British Foreign Policy Factors

The thesis has a brief review of the historical backgroud of how the Hong Kong problem occurred and how UK discouraged for several times the Chiang Kai-shek government's efforts to regain the sovereignty over Hong Kong. It continues to explain that it was not because of a reward for the significant political decision made by Mao Zedong on "maintaining the status quo of Hong Kong" but due to its overall consideration of various interests in China that UK took a lead in recognizing the P.R.C. in the 1950s.By unfolding the furious confrontaions between UK and China over Hong Kong's returning to the latter after the Reform and Opening-up policy was adopted, the thesis makes a profound analysis of the reason why UK changed its diplomatic thoughts towards China during the whole process of all rounds of China-UK negotiations over the Hong Kong problem.The author holds that Hong Kong remains UK's core interests in Asia-Pacific region although it has returned to China after 1997, and it is also where Chinese concern of interests lies in. The author points out that we must clearly understand the veiled struggles between UK and China in Hong Kong about political ideology which will stand long and probably become intensified under certain circumstances.The thesis does not confine its discussion only to the Hong Kong problem at issue, but gives an overall analysis of the future prospect of UK-China relations beyond the Hong Kong problem. The author believes that the common interests shared by UK and China in aspects like politics, economy, trade, culture, education and sports, etc. constitute the impregnable basis of UK-China relations. Meanwhile, there exist negative elements that will affect or hold up the smooth development of UK-China bilateral relations. The human rights problem, in particular, is a field where UK and China will have big differences and contradictions.The thesis also quotes a great number of most up-to-date facts to explain how increasingly great importance the David Cameron's coalition government will attach to cooperating with China and making good use of the huge Chinese market to help UK out of the current financial crisis at the earliest possibility. Therefore, the author believes that the future UK-China relations as a whole can be expected to move towards better.