The agreement between China and Britain to guarantee a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong for 50 years following its handover to Chinese control a quarter-century ago has been “breached comprehensively” in recent years by Beijing, according to Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor.
The principle of “one country, two systems” in the Joint Declaration on the question of Hong Kong, which was filed at the United Nations in 1985, was supposed to guarantee a “high degree of autonomy” for the city, protect its way of life as well as its freedoms and rule of law, Patten recalled. The handover went into effect on July 1, 1997, and the guarantee was to last to 2047.
“It’s fair to say for 10 years after 1997, maybe a bit longer, things did not go too badly wrong, but they’ve gone downhill since, partly because [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and his colleagues are terrified of what Hong Kong actually stands for,” said Patten, who in a new book is quite critical of a controversial national security law enacted for the city two years ago.