In 1997, on the day of the handover of Port Stanley, former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd remarked to Chinese President Jiang Zemin; "I know what you're thinking, but you will never see this happen in Hong Kong". It was geo-politics, Britain needed to keep Argentina in the western block of nations, and having discovered that after all, there was no oil in the Malvinas, gifted the islands as a goodwill gesture.