Introduction

This book seeks to explain why China and the UK successfully achieved the handover of Hong Kong through bilateral negotiations. Adopting a theory-based archival approach, it reconstructs the bilateral interactions and emplys comparative case studies to investigate the impact of the negotiation strategies deployed in the bilateral exchanges. It aims to reconstruct the bilateral negotiations based on first-person accounts of the negotiation, identify the characteristics of China’s negotiation strategy, and draw insights from the years of bilateral consultations.