The Communists’ position from 1949 on was that the British administration of Hong Kong was a legacy of history. It was not their doing but they accepted it. However, if the People’s Republic of China was to agree to the continuation of British rule beyond 1997, it would definitely be the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party. Deng himself later explained that he could not become another Li Hongzhang, the Qing dynasty official who had signed the 1898 Convention that turned the New Territories over to Britain.
Because London pressed for an answer, Deng eventually decided he had no choice but to take back Hong Kong. Even so, he coupled that decision with his dream of reunification with Taiwan by applying his formula of “one country, two systems,” which had been devised with Taiwan in mind, to the British colony, hoping that it would be a model for the breakaway island.
A decision to take back Hong Kong in 1997 was formally made by the Politburo on December 26, 1981—a fact never before reported. So by the time Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Beijing in 1982, China’s position was firm. Nothing that the Iron Lady did could change China’s mind. What remained for the British to do was to educate the Chinese on the details of how the colony was run. The culmination of this process was the Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong signed by the two countries in 1984. In this document, China declared its intention to recover Hong Kong on July 1, 1997. Britain declared its willingness to restore the colony to China on that date.