Opinion | Beijing's broken promise on Hong Kong democracy shattered our trust
Frank Ching says at heart, it was Beijing's reneging on its pre-handover pledge on Hong Kong democracy that sparked the protests
Two weeks ago, Britain's House of Commons held an emergency session to discuss China's decision to bar a delegation of its Foreign Affairs Committee from visiting Hong Kong.
According to committee chairman Sir Richard Ottaway, China's deputy ambassador, Ni Jian, told him that the Sino-British Joint Declaration "is now void and only covered the period from the signing in 1984 until the handover in 1997".
This is highly unlikely to be China's formal position. After all, its foreign ministry has just issued a sophisticated policy paper regarding the Chinese dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea and its department of treaty and law understands how contracting parties incur obligations to each other in the signing of treaties.
What is much more likely is that the Chinese official told Ottaway that, since the winding up of the Joint Liaison Group in 1999, Britain has no further obligations and there is no role left for it to play.
But to any British government with some spine, such a position should not be acceptable. After all, from 1984 to 1997, when London had an obligation to run Hong Kong, China was loud in its comments of what the British were supposed to do or not do.
Even in November 1995, less than two years before the handover, Chen Zuoer , then China's point person in the Joint Liaison Group, warned that Hong Kong was spending too much on welfare and that "it's like a Formula One car which is going to crash and kill all six million people in Hong Kong".
