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And it was based on the perhaps misguided assumption, which some of us had occasional doubts about, that the chinese were. the chinese communist party, let me make a distinction, would keep their word, and they have pretty comprehensively broken their word, which is contained in an international treaty lodged at the united nations called thejoint declaration. you said at the time, you wrote at the time in the hong kong diaries, which you ve just published, that, ultimately, after the handover, much will depend on whether the chinese communist party can actually be trusted to honour one country, two systems, which was the deal agreed. hong kong s former chief executive, cy leung, who s now vice chairman of china s top political advisory body, said just days ago that hong kong s democracy is following the basic law and the principle that you agreed of one country, two systems. you re smiling. well, cy leung is, as the polls seem to suggest when people are asked in hong kong about it ....
Question the point that was made endlessly by my biggest critic, who was a former british ambassador in china called percy cradock, and he d been very close to margaret thatcher. it was very much driven by him when thejoint declaration was agreed, and when people were arguing that there should be an arbitration mechanism in it, he said, no, no, no. and his argument was this. he said, and he had reason for realising this because he d been in the british embassy when it was burnt down during the cultural revolution, he said, the chinese leaders may be thuggish dictators, but they re men of their word. now we know that part of that is true the first bit, but the second part isn t. and you can look at things all round the world, examples of the chinese simply breaking international agreements. president obama said it about them in relation to the wto. they ve done it in relation to the fortification of atolls and islands in the south china sea. and they ve comprehensively broken their ....