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63. The second course would by comparison have the merit that the arrangement would (on paper) have a fixed term to run.
But as a
course to be pursued deliberately, even in a situation where the Chinese are showing a spirit of reasonable co-operation, it carries some great dangers. From a position within the administration, the Chinese would have an infinite capacity to interfere. At any time they would be able to instigate trouble among their supporters and then to hamper or frustrate our efforts to deal with it. If they
They
were not already represented in the security forces as part of the arrangement, they would possess a cast-iron pretext for bringing police or troops in to deal with a difficult or deteriorating situation. They could use their position to limit our withdrawal of persons and assets, to the extent that they considered it necessary to retain "hostages" in order to squeeze the maximum advantage out of us (both before and after our departure). could manoeuvre us into a position in which we might be forced to postpone our departure indefinitely for the sake of our hostages. This course might however prove to be the only way in which we could effect an orderly withdrawal in the face of uncompromising Chinese hostility and opposition. But it would seem prudent to follow it only in extremis; to offer it earlier would undoubtedly put
irresistible temptations in their way.
4. There remains the straight offer to negotiate a hand-over. The prospects that China would respond with any reasonable degree of co-operation to such a move on our part must depend very much on:-
(e) whether it suited their policy at that time to take the
Colony over and, if it did, what their "interest" was in getting it back. If we chose a time that did not suit either their economic or political objectives, we could expect them to maximise their demands upon us and to seek to ensure that we left in utter confusion and in the most humiliating conditions. If our withdrawal did suit their policy, their reaction might vary from an uncompromising statement of their terms if they wanted to extract a propaganda and prestige advantage to a reasonable negotiating posture if they were genuinely anxious, for economic reasons, to take Hong Kong over with minimum damage to its economy.
(b) The strength of our negotiating position. In this
respect we are likely to be in the best position if we
seek to withdraw voluntarily when conditions are more or less normal, in a less satisfactory position if we try when conditions in Hong Kong are difficult (e.g. because of economic decline) and in the worst possible position
if we do so under Chinese pressure.
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