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Decolonisation in the age of globalisation: Britain, China, and Hong Kong, 1979-89

Online ISBN:
9781526179678
Print ISBN:
9781526171320
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

Decolonisation in the age of globalisation: Britain, China, and Hong Kong, 1979-89

Chi-kwan Mark
Chi-kwan Mark
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Published online:
18 January 2024
Published in print:
25 July 2023
Online ISBN:
9781526179678
Print ISBN:
9781526171320
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

This book examines Britain–China–Hong Kong relations in the 1980s from global, diplomatic, and imperial perspectives. During Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, Britain actively engaged with China in order to promote globalisation and manage Hong Kong’s decolonisation. Influenced by neoliberalism, Thatcher saw Britain as a global trading nation, which was well placed to serve China’s economic reform. With her conviction in free-market capitalism, Thatcher was eager to extend British rule in Hong Kong beyond 1997. During the 1982–84 negotiations, British diplomats aimed to ‘educate’ China about how capitalist Hong Kong worked. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping held an alternative vision of globalisation, one that privileged sovereignty and socialism over market liberalism and democracy. By drawing extensively upon the declassified British archives along with Chinese sources, this book recounts how Britain and China negotiated over Hong Kong’s future, culminating in the signing of the Joint Declaration on its retrocession in 1997. It explores how Anglo-Chinese relations flourished after the Hong Kong agreement but suffered a setback as a result of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. This innovative study argues that Thatcher was a pragmatic neoliberal, and the British diplomacy of ‘educating’ China about capitalism, democracy, and global norms yielded mixed results.

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