As the swinging '70s gave way to the more anxious 1980s, people in Hong Kong became increasingly apprehensive about a fast-approaching, though once comfortably distant, date â?? 1997, the expiry date for the vast (by Hong Kong definition) hinterland acquired in 1898 on a 99-year lease and still known as the â??Newâ? Territories.
Many businessmen were growing restless about the uncertain impact of this impending change would have on business basics: would land leases be extended beyond that date (virtually all land in Hong Kong then as now is â??crownâ? land and parceled out on long-term leases)? Would contracts be honored? More to the point: What did China intend to do with Hong Kong?
It was against this background that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made her famous first visit to Beijing in September 1982, to begin negotiating the future of the British colony with the Chinese Communist government of Deng Xiaoping. The meeting did not go that well.
Thatcher went to Beijing hoping to persuade Chinaâ??s paramount leader that continuing British administration of the territory was necessary for the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution, which essentially ended only with Mao Zedongâ??s death in 1976, was still a vivid memory, as Chinaâ??s revolutionary opening and reforms only just beginning.
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