Diplomatic realpolitik has prevailed over highprinciple in the final days before the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on Monday next. The British government has followed the United States in deciding not to boycott the inaugural ceremony for the nonelected provisional legislature after the handover, reversing an earlier decision. Both governments will be represented by senior diplomats.
Although the grounds announced to justify this change of course were that the new chief executive, Mr Tung Chee hwa, is being sworn in at the same time along with the judges, observers have concluded that deeper interests are at stake. Whatever reservations governments may have had about the incoming appointed legislature have been subordinated to maintaining good relations with China and the new Hong Kong administration. This week the US renewed its most favoured nation trading status with China. The decision symbolises its policy of engaging a huge, emerging power, its markets and peoples.
Given the great importance China attaches to the reversion of sovereignty, boycotting such an important ceremony would indeed be a foolish gesture for those who wish so to engage with it all the more so since the Chinese have a good case in international law for having proceeded as they have done with the legislature. They say that Mr Patten and the British government broke agreements to change political representation arrangements under the Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law of 1990 only on a bilateral, not a unilateral basis. The legislature elected two years ago on a universal franchise does not comply with that agreement, however justified it may be from the point of view of democratic principle.
It has often been pointed out that the British in Hong Kong were exceedingly late converts to the democratic franchise. Mr Patten's decision to universalise it for the 1995 elections was never likely to convince the Chinese government; given that fact, it was not to be expected that the legislature would act as a "through train" to the next elections in 1998. The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Cook, has sensibly shifted the ground towards convincing Britain's international partners to insist that these elections be held on time, a call endorsed yesterday by EU foreign ministers. Most EU states will be represented at the hand over.
Such an approach is certainly not at odds with insisting on China's obligations to respect the autonomy and political culture of Hong Kong in the years to come. They have solemnly and repeatedly undertaken to do so within the framework of the "one country, two systems" policy. On this basis, the Chinese must resist the temptation to dismiss criticisms of their conduct as interfering with their sovereignty or internal affairs. They insist, quite rightly, on the need for mutual respect in the conduct of international affairs. But this principle cannot diminish the respect for universal rights and treaty obligations from which international concern for Hong Kong's freedoms quite justifiably.