Sir Percy Cradock, the British diplomat who negotiated terms for returning Hong Kong to Chinese rule, has died at 86, his family said.
Cradock died last Friday following a brief illness, the family announced in the Times newspaper on Thursday.
Cradock was first posted to Hong Kong in 1961, then moved to Beijing the following year and again from 1966 to 1969, and was taken prisoner when the embassy was besieged by a mob during the Cultural Revolution.
He returned to Beijing as ambassador in 1978 as Britain began to deal with the looming return of the Hong Kong colony in 1997.
Given China’s military advantage, and Hong Kong’s dependence on China for food and water, Cradock said “Britain had virtually no cards” to play in negotiations.
Giving up Hong Kong grated against then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s instincts, and she was often suspicious of professional diplomats.
Cradock in turn was wary of politicians.
“It’s not the other side you have to worry about, but your own, the inability to influence London on matters where you have special knowledge and interest,” he wrote in a 1994 memoir.
In 1984, Britain and China agreed on a “one nation, two systems” approach, but Cradock said negotiators were under no illusion that Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng (鄧小平) was a European liberal.
“We signed that bloody agreement with him because he ruled China and because he could harm Hong Kong or could help it. We were absolutely cold realists about it,” he said.
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