Thursday last week, or December 19, marked the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. In a front-page story published on December 20, 1984 with a headline “A stroke of pen and it’s all over,” the South China Morning Post wrote “Hong Kong entered a new era at 5.30 pm today (Dec 19).”

The report highlighted the presence of nearly all influential members of the then Chinese Politburo at the signing ceremony. They included the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping. “This was taken as a sign that Chinese leaders are staking their own credibility on the agreement.”

Hong Kong people greeted the agreement with hopes and fears as they kept their fingers crossed on the journey towards reunification. The rest is history.

Not supported by any arbitration mechanism

Not surprisingly, the 40th anniversary of the joint accord last week had gone unnoticed in the city. There were no official ceremonies, no commemorative events and media reports. The South China Morning Post re-published the 1984 story under its “On this day” column with a picture of its front page on its website.

40 years on, the Joint Declaration has become a historical document with little, if any, relevance and significance to Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region since July 1, 1997.

It is not difficult to understand why. The question of whether the Joint Declaration has been honoured by both sides, or a dispute of violation by any one of two signatories, is meaningless.

There is no arbitration mechanism in the agreement, which, according to last Governor Lord Patten in his book The Hong Kong Diaries, adds on to Hong Kong’s ill-fortune.

In an article headline “The destruction of Hong Kong” at the end of his book, he wrote, “… as many Hong Kong recognised at the time, the guarantee of Hong Kong’s way of life contained in the Joint Declaration was not supported by any arbitration mechanism.

“It was said by British ministers and officials – this was the sales pitch to Hong Kong, to the United Kingdom and around the world – that this was unnecessary, since it was the intention to develop more rapidly Hong Kong’s own democratic institutions.

“In the event, this promise was left rather limply dangling in the wind. China’s leaders recognised that breaking an international agreement such as the Joint Declaration would trigger criticisms from many countries. But they thought they could get away with it.”

Beijing’s promises

In the agreement, the central government has spelled out a list of 12 basic policies towards Hong Kong. They included a high degree of autonomy, independent judicial power, including the power of final adjudication, preservation of life-style and basic rights and freedoms.

To the Chinese Government, whether those policies have been implemented as promised is now irrelevant to the British Government.

Speaking at a media briefing in 2017, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said: “Now Hong Kong has returned to the motherland’s embrace for 20 years, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any practical significance, and it is not at all binding for the central government’s management over Hong Kong.

“The UK has no sovereignty, no power to rule and no power to supervise Hong Kong after the handover,” he said.

There is no denying the British rule had come to an end at the stroke of midnight of June 30, 1997. Realistically, no one has legal binding power over Beijing’s policies towards Hong Kong.

But if the Basic Law is a document that sets out Beijing’s promises for post-1997 Hong Kong, the Joint Declaration is a historical document that has laid down Beijing’s pledges that were summarised in a set of 12 basic policies. Based on the text of the agreement, those promises did not have an expiry date.

It is difficult to comprehend the notion that an agreement between two sovereign states on how Hong Kong should be run in the post-colonial era “no longer has any practical significance” after a certain period of time.

Of the 12 basic policies, the last one says the other 11 policies, which were elaborated in Annex I of the pact, will be stipulated in the Basic Law. The Basic Law was promulgated in 1990 and took effect on July 1, 1997.

40 years have elapsed since the promises in the Joint Declaration were made to the people of Hong Kong and the world. The wide gap between the promises then and the reality now could not be more disheartening with the relevance and significance of the Joint Declaration lost in the corridors of history.

( Pic : basiclaw.gov.hk )

▌[At Large] About the Author

Chris Yeung is a veteran journalist, a founder and chief writer of the now-disbanded CitizenNews; he now runs a daily news commentary channel on Youtube. He had formerly worked with the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Economic Journal.