[NeedMoreTea]

They weakened status well before the joint agreement. Yet right after Tiananmen Square, and after the joint agreement, they managed to rapidly dream up a selection of 50k families, so they were also far from powerless to act without Deng Xiaoping's approval. Thousands of HKers were leaving after Tiananmen, to anywhere that would take them, so it's not like it would have deprived China of those citizens after 97 handover.

[em500]

There's a big difference between accepting 50k and 5million people, on both the British and the Chinese side.

[frosted-flakes]

50k families is more like 200k–300k people.