How much money did Britain plunder from Hong Kong over the course of more than a century? In the face of such enormous economic interests, Thatcher could think only of making Hong Kong into a "second Falklands" . And now each country's highest government official were sat down together. One of them was the Iron Lady. The other was China's leader, who endured the 12,500 kilometer Long March, directed legions of men in battle, and helped preside over the founding of a New China.
What sort of chess match would the two sides play?
At the outset Thatcher took a rigid stance. She haughtily said: "As Britain sees it, Hong Kong is British. This has been affirmed in three treaties recognized in international law, two of which were concessionary treaties. If China wishes to repossess Hong Kong, the only way for it to do so is through bilateral negotiations on amending these treaties. The only way to guarantee continued prosperity for Hong Kong is through continued British administration; continued rule, in other words. Any declaration that China intends to retake Hong Kong in 1997 will have a destructive influence on Hong Kong, and will prompt tremendous instability!"
Thatcher's overbearing stance irked Deng Xiaoping. His hardline reply threw a scare into the assembled officials, which included Foreign Minister Huang Hua and his deputy Zhang Wenjin, Chinese ambassador to Britain Ke Hua, Percy Cradock, and Hong Kong governor Edward Youde.
Deng said, "Hong Kong's sovereignty is not open to discussion! Hong Kong must be returned to China in 1997. China must have back not only the New Territories, but also Hong Kong Island and Kowloon as well. As far as China is concerned, there is no room for compromise on this question. Negotiations between China and the UK will proceed under these auspices, as we work through how to resolve [the issue of] Hong Kong!"
Deng Xiaoping's impassioned defense of China's sovereignty showed he was willing to give as good as he got from the British.
He said: "If by 1997, forty-eight years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, China has still not retaken Hong Kong, no Chinese leader or government could stand before the Chinese people! Or before the world! If [Hong Kong is] not retaken, it would mean that the Chinese government is [no different from] Qing, and China's leaders are [no different from] Li Hongzhang, a high-ranking official in late Qing dynasty. If our people cannot place their confidence in us, then the Chinese government should step down! There would be no other choice.
"I have to tell madam that this question cannot be delayed any longer. We must be able to announce to the world within the next two years that we will be retaking Hong Kong! In arriving at this decision, the Chinese government has taken every conceivable possibility into account.
"If, as madam has suggested, an announcement that we will be retaking Hong Kong would have a catastrophic effect, than we must bravely face the catastrophe! If at some point in the next fifteen years there may be man-made disturbances, these could be created by Chinese as well as foreigners, but chiefly by Britons.
"I must remind madam, Hong Kong is not the Malvinas, and China is not Argentina!"
Writing these lines, hearing a Chinese leader express himself so forcefully, the depression brought upon me by half a year spent reading through modern Chinese history was swept away, replaced by a rare feeling of joy.
This was a cri du coeur of a people oppressed, bullied, and humiliated for more than a hundred years, announcing to the world: The Chinese people, long humiliated and victimized, have stood up! The Chinese nation is no longer a flock of sheep to be divvied up by foreign powers!
Deng's words reverberated through the hearts of those participating in the Sino-UK negotiations; even more so, they reverberated within the arrogant heart of the Iron Lady.
Thatcher asked Deng: "Could we perhaps be allowed to continue leasing the New Territories?"
"No you cannot!" came Deng's stinging retort, more abrupt even than Churchill's rejection of Wellington Koo so many years ago. "The madam would do well to remember," Deng reminded the British, "that were serious instability to occur within Hong Kong during the next fifteen years, the Chinese government would be forced to consider the time and means by which to retake Hong Kong!" He paused, and then added a final thought. "If it were necessary, China would retake Hong Kong this very afternoon. The Chinese people may be poor, but they are not afraid to die in battle."
It was then that Thatcher finally realized that the short, wizened old Chinese man in front of her was not one of the weak, impotent Qing mandarins of old; rather, he was of the valiant generation that produced Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the battle-hardened leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. He yielded to Thatcher not an inch, giving no consideration to her sensibilities, and giving her no room to haggle. She had met her match, and had lost the first battle in her negotiations with China.
After the two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting came to a close, Thatcher tripped and fell at the end of the flight of steps leading out of The Great Hall of the People.
That night, after she had returned to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, she said to Ambassador Cradock, "That man (Deng Xiaoping) is ruthless."
I doubt very much that Thatcher had forgotten her history, forgotten how 140 years before the British had dispatched twenty-six warships to Nanjing's Xiaguan district, forcing China to sign the Treaty of Nanjing; forcing it to cede Hong Kong and open up Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai as treaty ports; and forcing it to pay twenty-one million silver dollars in reparations, under threat of bombardment. That was not only ruthless; it was a brutal invasion.
But the Iron Lady was not ready to give up, not by a long shot.