IT was a long time coming. For more than a year, Beijing seemed impervious to all pleas to put the bitterness of the political reform row behind it and move on to co-operate on other matters. So the enthusiasm to move ahead which Vice-Premier Qian Qichen showed on his visit to London this week comes as a welcome surprise.
With hindsight, it is now clear China waited so long for fear that it would appear to lose face if it allowed any real improvement in relations before the Legislative Council elections were out of the way. There are signs that the Beijing leadership decided, in principle, on a rapprochement as early as last spring - when politburo member Li Ruihuan made his famous speech comparing Hong Kong to a fragile Yixing teapot. But until now it had only been possible to reach agreements on issues that could wait no longer, such as the Court of Final Appeal and airport funding.
The accords reached in London are different: setting a broad framework for a new relationship over the next 20 months. How significant they prove to be will depend on how they are implemented in the coming months. But they can already be seen as an important step forward in several areas.
While not necessarily bringing into sight an end to deadlock on Container Terminal 9, the high-level agreement on the need to develop Hong Kong's container ports is Beijing's first - albeit implicit - recognition of the economic losses caused by blocking the project and sends a signal to lower-level Chinese negotiators to intensify efforts to find a face-saving solution.
Threat averted Agreement on informal get-togethers in the territory between local civil servants and their mainland counterparts averts the threat of Hong Kong civil servants being summoned to interviews in Beijing, as China had previously demanded. The other two accords, on co-operation with the Preparatory Committee and preparations for the handover ceremonies, represent a welcome about-turn from the mainland's earlier stance that the British and Hong Kong governments had no role to play in either matter.
Yet the real significance of the Qian visit lies not so much in these agreements as in the warmer atmosphere which has emerged. Over the past three years, Wen Wei Po and Beijing's other mouthpieces in the territory have heaped abuse on Britain, depicting it as a declining world power that had become all but irrelevant. But, from the moment he arrived in London, Mr Qian has pursued a very different path, lavishing praise upon Britain as a 'highly influential' country and 'important traditional trading partner', while agreeing to new consulates and trade ties.
