The Time the Iron Lady ‘Turned’ Before China

BEIJING â€" “The lady’s not for turning,” Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday, told an audience of fellow Conservatives in Britain in late 1980. The phrase would become a signature of her personality and governing style.

Yet three years later she did “turn” - with China and the issue of Britain’s sovereignty over Hong Kong. It may have been one of the few times.

For a year starting in September 1982, when Ms. Thatcher traveled to Beijing to meet Deng Xiaoping and begin discussions about the future of Hong Kong, which Britain had ruled since 1842, she tried to argue that Britain could, and should, hold on to it after much of its land was due to be handed back in 1997, on the basis that some parts had been ceded in perpetuity.

She failed, after a year of “defending a position unacceptable, at the very outset, to the Chinese government,” as Sir David Akers-Jones, a former acting governor of the colony, wrote in his memoir, Feeling the Stones. Had the Iron Lady met her match

“For the British Prime Minister this was a discussion about sovereignty and administration. For the Chinese, there was never any question about the recovery of sovereignty,” Mr. Akers-Jones wrote. In 1984 Britain and China signed a treaty declaring all of Hong Kong would be handed back to China in 1997.

Here in Beijing today, in editorials and articles, her “turn” was noted - approvingly by some, while others noted, disturbingly, that it may have been one of the few times she behaved like a woman. (China’s political culture is unfriendly to women and there are few women in positions of power in the Communist Party.)

“Thatcher managed to understand that China is not Argentina and Hong Kong is not the Falklands,” wrote the Global Times in an editorial, referring to the war over sovereignty she successfully had led to retain the islands in the south Atlantic, claimed by Argentina, shortly before the Hong Kong talks began. “She signed the joint declaration, which set the foundation for Hong Kong’s return,” the newspaper wrote, referring to the treaty that returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty.

“We can say that she made her biggest compromise as prime minister in this issue,” it continued.” It’s fair to say this, even though frictions between China and the UK existed until Hong Kong’s return in 1997.”

Perhaps reflecting lingering official displeasure in Beijing over her gumption in trying to hold onto Hong Kong, the editorial struck a dismissive note that simultaneously managed to play up China’s rise: “The win-win spirit China brings to international politics is expanding. We have reasons to show respect to this woman that signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration. But at the same time, the world should move on,” it ran.

Nandu.com, the online version of Southern Metropolis Daily, a major media outlet in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong in the south of the country, offered some even more pungent insights, saying some analysts at the time linked her “turn” over Hong Kong to her female gender.

“In her very long political career, it seems on only one occasion was she forced to revert to her true colors as a woman, and that was in 1982 in Beijing,” ran the article in Nandu.com.

“Some people analyzed the reason Thatcher finally gave in to Deng Xiaoping over the Hong Kong question thus: ‘Compared to Deng, she was just a woman,’” said the article, one of several in a special put out by the newspaper which otherwise was rather admiring. All major Chinese news portals ran specials on her.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post noted the exception to her “Iron Lady” image, too. “The lady was not for turning, but there were times when the Iron Lady had to bend,” it wrote.

In 1982, “Thatcher lobbied Deng to accept the formula of exchanging Hong Kong’s sovereignty in return for continued British administration after the lease of the New Territories expired in 1997,” the newspaper wrote.

It quoted Zhang Tongxin, a former director of Renmin University’s Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Research Institute, as saying that Ms. Thatcher went into the negotiations with a tough stance.

“But she came to realize China’s firmness on taking back Hong Kong,” Mr. Zhang told the newspaper. “The negotiations were very difficult at the beginning, but Mrs. Thatcher was able to adopt a pragmatic way of thinking, which led to a not-so-rough transfer of sovereignty,” he said.

The reappearance of colonial-era Hong Kong flags at pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong today perhaps serves as an ironic reminder of her sovereignty stance, but it was not noted in Hong Kong or Chinese media.

Margaret Thatcher stumbles outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in September, 1982.

Also not widely noted - when Ms. Thatcher visited Beijing for the talks with Deng, which began on Sept. 24, 1982, she tumbled to the ground on the steps of the Great Hall of the People, where they took place. The fall was read by some as a sign, as the voice-over (in Chinese) in this Youtube clip of the fall indicates: had the iron lady met something even tougher than herself in Beijing

As Sir David noted in his memoir, the negotiations were - literally - uncomfortable.

“The high ceilings, huge pillars, great austere spaces for greeting, and vast meetings rooms” are “awesome,” he wrote. “Chairs are arranged to reflect the gravity of meetings so that the principal speakers have to talk uncomfortably sideways to one another with the interpreters sitting behind, which does not put visitors at ease for a cosy chat,” he wrote.

And the British party was taken aback at Deng Xiaoping’s regular use of a spittoon as they talked (it’s the white, bowl-like item at Deng’s feet.)

Did she meet her match in Deng As Robert Cottrell wrote in The Independent in 1992, 10 years after the meeting: “Short-tempered, bossy, spitting and chain-smoking, Deng was no more inclined to self-doubt than Thatcher herself, and much less fond of argument. The stage was set for a two-hour meeting which was acknowledged, even in the coded language of British diplomacy, to have been ‘abrasive’.”

And the lady turned.