This chapter turns to Hong Kong between 1979 and 1981, during which the Callaghan and then Thatcher governments took soundings about Hong Kong’s future. It explores how the processes of decolonisation and globalisation interacted in Hong Kong’s case. In March 1979, Governor Murray MacLehose visited China to explore the question of Hong Kong’s long-term future via the immediate issue of New Territories land leases. Deng Xiaoping seized the initiative by claiming that sovereignty over Hong Kong belonged to China. Having been rebuffed by Deng, the British decided to go slow regarding an approach to China during 1980 and 1981. The second part of this chapter looks at how Hong Kong’s financial and administrative autonomy from London since the 1960s, and its emergence as a ‘global city’ by the early 1980s, had brought about subtle changes in the UK–Hong Kong relationship. This was manifested in Hong Kong’s textile trade disputes with Britain, its growing economic links with China and the rest of the world, and the passage of the 1981 British Nationality Act which denied a right of abode in Britain to Hong Kong residents. The ‘long decolonisation’ of Hong Kong provided the backdrop of Thatcher’s visit to China in September 1982.