Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday, may not have been one "for turning", as she dubbed her putative inability to not ever alter basic principled direction. But when the first woman to become British prime minister first met the leader of China - Deng Xiaoping in 1982, over the Hong Kong sovereignty issue - she wasn't keen on losing either.

That's because the short, chain-smoking, astute successor to Mao Zedong wasn't "for turning" either. Just as the Iron Lady had not been intimidated out of the Falklands/Malvinas, Deng wasn't "for turning" on the issue of China's takeover of Hong Kong. The return of the territory to China was going to happen whether the Iron Lady and the British people liked it or not - and in the manner that Beijing, not London, wished.

"... He was obdurate ... He was not to be persuaded," recalled Thatcher of the exchange with Deng in September 1982. "At one point he said that the Chinese could walk in and take Hong Kong later today if they wanted to."