Negotiations in the Chris Patten Period

The appointment of Chris Patten as the last governor of Hong Kong symbolized a change in British negotiating strategy. Chris Patten sought to explore whether a confrontational negotiating approach could force the Chinese to accept a faster pace of democratic reforms in Hong Kong. After the failure of the seventeen rounds of negotiations on democratic reform in Hong Kong in 1993, the earlier Sino-British through train agreement had been derailed. The failure of the negotiations led to criticism of Patten’s negotiating strategy at home and abroad, he was sidelined in the Sino-British negotiations and the two countries worked together to resolve many issues relating to the smooth transfer of sovereignty in 1997.