An Introduction to Hong Kong, Britain,
and China, Part II: 1965-1993
David Clayton

Department of History, University of York

Image – A clipping from Ta Kung Pao showing people from Canton, Shumchun and Macao giving their support to the Kong Kong leftist rioters. January 1December 31, 1967. MS Commonwealth Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Hong Kong Departments: Registered Files, Hong Kong, British
Honduras, British Indian Ocean Territories and the Seychelles FCO 40/113. The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom)An Introduction to Hong Kong, Britain, and China, Part II:
1965-1993
Until 1997, Hong Kong was one of the last territories in a once-vast British Empire.
From 1997, Hong Kong, a global city with a degree of autonomy, was governed by atwenty-first century superpower. For global and world historians, therefore, the FCO
40 and FC O21 series—contained in Gale’s digital archive collection titled China andthe Modern World: Hong Kong, Britain, and China Part 2, 1965-1993—are extremely
valuable; for historians of late twentieth-century Britain and China they are
indispensable.
As explored in this cover essay, these series, released under changing British lawsof disclosure, enable historians to write accounts of:•••

Sino-British Relations (and the Cold War in Asia),
Hong Kong’s Public Administration, andSocio-economic and Cultural Changes in Hong Kong. 1

This essay begins by classifying the documents in the files and then elaborates upon
the above fields.

Document Types
For those that are unfamiliar with British government records, it needs to berecognised that these files were created by civil servants based in London working
for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The FCO was a powerfuldepartment of the British state headed by a high-ranking politician, the Foreign
Secretary, who was just behind the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of Exchequerin terms of status. The Prime Minister of an incumbent government would appoint
the Foreign Secretary (and other politicians as sub-ministers), and those heading thedepartment changed reasonably regularly, with civil servants providing continuity
across elected governments.
The FCO formulated British foreign policy and offered guidance to the Governor ofHong Kong, with the files in this collection deriving from a unit that specialised in
Hong Kong affairs (see the FCO 40 descriptor) and from one which had expertise in
See Steve Tsang, ‘Modern Hong Kong’, Tsang, Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Asian History (Oxford University
Press, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.280.
1

UK relations with what was then called the Far East (see FCO 21 descriptor). The
information contained in these files can be used to capture metropolitan
perspectives and Hong Kong insights.

Metropolitan Perspectives
Metropolitan perspectives can be found in the following types of documents:•

Hand-written and typed minutes record how a bureaucratic elite thought
through diplomatic problems—including how to initiate negotiations with the
Chinese People’s Government (CPG) on Hong Kong’s status post-1997 andhow to manage the backlash against Hong Kong’s export growth which
adversely affected UK relations with the US, Europe and the Commonwealthfrom the mid 1950s. Typically, these minutes reveal how UK policy goals
traded-off Hong Kong’s political autonomy.

•

Position papers were written in London, sometimes with input from otherdepartments of state such as the Ministries of Defence, Health, Technology,
Transport and the Home Office, and Board of Trade; FCO files also containreports written by other UK agencies (see, for example, FCO 40/3902, which
includes a UK police report on organised crime). Some of these papers were
presented to the Prime Minister and/or the Cabinet. Files on the ‘Future ofHong Kong’ post-1997 cluster in the mid-1970s; in the late-1970s—that is, inthe run up to Governor Murray MacLehose’s visit to Beijing in 1979 (see FCO
40/1058-1061: Future of Hong Kong: New Territory Leases, 1979); and before
the 1984 Joint Declaration (see FCO 40/1546-58).

Hong Kong 1997-The Implications for the United Kingdom (FCO 40/3902/0010).

•

Letters received from UK and international organisations and from individuals
with interests in Hong Kong affairs; responses to parliamentary questions andreports on parliamentary debates (notably on future of Hong Kong in 1984:
FCO 40/1736-1740); briefs for visits by FCO officials, FCO ministers and MPs
to Hong Kong; and reports on their visits.

Hong Kong Insights
These refer to information created by those living in Hong Kong communicated to
the FCO via:•

Telegrams, facsimiles and letters which reveal the views of high-ranking
bureaucratic elites, such as the Governor or senior officials working within
the Government Secretariat; see, for instance, documents written by ‘thepolitical adviser’ in FCO 21/541. The attitudes of these elites were informed byad hoc encounters between officials and social elites, by scientific polling androutine analysis of Hong Kong newspapers. 2 These communications also
relayed messages from representatives of the CPG.
•

A diverse range of unpublished reports, from, inter alia:(i)
Branches of the Hong Kong government—such as economic or social
services/housing/lands and works/education/city and New
Territories/security/home affairs/councils and administration—
detailing progress with legislation, the take up of socio-politicalentitlements (including to vote), infrastructure projects andcommunity-liaison schemes (see, for example, FCO 40/1419);(ii)
Executive Council minutes and memorandum;(iii)
Security and legal advisers commenting on, for example, prosecutions
for public order offences including against pro-democracy activists(FCO 40/2852); and emigration statistics (FCO 40/4225);(iv)
Special Branch of the Hong Kong Police on anti-colonial activities,
including labour activism (FCO 40/267).

Social Services Branch Progress Report (May 1–31 July 1982) (FCO 40/1419/0022)

Florence Mok, ‘Town Talk: enhancing the “eyes and ears” of the colonial state in British Hong Kong, 19501970s’, Historical Research: the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 95(268), (2022), 287-308,
https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htab039.
2

•

Newspaper cuttings and press releases collected by the Information Services
Department, Hong Kong.

•

Letters lobbying for imperial interventions sent by individuals or organisations
based in Hong Kong, the UK and overseas; for example, the Association of
Women for Action and Research on Governor Chris Pattern’s political reforms(as contained in FCO 40/4053).

•

Minutes of meetings between FCO officials and Hong Kong officials andcouncillors; and with ‘leading personalities’ (FCO 40/506) and ‘prominent
businessmen’ (FCO 40/1539).

Letter from Hong Kong Association, inviting FCO secretary to a lunch meeting on January 30,
1984 (FCO 40/1539/0005)

Sino-British Relations (and the Cold War in Asia)
Historians have consistently argued that managing Britain’s diplomatic andcommerce relations with Communist China imposed constraints on British rule inHong Kong. 3 Historians have also shown how Hong Kong was a key location for thecontinuation of conflict between the Nationalist regime in Taiwan and theCommunist regime in Beijing, as inflected by the Cold War in Asia. Britain (andAmerica’s) role in Hong Kong therefore affected Sino-American and Anglo-American
relations.
The FCO files provide abundant empirical evidence of how Cold War tensions weremanaged across the following sub periods:• circa 1967 to 1979: when Britain and China formulated new policies to resolvethe ‘1997’ question against a backdrop of an improvement in relations
between the US and communist China and of serious conflicts in Asia—mostnotably in Vietnam.
• 1979 to 1984: when there were discontinuous negotiations leading to thesigning of the Sino-British Declaration—a general agreement to transfer thesovereignty of Hong Kong.
• 1984-1997: when preparations for the transfer of power were overseen by aSino-British Joint Liaison Group; when the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s post-1997
constitution) was framed by Beijing nominees; and when there weredisagreements over ‘democratisation’. 4
With the FCO reviewing the timing and form of its approach to China annually fromcirca 1971, there are abundant documents which set out the legal practicalities (andpolitical infeasibility) of British administration post-1997. These documents also
reveal how local Chinese and expatriate civil society groups, business leaders andcolonial bureaucrats affected UK policy. 5 Governor Murray MacLehose’s visit to
Beijing in 1979 is illustrative of how FCO files can be used to reconstruct the limits ofBritish power.

See Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (Penguin, 2017),
especially pages 384 to 388, which used PREM files; and for what is likely to be the most comprehensive accountto date, Chi-Kwan Mark, Decolonisation in the Age of Globalisation: Britain, China, and Hong Kong, 1979-89(Manchester University Press, July 2023).
For background, Suzanne Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay: Hong Kong and the Challenge of Chinese Politics
Reforms (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).
See Yui Chim Lo, ‘The Last Stand of Colonialism? The Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative
Councils and the Sino-British Negotiations Over Hong Kong, 1982–1984’. The Journal of Imperial andCommonwealth History 48, no. 2 (2020), 370–94, https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2019.1689620; Milia Hau, ‘The
Official Mind of British Post-Imperialism: Influencing Parliamentary Opinions during the Anglo-Chinese
Negotiations on the Future of Hong Kong, 1982-84’. The International History Review 43, no. 6 (2021), 1198–
1216, httpHong s://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2021.1876135; and Matthew Hurst, ‘Britain’s Approach to the
Negotiations over the Future of Hong Kong, 1979–1982’. The International History Review (on-line, January 2022):
1–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2021.2024588.
3

45

From the late 1960s, British government debated making an informal approach to
the CPG (see FCO40/160), which was finally untaken in 1979 by MacLehose. In 1979
MacLehose sought (but failed) to gain the CPG’s approval for new legislation in Hong
Kong that would have provided those buying land in the New Territories with greater
security under leases expiring after 1997. As documented (see FCO 40/1058 to 1062)
Chinese leaders recognised that this was an attempt to use a legal question to open
up a political one about sovereignty.
Due to this approach, the FCO came to understand China’s determination to reunite
Hong Kong with China under a “One Country, Two Systems” model, and thereafter
tried to “educate” China about what made capitalism work in Hong Kong (and thus
for Communist China), including during Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s visit to
Beijing in 1982. 6

Hong Kong’s Public Administration
After 1967, in response to social problems in Hong Kong and in anticipation of SinoBritish negotiations regarding Hong Kong status post-1997, British governments
increased pressure on the colonial administration to intervene more extensively insociety. 7 Against a backdrop of rising demands within Hong Kong for social andpolitical reforms, FCO files highlight persistent tensions between British
governments and the colonial administration over a range of policies:•

Public housing schemes: even though the tax revenues of the colonialadministration were rising due to economic growth, these long-lived
commitments had large fiscal implications; they also had repercussions for
Sino-British relations, as schemes (including new towns) were planned for
the New Territories and thus required secure leases lasting beyond 1997.

•

Labour standards: Hong Kong labour laws were not fully aligned with
International Labour Organisation Conventions and protectionists demanded
improved labour conditions, so FCO experts encouraged the Governor toextend legal protections to Hong Kong workers, with metropolitan nudges
particularly strong under the Labour Governments of the 1970s.

Chi-kwan Mark, ‘To “Educate” Deng Xiaoping in Capitalism: Thatcher’s Visit to China and the Future of Hong
Kong in 1982’. Cold War History 17, no. 2 (2017): 161–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2015.1094058; 方侃实.
‘1978-1982 年中国收回香港的决策背景与历程’. 当代中国史研究, 24, no. 5 (2017), 35–43; 高望来. ‘中国谈判风格理论与中英关于香港问题的谈判 (1992-1997)’. 外交评论 2 (2019), 36–45; Michael Sheridan, The Gate to China: A New
History of the People’s Republic & Hong Kong (William Collins, 2021); the Thatcher papers, held at Churchill
College, Cambridge, include digital versions PREM files—by way of illustration; Pao Sohmen, Anna. Y. K. Pao: My
Father (Hong Kong University Press, 2014). Thanks to Matthew Hurst for these references.
For the standard entry text, Ian Scott, Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong (Hurst, 1989); andfor case details Ray Yep and Tai-Lok Lui, ‘Revisiting the golden era of MacLehose and the dynamics of social
reforms’, China Information, 24 (3) (2010), 249-272, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0920203X10379360;
and Alan Smart and Fung Chi Keung Charles, Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics andInformality, 1963-1985 (Hong Kong University Press, June 2023).
6

7

•

Environmental protections: country parks—the majority of which were
designated in the 1970s—began to conserve local ecologies, many of whichcontained reservoirs delivering a degree of water security; and, with theseareas protected from development, Hong Kong gained clean supplies ofwater.8•

Media management: the colonial administration provided the FCO withinformation on regulation and censorship, including by reporting back on
court cases (see FCO40/113), with these files revealing how ‘freedoms ofspeech’ were extended, albeit it, only late under British rule.9

Telegram of August 29, 1967 on actions against Communist press (FCO 40/113/0030)

David Clayton, ‘The Roots of Regionalism: Water Management in Postwar Hong Kong’, in Gary Chi-hung Luk, ed.
From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover (University of California, 2017),
166-185.
Michael Ng, Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842-1997) (Cambridge
University Press, 2022).
8

9

•

Monetary matters: the FCO, which had a financial relations department, wasconcerned about the financial stability of Hong Kong; and about Hong Kong’s
sterling assets held in London—but due to be transferred on retrocession.10•

Public procurement: With public contracts going to non-British firms, there
were tensions between Hong Kong and London regarding Hong Kong practicesof public procurement.11 Hong Kong’s commitment to expensive large-scale
infrastructure projects (notably a new airport) also adversely affected SinoBritish relations, especially in the 1990s.

•

Anti-corruption controls: Arguably, the most far-reaching public policy reformof the period was the tightening of anti-corruption controls as attributed tocolonial state-building plus new social attitudes which created the conditions
for a divergence from British legal norms.12
The FCO 40 series contains, for example, insights on the case of Peter Godber.
Godber, a senior police officer, escaped from Hong Kong when underinvestigation under the 1971 Bribery and Prevention of Corruption Ordnance.
FCO files show how this episode revived debates within Whitehall and in the
Hong Kong Secretariat about whether there needed to be an external
commission set up by the UK government that investigated corruption (seeespecially FCO 40/451).13
After the Godber incident, and on setting up an Independent Commission
Against Corruption, the colonial administration took investigatory powers awayfrom the police. Significantly, this new commission forestalled UK government
interventions which would have further undermined Hong Kong’s politicalautonomy. This new local commission, however, gained sweeping powers
whose consequences (including on a 1977 police mutiny) were monitored by
the FCO. The FCO was also provided with information on the effects of anticorruption campaigns, including by the Commission.

Catherine Schenk, International Economic Relations Since 1945 (Routledge; 2011).
Adonis M. Y. Li, ‘Hindrance or Helping Hand?: Hong Kong and Sino-British Railway Commercial Diplomacy,
1974–84,’ The International History Review (2022), https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2022.2160781.
10

11

H.J. Lethbridge, ‘The Emergence of bureaucratic corruption as a social problem in Hong Kong’, Journal of
Oriental Studies, XII, nos. 1 and 2, 1972, pp. 33-50; and Mark Hampton, ‘British legal culture and colonial
governance: the attack on corruption in Hong Kong, 1968-1974’, Britain and the World: Historical Journal of the
British Scholar Society, Volume V, no. 2, 2012, 223-240, request PDF here; Ian Scott and Ting Gong, Corruption
Prevention and Governance in Hong Kong (Routledge, 2019).
12

Ray Yep, ‘The Crusade against Corruption in Hong Kong in the 1970s: Governor MacLehose as a zealous
reformer or reluctant hero?’ China Information, 2013, 27 (2): 197-221, https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X13482244.
For an important Hong Kong Government document note: ‘Public Impressions of the Independent Commission
Against Corruption’, in MOOD Report (Covert Opinion Polling Exercise conducted by Home Affairs Department), 4
March 1980, HKRS471-3-2, held by the Government Records Series, and available via the Public Record Office,Hong Kong.
13

In short, the extension of anti-corruption controls illustrates how, over public
policy matters, the colonial administration retained a degree of politicalautonomy. The extent of political autonomy was, however, negotiated on acase-by-case basis.

Socio-economic and Cultural Changes in Hong Kong
In the 1960s and 1970s, as they struggled for new rights in the context of the colonialadministration intervening more in everyday lives, Hong Kong Chinese people cameto appreciate how they were different from new migrants from China and began to
identify themselves more closely as being from Hong Kong. 14 By providing insights onsocial movements, FCO documents allow historians to reconstruct these processesof identity formation. 15 FCO documents detail the activism of elites and evaluate
political organisations, which will be of use to political historians. 16
FCO files on immigration from China are particularly valuable because they provide
a way of assessing cultural differences between Hong Kong Chinese people andrecent migrants from the mainland. With new border controls having repercussions
for Sino-British relations, information on this topic is held in a range of files—that is,beyond those with ‘immigration’ in the title.

These files show that, even though the number of migrants entering Hong Kong from
China was much lower in the 1970s than in early periods, illegal immigration wasperceived from the early 1970s as contributing to overcrowding and a crime wave,
with new migrants from China (but not from Southeast Asia) identified as being‘inferior’. 17
FCO files also document the politics of a large-scale and long-lasting international
refugee crisis arising from the Vietnam War (and China’s involvement in it), withFor orientations into a diffuse field: John Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Rowman &Littlefield, 2007); Law Wing Sang, Collaborative Colonial Power: the Making of the Hong Kong Chinese(Hong Kong University Press, 2009); Lam Wai-man, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong:
the Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization (Routledge, 2015).
Florence Mok, Covert Colonialism: Governance, surveillance and political culture in British Hong Kong,c.1966-97 (Manchester University Press, July 2023).
There are additional files in FCO 53, mainly on the British Nationality Act, 1981, as explored in Mok,
Covert; and Chi-Kwan Mark, ‘Decolonising Britishness? The 1981 British Nationality Act and theIdentity Crisis of Hong Kong Elites’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, 3 (2020), 565-90,
https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2019.1638619.
Florence Mok, ‘Public opinion polls and covert colonialism in British Hong Kong’, China Information,
33(1) (2019), 66-87, https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X1878743, and Florence Mok, ‘Chinese Illicit
Immigration into Colonial Hong Kong, c.1970-1980’ https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X1878743, Journalof Imperial and Commonwealth History, 49(2) (2021), 339-367,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X1878743; and, for the quote, Mok, Covert, 200.
14

15

16

17

escapees from Vietnam (including ethnic Chinese peoples) travelling to/via Hong
Kong where they were held in camps.

Ways Forward for Historians Using the FCO Series
Historians must appreciate that there are limitations with the FCO series, mostnotably:• Only an extremely small proportion of original records have been preserved
permanently, with the rest destroyed.
• Documents have been retained or redacted under the UK Freedom ofInformation exemption scheme: for example, note documents taken out of
FCO 40/2608, ‘Sensitivity Review of Hong Kong Government Records’; andfrom FCO 40/4122, ‘Sewage Strategy in Hong Kong’.
• The digitised FCO files must be used with other primary sources that provide
context and corroborative/conflicting information:(i) For the study of Sino-British relations (and the Cold War in Asia),
Chinese Communist, Chinese Nationalist and American
government records and published memoirs of diplomats andpoliticians;(ii) For the study of public administration: Hong Kong government andmedia records; and(iii) For the study of socio-economic and cultural changes: media
records, oral testimonies and social surveys.
Even so, it is hard to imagine how historians of late twentieth century Sino-British
relations and Hong Kong can ignore this Gale digital archive collection. Moreover,with FCO files in digital form, researchers can deploy dual techniques:• Searching the 2,980 FCO 40 file titles plus 56 FCO 21 file titles; reading
documents within a selection of these files; and using context (information notcontained in the file) to turn facts within documents into evidence.
• With many millions of words contained in an estimated 390,000 pages,
historians can also use key-word searches to trace individuals; to plot
linguistic patterns—including for identifiers such as Hongkonger; and to
capture prevailing sentiments. 18
In sum, China and the Modern World: Hong Kong, Britain, and China Part 2, 1965-1993
is, arguably, the foundation stone upon which historians will write new accounts of
Sino-British (and the Cold War in Asia), the public administration of Hong Kong andsocio-economic and cultural changes in one of the world’s great cities: Hong Kong.

Ninja Schulz, Carolin Biewer and Lisa Lehnen ‘Hongkongites, Hong Kongers, Hong Kong Belongers? Tracing
identity (re)constructions in news discourse in Hong Kong from 1903 to 1999’, English World-wide, 41(3) (2020),
295-324, https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00052.sch.
18