In September 1982, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went to Beijing to begin a dialogue on the issue of Hong Kong, a small nation that had been a colony of Great Britain for over a century. At issue was the 99-year lease which gave Britain authority over the islands was set to expire in 1997, raising a host of questions on what the future of the territory would look like. In 1984, after two years of negotiations, a Joint Declaration was released in which Britain agreed to cede Hong Kong at the expiration of the lease, while China guaranteed to allow the small nation to maintain an amount of political autonomy under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy.
During the talks, Thatcher later said that Deng Xiaoping, Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission of the Communist Party of China, had told her bluntly that China could easily take Hong Kong by force, stating that “I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon,” to which she replied, “There is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like.” Not surprisingly, for those living in Hong Kong during that time, there was a great amount of concern as to what the future would hold.
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