ABSTRACT
The historic trip of the colonial Governor Murray MacLehose with Deng Xiaoping in March 1979 marked the beginning of Hong Kong’s journey of reunification with the motherland. Despite Beijing’s policy of ‘long-term planning and full utilization’ (changqi dasuan chongfen liyong) towards Hong Kong (i.e. the Communists had no immediate plan to take back the territory after the liberation of the mainland), given the colony’s value as a gateway to the outside world the British had little illusion of the prospect of colonial rule beyond 1997. Such realism was reflected in a Cabinet study on the future of Hong Kong in the aftermath of the 1967 riots in the colony, a spin-off episode of the Cultural Revolution.1
