Percy Cradock

After the rioting, Cradock served as Chargé d'affaires in Peking from 1968 to 1969, and later succeeded Sir Edward Youde as British Ambassador to the People's Republic of China in 1978.

After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he was the first senior British official to pay a visit to the Chinese leadership in the hope of maintaining the much criticised Joint Declaration.

However, Cradock worsened his relationship with Thatcher's successor, John Major, by forcing him to visit China in 1991 after the row between the two countries over the Airport Core Programme of Hong Kong.

Although Cradock had retired, he joined the pro-Beijing camp, and became one of the most prominent critics of Governor Patten, censuring him for wrecking the hand-over agreement that had been agreed with the Chinese government.

He was educated at Alderman Wraith Grammar School in Spennymoor in his childhood when he experienced the decline of the local mining industry, influencing him to become a devoted supporter of Labour for a long time.

He was sent to Hong Kong in 1961 to learn Mandarin, and in the next year became Chinese Secretary of the British Chargé d'affaires Office in Peking, the People's Republic of China.

[5] Although the political situation in China by then was growing increasingly unstable, Cradock and his colleagues managed to maintain the safety of the office at the onset of the Cultural Revolution.

The fire forced the Chargé d'affaires, Sir Donald Hopson, and Cradock to lead the staff and their family members to quickly evacuate the building, and to "surrender" to the mobs.

After the rescue, Cradock, Hopson and other British subjects were put under house arrest in the embassy zone in central Peking for months, until the political situation cooled down at the end of 1967.

In Hong Kong, only MacLehose, Kan and Wilson knew the purpose of their mission, which was facilitated by Youde in London and Cradock in Peking, and was endorsed by the Foreign Secretary, Dr David Owen.

[7] However, unexpectedly, the leader of Communist China, Deng Xiaoping, simply disregarded the question of land leases and firmly insisted on taking over the whole of Hong Kong on or before 1997.

[8] Following the victory of the Conservatives in the UK General Election in 1979, the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, adopted a tough line in diplomacy, and the question of Hong Kong was no exception.

Cradock feared that prolonged or broken talks would put China in an advantageous position and would provide it with an excuse to unilaterally decide the future of Hong Kong, at a time when 1997 was rapidly approaching.

In this regard, Cradock advised Thatcher to compromise with China so as to let Britain retain some degree of influence over the Hong Kong issue, and one of the major concessions he urged was to stop insisting upon the authority conferred by the three treaties to extend British administration beyond 1997.

Furthermore, 30% believed that "One Country Two Systems" suggested in the Joint Declaration would be unworkable, showing that the general public of Hong Kong felt insecure and doubtful about the agreement made between Britain and China.

[18] When Cradock, a diplomat fluent in Mandarin, left the Sino-British talks in the end of 1983, it was rumoured that he would succeed Sir Edward Youde as Governor of Hong Kong.

Yet, the rumour never turned into reality,[3] and on the contrary, Cradock, who was dubbed "Maggie's Mandarin", and had become a much trusted advisor to Margaret Thatcher, insisted that he should be posted back to London.

Critics have claimed that the reason for Thatcher entrusting him was because both of them regarded the Soviet Union as Britain's biggest adversary, while the United States was the most important ally, and therefore they could always head to the same direction when making diplomatic decisions.

On 7 February 1991, when Major was holding a cabinet meeting at Number 10, the Provisional IRA launched a mortar bomb at the building, breaking all the windows of the conference room.

An unprecedented one million people assembled in downtown Central, expressing their anger towards the Communist regime's military suppression of the peaceful student rally in Peking which was in support of freedom and democracy in China.

It was due to his efforts that China agreed to gradually promote democratisation in the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by allowing half of the sixty seats of the Legislative Council to be directly elected by 2007, which was duly achieved in 2004.

[20] Apart from the above measures, to rebuild confidence of the people of Hong Kong towards their future, Governor Sir David Wilson introduced the Airport Core Programme, which was also known as the "Rose Garden Project", in his annual Policy Address to the Legislative Council in October 1989.

In the Memorandum, Britain promised to reserve not less than HK$25 billion for the future government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in exchange for the support of China over the Airport Core Programme.

[22] After the new airport episode, it was felt by the Conservative government that the soft diplomacy previously adopted by Britain in its relations with China was no longer effective, and Major concluded that Cradock and Governor Wilson had been too kind to the Chinese authorities and that they should take responsibility for that approach.

[4] Patten was much blamed by the Chinese authorities for his democratic reform, with the Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, Lu Ping, once famously denouncing him as a "sinner to be condemned for thousands of years".

Cradock defended his actions on the grounds that he acted from a realist point of view and he thought that the United Kingdom actually had "no card" on hand and had little bargaining power at all.

[3] Among them, The Economist news magazine claimed that both Cradock and Thatcher were no different from former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who betrayed Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany by signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.

[20] The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons also stated that it would be disreputable for the United Kingdom to not introduce political reform in response to the demand of the people of Hong Kong.

In an interview in 1996 with The Common Sense, a documentary produced by the Radio Television Hong Kong, Cradock claimed that the United Kingdom nearly lost all her influence over China because the two countries had been in political dispute.

[31] On the other hand, he also called for the Hong Kong people to face the reality and not to believe in any illusion and false hope of democracy brought forward by Chris Patten.