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THE FUTURE OF HONG KONG
1. In the annexes to this paper are set out details of the
physical characteristics of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, of the
legal position in respect of our tenure of it and of the situation
there today. In this paper no proposals are made which require
immediate decisions, but a number of considerations in relation
to the future of the Colony are set out which we must inevitably
bear in mind, and the options with which any Government will be
faced as time goes on are set out.
2.
The present Chinese Government, and probably any Chinese
Government in the foreseeable future, see no distinction between
the status of those areas of the Colony acquired by Britain by cession
under the Treaties of Nanking and Peking and that of the New
Territories which are held under lease. All, as they see it, are
part of China and to be recovered at the appropriate time. It is
therefore unrealistic for us to think of them differently. For
this reason independence as a goal for the Colony is unthinkable
and so is any movement towards constitutional progress along
conventional decolonisation lines.
3.
Secondly, it is very difficult indeed to imagine Hong Kong
as viable if the New Territories are detached from it at the expiry
of their lease in 1997. The frontier would lie in the middle of a
built-up area; Kaitak airport would be in China; so would a
substantial part of the industrial area and also the main reservoirs;
virtually no food would be grown in British territory. The population
remaining in our control would be of the order of 3 million, assuming
that there was not a huge influx from the New Territories.
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