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00:00For 500 years, our little island Britain has punched above its weight around the world,
00:10getting our way.
00:13A means to our success, not just gunboats and commerce, but ruthless powerbroking, Machiavellian
00:23manoeuvring, and plenty of charm, diplomacy.
00:29These are the people you don't often get to hear about.
00:32It's the kings and queens, the politicians and the generals who dominate the history
00:36books.
00:37But this series is about my predecessors who championed Britain's interests abroad, ambassadors
00:43and envoys, powerbrokers and negotiators.
00:47You must never forget that it's British interests which you're there to promote and protect.
00:52You are constantly having to talk to, make deals with, make concessions to, people who
00:59in other ways are doing things which you thoroughly dislike and disapprove of.
01:03The worst kind of diplomat is one who tells his foreign secretary what he thinks the minister
01:09wants to hear.
01:13As our man in Washington, I saw history in the making.
01:20Now I'm going back in time, putting myself in the shoes of different diplomats over the
01:25last 200 years, dealing with China, their job, fighting for British prosperity.
01:33Our economic well-being is as much a part of the national interest as the defence of
01:37the realm.
01:38Wherever we're sent in the world, we diplomats look out for British trade and for British
01:42business.
01:43As Bill Clinton said, it's the economy, stupid.
01:46The days of being snooty about business and not getting one's hands dirty with business,
01:51they're long past.
01:52Promoting British trade is one of the very few useful things the Foreign Office does.
02:22On the 26th of September, 1792, an extraordinary diplomatic expedition set off from Britain.
02:33Its leader was George McCartney, a well-connected Anglo-Irish aristocrat.
02:43McCartney had already gained wide diplomatic experience in Russia, India and the Caribbean.
02:49He'd even suffered the misfortune of being taken prisoner by the French.
02:53I was once detained for an hour or so in a Soviet police station, but that's another
02:58story.
03:00McCartney's task was to use diplomacy to prise open trade for Britain with an even bigger
03:05empire.
03:06He was to be our very first ambassador to China.
03:15It all boiled down to this.
03:16In the 18th century, a new craze for drinking tea had poured across Britain, starting in
03:22the fashionable drawing rooms of the aristocracy, where chinoiserie was all the rage, and in
03:26the end becoming the beverage around which almost everybody shaked their day.
03:30The British national drink was made in China.
03:35And so, of course, was much of the finest of China, cups and saucers and so on.
03:41And it didn't come cheap.
03:48By the 1790s, the British were drinking some 20 million pounds of Chinese tea each year.
03:58The Chinese would accept only gold or silver as payment and British coffers were fast running
04:03out.
04:04To pay for our tea, McCartney's task was to persuade China to start buying British
04:12goods.
04:13The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote in The Wealth of Nations in 1776,
04:22To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at
04:28first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers.
04:32It is, however, a project extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by
04:38shopkeepers.
04:45Trade was at the heart of British identity at the end of the 18th century, a rapidly
04:49industrialising and voraciously consuming nation, extending its reach across the world.
04:59Under the waves that Britain ruled, sailed merchantmen packed to the gunwales with goods
05:04and slaves.
05:05We sold in Cape Town what we had bought in Calcutta, we bought in Jamaica what we'd sell
05:10in Europe.
05:12Inspired by Adam Smith, Britain built an empire on the principle of mutually advantageous
05:17trade among nations.
05:23But unfortunately for McCartney, Confucius had never read Adam Smith.
05:43After nine long months at sea, the British mission finally reached China.
05:52McCartney was intrigued by all he saw, and told the mission's own artists to sketch everything
05:57in sight.
06:05The British were just as much objects of curiosity to the Chinese.
06:09They stuck out a mile in their tailored European trousers, and were nicknamed devils, since
06:14in Chinese theatre only devils wore tight clothes.
06:20These days when you get a new diplomatic posting, you usually get enough time to learn
06:24about the country you're going to.
06:26Poor old McCartney didn't get that opportunity.
06:29In 1793 there wasn't a single person in the whole of Britain who could speak a word of
06:33Chinese, and the only Englishman who had tried to go on a diplomatic mission to China had
06:38died on the way.
06:40So though he read as much as he could in preparation, McCartney was totally unprepared for the culture
06:46shock that awaited him.
06:48He might as well have come from another planet.
06:53Qing Dynasty China discouraged all contact with foreigners.
06:57There were no permanent foreign ambassadors, and trade with the Western merchants was tightly
07:02controlled and limited to the port of Canton.
07:06The Chinese believed that they were the centre of the world, and that foreigners were essentially
07:11lesser people who were barbarians.
07:13They came to pay tribute, they were allowed to trade up to a point, but only up to a point.
07:17And Britain, becoming the biggest trading nation in the world, naturally believed in
07:22free trade, that all markets should be open, and that countries should deal with each other
07:26equally, that we should have an ambassador in Peking whose main object would be to promote
07:32trade.
07:33And so there was a complete lack of understanding of the fundamental ideas.
07:46When at last McCartney's expedition arrived in Beijing, they were overwhelmed by the sheer
07:52quantity of people.
07:56But their journey still wasn't over.
07:59McCartney must have felt the truth of the old Chinese saying, heaven is high, the emperor
08:04distant, when he found that the Emperor Qianlong had decamped to his summer retreat in the
08:09cool mountains of the north.
08:16As the weary party travelled northwards, a row was brewing over a tricky question of etiquette.
08:26Even in the age of globalisation, every country clings to its protocol, to its rites and rituals,
08:32which foreign diplomats ignore at their peril.
08:34Get the protocol wrong, where to stand, when to speak, how to address the president or
08:39the monarch, and you can blight your mission before it's even started.
08:45And in China, protocol really mattered.
08:50McCartney had been informed that when he arrived in court, he must perform the Chinese kowtow,
08:55prostrating himself before the emperor.
09:01But McCartney, a proud and haughty man, felt that kowtowing would be an intolerable humiliation
09:07to him, and thus to his sovereign, his majesty King George III.
09:13The arguments went backwards and forwards.
09:16McCartney suggested, what if I take off my hat and kneel, the same as I would do to my
09:20own king?
09:21No way, came the Chinese response, for a barbarian not to kowtow to the emperor was an unthinkable
09:27insult.
09:28Very well, said McCartney, I will kowtow to the emperor if a Chinese official of the same
09:33rank as me kowtows to a portrait of King George.
09:37This was considered an idea so outrageous that Chinese officials declined even to translate
09:44it for their superiors.
09:48I believe in good manners, and if you're going to talk to somebody in their own way, if they
09:54want you to take your shoes off, as in Japan you do so, they want you to sit cross-legs,
10:00you do so, and if you want to stand up, you do so, it's no big deal.
10:05So for me, I have no problem with that, and it's rather nice to understand where they're
10:12coming from.
10:14And I said, it depends what you want to achieve, if you really want the deal to be done, you
10:18better be clever about it.
10:20I'm not in favour of calling every foreign minister you meet Fred or Bill or Eduardo
10:27or whatever, I think that certain courtesies need to be observed.
10:33But I don't think you should ever allow yourself to be persuaded that the only definition of
10:38protocol is what the other people do.
10:45It was diplomatic impasse.
10:48Exasperated, McCartney noted in his journal, the Chinese character seems at present inexplicable.
10:56In perfect symmetry, Chinese officials dealing with him reported that the barbarian nature
11:02is unfathomable.
11:12As McCartney finally reached his destination, the argument over the kowtow was unresolved.
11:22The unassuming town of Chengde is best known for the imperial mountain resort where the
11:27Qing emperors would flee the summer's heat.
11:34Unlike McCartney, I arrived in deepest winter.
11:43Emperor Chen Long was over 80 years old and in the 58th year of his reign.
11:49To the Chinese, he was the intermediary between heaven and earth.
12:00McCartney had brought with him what he thought were suitably impressive gifts, from telescopes
12:04and clocks to a hot air balloon, a dazzling display designed to wow China into opening
12:10up trade.
12:11But to Chen Long, this was but a barbarian's tribute, a sign of submission.
12:19So much for McCartney's gifts to the emperor.
12:21They were intended to showcase British genius and prize open a new and valuable export market.
12:27The notion of paying tribute to the Chinese emperor never crossed the minds of red-blooded
12:32Englishmen.
12:33Mind you, diplomatic gifts have a habit of misfiring.
12:36I remember when I was in the foreign office responsible for the old Soviet Union, we gave
12:41Andrei Gromyko, the foreign minister, a valuable antique barometer.
12:46He looked at it in some puzzlement and then tried to play it like a balalaika.
12:51Diplomatic gifts are a complete nightmare, particularly as they get more and more trivial
12:56as governments have rules about the value of gifts which can be exchanged, yet an enormous
13:01effort is still wasted on procuring them.
13:03I have a very clear memory of flying to Moscow with Margaret Thatcher to see Mr Gorbachev
13:09and the foreign officer provided the gift she was to give him and in an idle moment,
13:14a rare idle moment on the plane, she asked to see the gift and it was brought forward
13:18and unwrapped and it was a pair of silver-backed hairbrushes.
13:21But he's bald, she said, and the foreign officer was forced to send somebody out from
13:25London with a back-up present.
13:32The night before McCartney was to meet the Emperor, he made his final preparations.
13:39But to kowtow or not to kowtow, that was the question.
13:47McCartney's instructions from London ordered him to conform to all ceremonials of that
13:52court which may not commit the honour of your sovereign or lessen your own dignity.
13:59And then again they said, while I make this reserve, I am satisfied you will be too prudent
14:04and considerate to let any trifling punctilio stand in the way of the important benefits
14:11which may be obtained by engaging the favourable disposition of the Emperor and his ministers.
14:17Behind the elegant ambiguity of the foreign office, the message was clear.
14:21You're on your own and you'd better not screw up.
14:28Dawn came, September the 14th, 1793.
14:36McCartney and his entourage reached the Imperial compound to find several thousand people gathered
14:42to celebrate the Emperor's birthday.
14:515,000 miles and a year since his mission had set off, it was the moment of truth.
15:01The Emperor arrived on an open palanquin carried by 16 men dressed in gold.
15:10As the Emperor passed, the Chinese crowds instantly fell prostrate to the ground in
15:14kowtow.
15:15But what did McCartney and his companions finally decide to do?
15:20They simply went down on one knee.
15:31When he was called before the Great Throne, McCartney presented the Emperor with some
15:35of the British gifts.
15:37This was intended to provide the opening to raising the question of trade.
15:43But Chen Long was not interested in engaging with these upstart barbarians who would not
15:48conform to court etiquette.
15:53Over the following week, every time McCartney tried to raise the business of his mission
15:58with Chinese officials, he was brushed off.
16:04Chen Long issued angry instructions.
16:08Let us immediately order the envoy to return to Beijing.
16:12When barbarians manifest sincerity and respect, I shall unfailingly treat them with kindness.
16:19When they are full of themselves, they do not merit the enjoyment of my favours.
16:28McCartney was sent packing in disgrace.
16:30There would be no new trade privileges, no new ports open to British merchants, no resident
16:36British ambassador.
16:37The mission was a total failure.
16:41You can't conceive of them saying yes to McCartney's demands.
16:47After all, what did he want?
16:48He wanted not only trading posts, possibly an island as a base for trade.
16:56And above all, he wanted diplomatic relations on an equal footing.
17:00Now, this was something quite unthinkable to the Chinese.
17:04After all, there could only be one sun in the sky, and that, of course, was China.
17:09China did not want two-way trade.
17:13It didn't mind China selling to Britain, but it didn't want Britain to come selling to
17:19China, because then he wouldn't benefit from a surplus.
17:23And therefore, I think McCartney's mission was doomed to failure, not so much of cultural
17:29differences, but total protectionism.
17:33We had so much to offer China, whether it was elaborate clocks or rolls of cloth.
17:42Why wouldn't China want to take advantage of our friendship and our trade?
17:47To his credit, and rather unlike some later travelers to China, he refused literally and
17:57metaphorically to kowtow, and refused to leave behind his own concept of what was reasonable
18:05behavior in dealing with the great emperor.
18:19In the heart of London, where Britain's prosperity has always been a single-minded pursuit, is
18:24one of our oldest financial institutions, Cootes Bank.
18:35Its boardroom is lined with an exquisite wallpaper brought back from China by McCartney.
18:42Even disastrous missions can yield fine souvenirs.
19:04I reckon that in McCartney's place, I might well have kowtowed before Qin Long, but that
19:09would have been the most almighty tussle between my head and my heart.
19:13To have abased myself before a foreigner would really have stuck in the craw, but my job
19:18as a British diplomat was, with a hard head and a cold eye, to open up trade with China,
19:24even if it meant a dent to my diplomatic dignity.
19:30Wallpaper wasn't the only thing the ambassador brought back.
19:32For King George III, there was an edict from Emperor Qin Long.
19:38As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things.
19:42I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures.
19:51But the most devastating thing of all was that Qin Long's edict was drafted even before
19:56McCartney arrived in China.
19:58So the sad truth is that the ambassador never really stood a chance.
20:23When it comes to fighting for British prosperity, serious issues can take ridiculous guises.
20:29In my time as ambassador in Washington, I spent interminable man-hours on the Great
20:34Banana War.
20:38This was a ludicrous dispute between Europe and America about tariffs on a fruit that
20:43neither grew.
20:44The Scottish cashmere wool industry got caught in the crossfire when the Americans threatened
20:48retaliation against various European imports.
20:52Eight thousand Scottish jobs were at stake.
20:55It was a serious threat to British prosperity.
20:58Ambassadors justify their existence by thwarting things like this.
21:04To succeed, I had to break ranks with my European colleagues and tell the Americans that they
21:08could do anything but lay off of my blue wool socks.
21:12Sure enough, Italian sausage and goodness knows what else were hit, while Scottish cashmere
21:17was spared.
21:18Looking out for British trade, you sometimes have to fight dirty.
21:39Hong Kong, one of the great engines of the global economy.
21:44It's all about money, trade, display, and consumption.
21:52It's capitalism incarnate.
21:57But back in the mid-19th century, when the British first took over, it was an insignificant
22:03backwater.
22:07When the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, heard that Hong Kong had become our latest
22:12colony, he dismissed the prize as a barren island with hardly a house upon it.
22:17It will never serve as a mark for trade.
22:20That's almost as bad as announcing the end of boom and bust.
22:25But Palmerston's comment reveals an underlying truth about Victorian Britain's mercantilist
22:31view of empire.
22:32It is, as he put it, the business of government to open and to secure the roads for the merchant.
22:39Half a century had passed since McCartney's failed mission, but China remained no less
22:44the object of desire for Britain's commercial ambitions.
22:47Diplomacy having failed, it was now the hour of the gunboat.
22:54As tea continued to pour from China towards Britain, we found a new way to pay for it.
23:01Smuggling opium into China from India.
23:05When China attempted to stop a trade that was turning its people into drug addicts,
23:10Britain responded with war.
23:14As a result, the Chinese were forced to open five ports, including Canton, to European
23:20commerce, while Britain gained a permanent base in Hong Kong.
23:25But European trade remained very restricted, and there was still no diplomatic relations
23:32between Britain and China.
23:35Nobody could have been more determined to open China to what he considered the unquestionable
23:39benefits of Western civilization than the man who, from 1854, gloried in the titles
23:45of plenipotentiary and chief superintendent for trade in the Far East, and governor of
23:51Sir John Bowering, like a number of more recent top diplomatic appointees, came straight
23:56from the benches of the House of Commons.
23:59John Bowering was a rather loud-mouthed, long-winded radical.
24:04Definitely on the left, so they didn't use those terms then.
24:07He wrote hymns, you know, he was a radical.
24:10He was a radical.
24:11He was a radical.
24:12He was a radical.
24:13He was a radical.
24:14He was a radical.
24:15He was a radical.
24:16He was a radical.
24:17They didn't use those terms then.
24:19He wrote hymns.
24:20You know, he was an intelligent man, but very fond of the sound of his own voice.
24:25So the secret was to get him as far away as you could.
24:28And being made to be governor of Hong Kong, and in charge of the arrangements at Canton
24:36for trading with China, seemed to be a good way of, you know, getting him out of Westminster
24:40where he was a nuisance.
24:41As a young radical, Bowering had denounced the opium trade as immoral.
24:47But out East, he changed his tune.
24:49Anything to do business with China.
24:54Yet, for his first two years in Hong Kong, he was frustrated at every turn.
24:59He simply couldn't crack the Chinese market.
25:03In his letters home to headquarters in London,
25:05Bowering became increasingly inspired by the opium trade.
25:09Bowering became increasingly insistent that a more forceful policy towards China might again be needed.
25:15It is hard to get on with these stubborn mandarins, he wrote to the Foreign Office.
25:19Before the end, I am quite afraid we shall have to employ something harder than brain bullets.
25:31Lord Palmerston agreed.
25:33I clearly see that the time is fast coming when we shall be obliged to strike another blow in China.
25:39These half-civilised governments require a dressing every eight or ten years to keep them in order.
25:45And they must not only see the stick, but actually feel it on their shoulders.
25:52Nowadays, Victorian attitudes about half-civilised peoples in need of a good thrashing are horribly jarring.
26:00But to judge Victoria's ministers by today's standards
26:03doesn't get you very far in understanding what they were about.
26:06It's the characteristic of empires at their peak
26:09to see their interests as the expression of universal values,
26:13to believe that their actions benefit all mankind.
26:16So, for Bowering, Britain's ambitions in China were a progressive, even moral, cause.
26:22After 60 years of frustration, there could be no question of kowtowing to China.
26:29Britain would use its naval and military might, and Britain would be right.
26:34In 20th, 21st century terms, there was no conceivable justification
26:39for globalising China by force
26:43and globalising China by obliging them to purchase opium
26:49in order to help the Indian balance of payments.
26:52I mean, it was a disgraceful example of imperial aggression.
26:58I would say it wasn't at all defensible in modern terms.
27:01It's no different than George W. Bush saying that he's got to spread democracy
27:08to all these places in the Middle East.
27:12His hind-mindedness came from a Victorian value of believing
27:17that Britain was actually spreading good and benefit to the world.
27:28In the event, Bowering found his Casa Spellai,
27:32though it was a pretty dubious one.
27:35On 8th October, 1856, Chinese officials boarded a boat called the Arrow
27:41and arrested its crew on suspicion of piracy and smuggling.
27:48The British Consul in Canton demanded their release and an apology,
27:53claiming the ship was registered in Hong Kong and under British protection.
27:59In fact, the registration of the Arrow had expired
28:03and it had been involved in piracy.
28:06But Bowering ignored all this, deliberately inflaming the situation
28:10by charging the Chinese with an outrageous insult.
28:14On Bowering's orders, the British Navy bombarded Canton and stormed the city.
28:26The Chinese responded by closing down all trade
28:30and setting fire to the European settlement.
28:44Commissioner Yeh, Governor of Canton, issued an order to his people.
28:49The British have attacked our city, killing our soldiers and people.
28:54I now command you to fight any Briton on land or water.
28:58$30 will be rewarded to anyone who succeeds in killing one Briton
29:03and brings his head to my office.
29:14Those were the days before an ambassador's style
29:18was cramped by instant electronic instructions from London.
29:22Not that I ever had the urge to declare war on anyone.
29:26But with instructions taking two months to reach Hong Kong,
29:30Bowering was expected to use his initiative
29:32in a way unknown to the modern generation of diplomats.
29:36But even by Victorian standards, starting a war was a serious thing to do
29:40and Bowering started a war.
29:44Declaring war on dodgy grounds has always tended to lead to a rumpus.
29:52When Palmerston, now Prime Minister, heard the news of Bowering's war,
29:56he took the unprecedented step of inviting the Attorney-General
30:00to advise the Cabinet on its legality.
30:07There was very little doubt that Bowering's actions were against international law.
30:13But the Cabinet felt that even so,
30:15they had little choice but to back Britain's man.
30:19So they devised a dubious doctrine
30:21that international law did not apply to what they called
30:24barbarous states,
30:26especially when British trade was at stake.
30:32While Palmerston and his supporters backed Bowering,
30:35asserting the importance of trade with China for British interests,
30:38poor old Bowering,
30:41poor old Sir John faced considerable criticism
30:45and there were motions of censure against him in both houses of Parliament.
30:49As part of the case against China,
30:51this blue book of foreign policy documents was presented to Parliament
30:56with the sexed-up title of
30:59Correspondence Respecting Insults in China.
31:02The critics dismissed it as a dodgy dossier
31:05and a bad excuse for war.
31:11It came to a vote in the Commons and the Government lost.
31:15Palmerston responded by dissolving Parliament
31:18and calling a general election,
31:20dominated by the Chinese question.
31:23This is one example of how wrong it is to say that,
31:26you know, democracies are always in favour of peace.
31:28The people, the electorate, the middle-class electorate of 1857,
31:32backed Palmerston to the hilt.
31:34He was perfectly right, they said, to go to war
31:37and take vengeance on this jumped-up Chinese commissioner
31:41who dared to arrest people out of a British ship.
31:45And all the politically correct people of all parties
31:49found themselves humiliated in the general election.
31:53People liked the war, people liked Palmerston, people liked the war.
32:07Thanks very much.
32:10Patriotic fervour won out, as it does so often,
32:13against legal and moral scruple.
32:15Palmerston won a resounding election victory
32:18and a clear mandate to continue an aggressive policy towards China.
32:22But it wasn't just jingoistic xenophobia
32:25that brought the public round so strongly behind Palmerston and Baring.
32:29They knew which side their bread was buttered.
32:37It took three more years before the war with China was won.
32:42The fruits of victory were further commercial advantages
32:46and Hong Kong's expansion to include Kowloon.
32:50But most important of all, Britain got what it had always wanted,
32:54permanent diplomatic representation in Beijing.
33:02But Baring wasn't in the Far East
33:06to see the war that he had started end in victory.
33:09He'd become too controversial,
33:12and though Palmerston's government had backed him,
33:15they thought it best he be replaced.
33:18He was disappointed, but unrepentant,
33:21writing in his autobiography...
33:24I had, during my tenure of office,
33:27the pleasure of seeing the shipping trade increase nearly 100%.
33:30I not only made the revenue, in which there had been a great deficit,
33:34but I left a large balance in the treasury chest.
33:38I carried out the principles of free trade
33:41to their fullest possible extent.
33:48In fact, British exports to China had risen over fivefold
33:52during Baring's time in Hong Kong.
33:56You can't argue with the results.
33:59Britain emphatically got her way
34:02and reinforced the foundations of her wealth and status.
34:05Did the end justify the means
34:08which involved the use of gunboats and opium?
34:11Well, most Victorians would have said it did.
34:14But what goes round comes round,
34:17especially in diplomacy.
34:21With empire, as well as trade, comes responsibility.
34:24In the Madrid Embassy in the early 1970s,
34:27I was responsible for Gibraltar,
34:30a small rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
34:33It was the largest ship in the world,
34:36and the largest ship in the world,
34:39and the largest ship in the world,
34:42and the largest ship in the world,
34:45and the largest ship in the world,
34:48I was responsible for Gibraltar,
34:51a small rock parked on the doorstep of a once great empire
34:54that, like Hong Kong, had fallen into British hands.
34:57Britain has given a solemn commitment
35:00not to give Gibraltar back to Spain unless its people agree.
35:03But whenever I met with my opposite numbers in Madrid,
35:06they used to bombard me with great grievances
35:09about our alleged violations
35:12of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
35:16In short, every argument they could muster
35:19why the rock should revert to Spain.
35:22We believed that we had a duty
35:25to honour the wishes of the Gibraltar people.
35:28They felt that a 260-year-old treaty was paramount.
35:31In international relations,
35:34there's no getting away from history.
35:37But unlike China,
35:40Franco's Spain didn't have the strength,
35:43or the economic, to force us to give it back.
35:46Effective diplomacy depends so often
35:49on the male fist inside the velvet glove.
35:56This most singular of days
35:59began with the most typical of Hong Kong's summer weather,
36:02heat and the promise of rain.
36:13In 1997, the Union Jack
36:16was lowered on the last significant colony
36:19of the British Empire.
36:32The governor took his leave
36:35as responsibility for the city's 6.5 million people
36:38was handed back to China.
36:42For China, this was a moment of pride
36:45for their leaders an end to what they call
36:48an age of shame and humiliation.
36:55To get to this historic moment
36:58had involved some of the highest and lowest points
37:01in the Chinese-British relationship,
37:04with our diplomats seemingly veering
37:07between the two different approaches to China,
37:11and the Chinese-British relationship
37:14with Hong Kong.
37:21For the final two decades of the 20th century,
37:24trade alone could not be the chief focus
37:27of British diplomacy with China.
37:30That was Hong Kong itself.
37:41As a result of the two Opium Wars,
37:44Hong Kong Island and Kowloon
37:47had become permanent British territory.
37:50In 1898, the new territories were added
37:53on a 99-year lease from China,
37:56so Britain had Hong Kong
37:59on a mixture of freehold and leasehold.
38:04This is Boundary Street,
38:07and it's the only part of the country
38:10that belonged to Britain on that side
38:13and land leased from China on this side.
38:16Nearly half of Hong Kong's population
38:19lived in the new territories.
38:22Our diplomats had a deadline.
38:25The lease was due to run out in 1997.
38:28But here was the rub.
38:31China wanted the whole colony back by then.
38:35That on the ground was very clear.
38:38The rest of Hong Kong could not remain British.
38:41We were powerless to stop the People's Liberation Army
38:44from simply crossing the road and taking over.
38:52Hong Kong was entirely dependent
38:55on the mainland for its food and its water.
38:58The Chinese enjoyed overwhelming military superiority,
39:01so they had virtually all the cards
39:04so merely to get into a negotiation with them
39:07about the future of Hong Kong,
39:10regardless of the outcome,
39:13was something of an achievement.
39:18The days of gunboat diplomacy had long since gone.
39:21Now we had to rely exclusively
39:24on the skills of diplomats
39:27who didn't have a military card in their hands.
39:30But the British were not entirely without levers.
39:34And Beijing certainly didn't want to kill the golden goose
39:37of Hong Kong's burgeoning capitalist economy.
39:40Yet, just as there had been between Qianlong and McCartney,
39:43there was still a gulf between the two sides.
39:46And at every turn,
39:49the baggage of history burdened the negotiations.
39:52Well, they were very touchy,
39:55very emotional about Hong Kong.
39:58They saw it as their recovery of national territory,
40:02which had been wrested from them
40:05in humiliating circumstances in the 19th century.
40:11They also regarded us as, of course,
40:14because of their Marxist-Maoist background,
40:17as devious capitalists
40:20who would be extremely tricky to deal with
40:23in the last stages of their power.
40:26The formal talks considered everything.
40:29Britain's interest in Hong Kong
40:32was no longer straightforwardly commercial.
40:35Its strategic goal was to preserve Hong Kong's unique way of life,
40:38including freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China.
40:43I remember my old boss, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe,
40:46trying to get over this idea
40:49that there was something of intrinsic value
40:52that needed to be preserved in Hong Kong.
40:55In face-to-face negotiations with the Chinese,
40:59he got up out of his armchair, seized a nearby vase,
41:02and, clutching it to his bosom, trotted across the room
41:05and handed it to the Chinese foreign minister.
41:08It was his colourful way of conveying the notion
41:11that Hong Kong's unique character
41:14required very careful handling
41:17if it were not to be smashed to pieces in the transfer of power.
41:24Of course, for the British team,
41:27the chief bull in the China shot was Margaret Thatcher,
41:30the first prime minister since Lord Palmerston
41:33to win three successive elections,
41:36who shared with her predecessor
41:39a belligerent approach to foreign policy.
41:44She had just emerged victorious from the Falcons' war,
41:47where, as she saw it, the Foreign Office had just been stopped
41:50from giving away another bit of British territory to the foreigners.
41:53So she was in a pretty combative mood.
41:57She didn't really see the need
42:00for any concessions to the Chinese over Hong Kong.
42:03And I involved a little law of diplomacy,
42:06which I recommend to you all.
42:09I would call it Craddock's first law of diplomacy,
42:12and it reads, it's not the other side you need to worry about,
42:15it's your own.
42:19The British negotiators tiptoed carefully
42:22through the minefield of Chinese objections.
42:26You have to be patient.
42:29You have to wait, and not always make your own proposals,
42:32not always reply at once to their proposals.
42:35The Chinese think in terms of a long time,
42:38and you have to understand that.
42:41I think the key behind it all
42:44was the capacity to put oneself in the other side's shoes,
42:47to think more or less as they are thinking,
42:50and thereby to judge how far you can go,
42:53how far you can press,
42:56and what traffic the bridge can carry.
43:04In December 1984, after two years of talks,
43:07Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher met in Beijing
43:10to sign the so-called Joint Declaration.
43:16This was a groundbreaking agreement.
43:20All of Hong Kong would revert to China in 1997,
43:23but it would keep its capitalist system,
43:26economic autonomy and freedoms,
43:29and China would adhere to a mutually agreed basic law in Hong Kong
43:32for at least 50 years.
43:35The Chinese called this unique arrangement
43:38one country, two systems.
43:50In 1984, on my first jaunt overseas
43:53as Foreign Office spokesman,
43:56I went with Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe to Beijing
43:59for the signing of the Joint Declaration.
44:02This was a moment in history,
44:05but I have to confess that my sharpest memories
44:08are of a chain-smoking Deng Xiaoping and his spittoon,
44:11of which he would make occasional use
44:14in conversation with Margaret Thatcher.
44:17As I then was, I happen to mention this to some of the British journalists,
44:20and I was horrified to find next day's press
44:23full of spittoon stories.
44:26But the Joint Declaration was a great achievement.
44:29Relations with China took a sharp upwards turn,
44:32and as is so often the case when the diplomacy goes well,
44:35so goes the business.
44:41Following the Joint Declaration,
44:45China and the United States became friends rapidly,
44:48and there were new agreements on economic and nuclear cooperation.
44:51But the honeymoon period did not last long.
45:05The noise of gunfire rose from all over the centre of Peking.
45:08It was unremitting.
45:12Some reports say more than 2,000 civilians were killed
45:15in last night's army assault on Tiananmen Square,
45:18held for seven weeks by students demanding greater democracy
45:21and an end to corruption.
45:31Hopes that China was en route to becoming a more open,
45:34liberal society were shattered in June 1989.
45:37People around the world were horrified,
45:40but perhaps none more so than those in Hong Kong.
45:43One million took to the streets in protest.
45:49Tiananmen Square incident in Hong Kong
45:52was hugely felt amongst the people.
45:55The mood in Hong Kong was one of unity,
45:58and there was a sense of unity
46:01and a sense of unity
46:05and they did not hold back.
46:08There was an outpouring of grief.
46:13The burning question for everyone was,
46:16how free would Hong Kong really be when China was in charge?
46:22The British press condemned the massacre
46:25and called for the denunciation of the Joint Declaration.
46:30What had previously been praised as a good, practical agreement
46:33was now seen as a dishonourable compromise,
46:36a betrayal of the Hong Kong people
46:39by devious diplomats who had succumbed
46:42to their occupational hazard of going native.
46:45I laboured in vain against charges in the press
46:48which was full of stuff about the pre-emptive cringe
46:51of the Foreign Office, whose China-loving,
46:54Mandarin-speaking Mandarins had kowtowed
46:57all too easily to Chinese demands.
47:01In terms of kowtows and cringes
47:04and grovels
47:07and similar gymnastic exercises,
47:10we were not engaged in a virility contest.
47:13What we were dealing with
47:16is a serious, long, patient negotiation
47:19in which inevitably, and particularly
47:22given the disparity in power,
47:25there had to be compromises.
47:31Perhaps in reply to the accusations of pre-emptive cringe,
47:34in 1992, the man appointed
47:37to be the last governor of Hong Kong
47:40was not a professional diplomat,
47:43but, like Bowering before him, a politician.
47:46We had agreed in the Joint Declaration
47:49that we were going to negotiate even more closely
47:52as we got closer to the handover.
47:55So, really, it was difficult to see
47:59what a politician could add.
48:02A diplomat, an official,
48:05would stay within that framework
48:08that had been laid down.
48:11With a politician, I thought
48:14he would be more of an unknown quantity.
48:17He would know inevitably less about the scene.
48:20He might want to make his mark,
48:23want to strike out in new ways.
48:26So I advised against a politician,
48:29but I was overruled.
48:32We foresaw, rightly,
48:35that there would be all kinds of political problems
48:38in Hong Kong and between Hong Kong and China
48:41which would need handling politically.
48:44There would be great interest in the House of Commons.
48:47You needed to have someone with a political background.
48:50And so that decision we'd taken,
48:54it became, as it were, available.
48:57It took some persuading of him,
49:00but we managed it.
49:03I remember a Sunday night supper at my flat in Carlton Gardens
49:06where we wrestled with him over the scrambled egg.
49:09But he eventually agreed to do it
49:12and I think that turned out very well.
49:15Chris Patton was determined
49:18to take a tougher line with China.
49:21I did feel strongly that I had responsibilities
49:24to do what Parliament had told would be done
49:27and that I had responsibilities
49:30to behave as well for the people of Hong Kong as I could.
49:33My principal responsibilities
49:36weren't to go on having a good relationship
49:39with my distinguished Chinese opposite numbers
49:42to whom I could speak Mandarin.
49:47The focus of his plans for reform
49:51was to make Hong Kong or Legco
49:54the closest Hong Kong gets to a Parliament.
49:57As elsewhere in the empire,
50:00colonial Hong Kong was far from democratic.
50:03The priority had been the simple march of business.
50:06Even in the 1990s,
50:09the governor was a kind of benign despot.
50:12But in handing over Hong Kong's people to Chinese autocracy,
50:15Britain had belatedly decided
50:18that it would therefore provide it for Legco
50:21to have some directly elected members.
50:24A modest 18 out of 60.
50:27Chris Patton decided that this was simply not good enough.
50:36I owe it to the community
50:39to make my own position plain.
50:42I have spent my entire career
50:45based on representative democracy.
50:48My goal is simply this,
50:51to safeguard Hong Kong's way of life.
50:55So the pace of democratisation in Hong Kong
50:58is, we all know,
51:01necessarily constrained.
51:04But it is constrained,
51:07not stopped dead in its tracks.
51:10Standing still is not an available option.
51:16Patton's plans went down well with the Hong Kong public and the press.
51:19But Beijing was absolutely furious.
51:22Not only at the content of the speech,
51:25but at the public way in which it had been made
51:28without consultation with China.
51:31The Chinese felt this contradicted everything
51:34that had been agreed in the joint declaration.
51:37It reeked of British treachery.
51:40As some would see it,
51:43from kowtow back to confrontation.
51:49I had a lot of sympathy for Patton.
51:52It's almost impossible to argue against democracy.
51:55But diplomacy, like politics, is the art of the possible.
51:58And what Chris Patton wanted wasn't possible
52:01because the Chinese didn't want it.
52:04And there wasn't a damn thing that we could do about it
52:07except to irritate them to no good purpose.
52:10Patton's response to the Chinese was in many ways admirable.
52:13But it forfeited the trust of China.
52:16In the end, his epitaph must be to paraphrase
52:19the comment of the French general on the charge of the Light Brigade.
52:22C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la diplomatie.
52:30The through-train of cooperation with China had hit the buffers.
52:34Heaping public insults on his head,
52:37China refused to have any further dealings with Patton
52:40for the rest of his time as governor.
52:43The Joint Declaration and the Basic Law were absolutely clear
52:47about the broad parameters of democratic development
52:52and defence of human rights,
52:56civil liberties, independent courts and so on.
52:59Nobody, however, had specified exactly
53:02what the democratic arrangement should be.
53:05What I refused to do was to connive at democratic arrangements
53:10which gutted democracy.
53:12The press boiled it down really to a mantra
53:16which ran, I think,
53:19democracy good, Patton good,
53:24diplomats bad, China very bad.
53:29And they tended to present the situation as one of war
53:32between Britain and China in which any attempt at compromise,
53:36any suggestion that we might settle this, that or the other
53:41in the normal way was regarded as appeasement.
53:45We had a lot of arguments in this country
53:48with some people who thought trade with China
53:51was really much the most important thing,
53:53we wouldn't put that at risk,
53:55and other people who, in a rather nebulous sort of way,
53:58thought we were losing Chinese goodwill.
54:00We did lose Chinese goodwill for the time being.
54:03There was a risk, but it's all come back.
54:06Can anybody with a modicum of common sense
54:09believe that China wishing to trade with Britain
54:14over things that they wanted
54:17or to sell things to Britain,
54:20that they would actually not do so
54:23because of the inconsequential governorship
54:27of a lowly minister in a faraway dot in the Chinese Empire?
54:33I don't think so.
54:42For the five years Chris Patton was governor,
54:45Britain and China remained at loggerheads over Hong Kong.
54:50Reform of LegCo went ahead, but come 1997,
54:54Beijing, as it had warned, undid it all.
55:00Today, Hong Kong's people, for better or worse, are back in China.
55:06And China has once again allowed democracy for LegCo to inch forward.
55:13What's the real way of judging whether dear old Sir Percy was right
55:20or whether I'm right?
55:22What's Hong Kong like today?
55:24Hong Kong has been fantastically successful.
55:27It's one of the very freest cities, societies in Asia.
55:32It still has all the hardware of a free society and software,
55:39except it doesn't have as much democracy as one would like.
55:42There have been hundreds of thousands of people on the streets asking for more.
55:46Now, if we'd simply done what China wanted before 1997,
55:51would Hong Kong have been as stable?
55:53Would Hong Kong have been as prosperous afterwards?
55:56Would Hong Kong have been as prosperous and free today?
56:00Rather doubt it.
56:15How to handle our relationship with China
56:18remains one of the key questions of British foreign policy.
56:23In many ways, we still believe, like Adam Smith, McCartney, Palmerston,
56:27and Bowering before us, that there's an inextricable link
56:31between economics and political freedom.
56:36So increasing economic ties with China may well be
56:40not only good for British prosperity,
56:42but also the best way of integrating China into the international community.
56:49But while human rights are still being abused,
56:53diplomacy must tread carefully.
56:56The secret is not to conceal your disapproval,
56:59not to say it was absolutely right to shoot those students in Tiananmen Square,
57:03or it's absolutely right to treat the Dalai Lama as you do,
57:06but to make your views known without actually screwing up
57:11your dealings with China, in this case,
57:15on matters where you really need to reach agreement with them.
57:18Obama has the same problem today in dealing with the People's Republic.
57:23It's a continuous problem in diplomacy.
57:26Diplomacy exists partly in order to find a way through this kind of contrast.
57:38These days, China is a vitally important market for British goods and services,
57:42and we strongly encourage Chinese inward investment into the UK.
57:45The boot is truly on the other foot,
57:48as McCartney and Bowery must be observing with some astonishment
57:51from their cloud in the sky.
57:53But some things never change.
57:55Now, as then, money talks,
57:58and for the most part, drowns out those who espouse human rights
58:02in Tibet and in China itself.
58:13Can there be an ethical foreign policy?
58:16In the final programme, I'll explore the conflict between values
58:20and what's known as Realpolitik,
58:23a conflict which has tormented the history of our diplomacy.
58:27Don't, don't, don't live under this dream
58:31that the West is going to come in and sort this problem out.
58:34Don't dream dreams.
58:43There's more information on the inside story of British diplomacy
58:47in this book to accompany the series.
58:49And the corridors of power season continues on Thursday at nine
58:53with the great offices of state.
58:55Next tonight, stay with us for brand new Storyville.
59:12STORYVILLE.COM