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But just as Hong Kong felt the new airport would underpin confidence, China deliberately stalled the project. The Chinese were obviously upset with all the sympathy shown in Hong Kong over the Tiananmen incident, and the overt way in which the Brits felt they had to rescue the ebb of stability, which made the Chinese lose face. I decided to try an idea on John Major who had succeeded Lady T.
Our meeting, quickly arranged by Algy Cluff, took place at Admiralty House and not No. 10, as its Cabinet room was being repaired from the IRA mortar bomb. John Major produced Percy Cradock who had been Lady T’s principal advisor on China. I put it to them that the only option to persuade the Chinese to sanction the go-ahead on the airport was for Major, as prime minister, to agree it face-to-face with Li Peng, the Chinese premier who was the tough nut behind Tiananmen.
Major did not like the idea lest Li Peng still said ‘no’. But he was prepared to send Cradock on a ‘secret recce’ to find out if Li Peng would receive Major and promise the airport. Through a close Chinese friend of mine, a meeting between Cradock and Li Peng was duly arranged. I recall telephoning Cradock on a Sunday morning to see if he would make the meeting.
‘It depends on the SAS,’ the bespectacled diplomat muttered.
‘Why the SAS?’ I asked, rather surprised.
‘I would have to travel to Peking via Copenhagen.’
‘I see! You mean the Scandinavian airline, not the Special Air Service!’
‘Yes, I mean my incognito flight into Peking from Copenhagen.’
‘And where would you stay?’
‘The embassy, I suppose.’
‘But nobody else is supposed to know about your secret mission! And your visa?’
‘You will have to arrange that quietly with the Chinese ambassador in London. And our ambassador in Peking will have to be told. I am going to stay with him.’
So much for the secrecy of this great British mission, especially when not even the foreign secretary was supposed to know!
Cradock did get the assurance from Li Peng, and John Major became the first Western leader to shake hands with Li Peng after the Tiananmen incident. Major had always disliked that dubious accolade. But I admire him for it because he did it for Hong Kong. The laughable paradox, however, was that the airport was not completed before 1997 because Patten upset the Chinese.
Understanding all this makes us realise that, although from a British point of view everything and more was done to secure an honourable handover (and nobody would disagree that it was entirely honourable), the Chinese were, by 1997, quite fed up with the Pickford boys for having been packing for 14 years since the Joint Declaration. So on the stroke of midnight on 30 June 1997 the Brits became totally irrelevant — thankfully got rid of as far as the mainlanders were concerned, and pointlessly powerless as far as the locals were concerned.
Ergo, asking the question today of how Hong Kong has fared since 1997 is, in the British context, rather jejune. The British legacy has been irrelevant in the last ten years, and it will be irrelevant for the next ten years and ten years after that. Hong Kong has continued to flourish after 1997 without a modicum of British involvement. Lady T need not be sad at all. Major’s brave handshake with Li Peng has long been forgotten, and Patten’s political agenda only blamed whenever raised. None of the Brits, or anyone that matters, has been invited to any of the tenth anniversary celebrations in Hong Kong.
Great Britain has had no thanks for what it did, even if it was an honourable lot. Little Britain is what remains in Hong Kong from the once mighty empire. I felt this acutely as I chaired, as president, the AGM of the Hong Kong Royal Commonwealth Society last Monday — in front of just nine veteran members, with a plate of spring rolls and two pots of tea on the side. The presence of the Vicar of Dibley might not have been out of place. As for the place of the Brits in Hong Kong? ‘Ichabod’ sums it all up!
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