour. It calls for a vivid feat of imagination to connect the dots across all those crowded chapters that would follow, linking the still tenuous outlines of the once fledgling settlement with the city that would take its place.
191 LEAVING GOVERNMENT HOUSE
204 LEAVING GOVERNMENT HOUSE
The Union flag that had long signified the presence of the Queen’s representative was lowered, furled and presented to the Governor as a parting gesture before some two hundred and fifty members of Government House staff and their families, many of them in tears. Patten did what he could to lighten the mood. “As a final act of generosity, I am going to give all of you the day off tomorrow,” he announced brightly, prompting smiles from those who realised that the following day had already been designated as a public holiday to mark the founding of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
230 THE SUNSET PARADE
Reflected in pools of water from the incessant downpour, the parade seemed poised, for a moment, on the cusp of history. The page was about to turn, leaving them to vanish like shades into the past. There was an almost palpable consciousness, among all present, that with the sudden urgency of accelerated incident which invariably hurries the final expectant paces to a once distant horizon, colonial tenure was trickling down to it last remaining hours and minutes.
The countdown to the end of colonial rule in Hong Kong, at midnight on 30 June 1997, was celebrated with the last grand extravaganza of Britain’s imperial history. The long retreat from the world’s greatest empire had commenced with the withdrawal of the Raj from India 50 years earlier. And now Hong Kong’s return to China would ring down the final curtain. Everyone who witnessed it knew there would never be another occasion quite like the one captured in these pages. ‘End of Empire’ is not merely a record of Hong Kong’s date with destiny but a tribute to what had arguably been the most successful – and therefore the greatest – jewel in the Britannic Crown.
ISBN 978-988-15562-1-9