T.S. 7/1162/46 V
RC Samuel Esq
Far Eastern Department F CO
THE FUTURE OF HONG KONG
2 December, 1977
HKK and jus).
-7 DEC 1977
No
There have been a mumber of articles recently in the local press about the Chinese attitude towards the future of Hong Kong. The seminal pieces are as follows. (There have in addition been a number of quotations, and comments on these articles in other papers, both Chinese and English);
(1) A brief article in the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST on 4
November. This reported that a major property developer, Mr Gordon Lu, together with a delegation of Hong Kong businessmen, had recently returned from a visit to China. The article quotes u as saying that, while there, they were told by Liao Ch'eng-chih (a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee and an adviser to the Foreign Ministry) that "China would settle the Taiwan problem first before it decides what to do with long Kong". In addition, Wu vas encouraging about the future of economic relations between liong Kong and China.
(2)
An article by Frank Ching, the Hong Kong correspondent of the Asian Wall Street Journal, in the 25 November issue of that paper.
Frank Ching refers to the same visit by Hong Kong businessmen. lie says they were told to "work for the prosperity of Hong Kong" and that "those in Hong Kong now should be at ease, don't sell your property and go elsewhere". He also expanded on the point about dealing with Hong Kong only after Taivan had been "liberated" by saying that the delegation had been told that this had been the instructions of Chairman Mao. Frank Ching's article says in addition that the local Deputy Director of the NCNA, Li Chü-sheng, when asked by members of the Real Estate Developers Association at a lunch arranged by Henry Fok (one of the leading United Front business figures here) what would happen when the lease expired in 1997, "dismissed the subject with a jocular "what lease?"",
/contd.......
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