Decolonisation in the Age of Globalisation

In the 1980s, Britain actively engaged with China in order to promote globalisation and manage Hong Kongs decolonisation. Influenced by neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher saw Britain as a global trading nation, which was well placed to serve Chinas reform. During the negotiations over Hong Kongs future, British diplomats aimed to educate the Chinese in free-market capitalism. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping held an alternative vision of globalisation, one that privileged sovereignty and socialism over market liberalism and democracy. By drawing extensively upon the declassified British archives along with Chinese sources, this book explores how Britain and China negotiated for Hong Kongs future, and how Anglo-Chinese relations flourished after 1984 but suffered a setback as a result of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. This original study argues that Thatcher was a pragmatic neoliberal, and the British diplomacy of educating China yielded mixed results. -- .