Sir Richard Mark Evans KCMG KCVO (Chinese: 伊文思爵士; 15 April 1928 – 24 August 2012) was a British diplomat who was the ambassador to the People's Republic of China from January 1984 to May 1988, during which he and Zhou Nan, the Chinese representative, initialled the Sino-British Joint Declaration on 26 September 1984.
During his ambassadorship, he also acted as the chief representative of the British delegation from the eighth to the twenty-second round of Sino-British negotiations over the sovereignty issue of Hong Kong.
In fact, much of the core negotiations had been done by his predecessor Sir Percy Cradock and therefore, the major mission of Evans and his team was to draft the clauses of the Joint Declaration with their Chinese counterparts within the limited time frame.
The series of negotiations ultimately resulted in the formal signing of the Joint Declaration by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang in Peking on 19 December 1984, a treaty confirming the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China in 1997.
Evans later participated in arranging a number of high-ranking official visits between the two nations.