3.
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Responsibility for implementing these
instructions was assumed by the Cabinet Office and
carried out by a small group of the Defence Review
Working Party.
The Working Party's report,
months work, hampered
although substantially the work of departments of the
former Commonwealth Office and Foreign Office,is,
therefore, an interdepartmentally agreed study.....
It was prepared in consultation (as opportunity
offered) with the Governor of Hong Kong and
Sir Donald Hopson, former Chargé d'Affaires in
Peking. For security reasons no copy of the
Report (or of earlier drafts) is held by anyone
outside Whitehall. The outcome represents many
The study has necessarily taken some time to
Prepare This is partly due to the intractable
nature of the problem facing us. It was also due
in part to the uncertainty surrounding Chinese
attitudes and intentions towards the Colony at the'
height of the Cultural Revolution and the difficulty
of assessing what effects the turmoil in China
might have on that country's policy towards Hong
Kong in the long term. The difficulty of taking
full account of the views of the Governor of Hong
Kong (the former Commonwealth Secretary quite
has bien properly issued an instruction to that effect) was
a further complication; because it was considered
of overriding importance that the existence of this
document should not become known in Hong Kong, the
opportunities for consultation with the Governor were
confined to the occasions when he visited the U.K.
One four
and
senior officials visited Hong Kong .
Foverain and Commonwealth Off,TOP SECRET
Downma
Str. S.W.1.
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