Registry
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Sayer
Confidential.
ROXIMOZOR
Yudkynes:
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
DRAFT
CONFIDENTIAL
To:- DOP
PAPER
DSR 11
ACEMENT A
Type 1 +
From
JT Masefield
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
CHINA: SALE OF HARRIER AIRCRAFT
INTRODUCTION
1. Officials have recommended that it should be British
policy to promote arms sales within the limitations of what the British Government believe to be acceptable in strategic terms, to press for COCOM agreement to such sales, and to abide by the result. They have also recommended that Ministers might wish to keep in reserve
the option of going ahead in the case of sales of particularly high commercial or industrial value to the UK, despite opposition in COCOM and from our partners, unless the general political or commercial objections appear to outweigh the advantages of the sale.
Extent of Chinese Interest
2.
Chinese interest in the Harrier was first expressed
in November 1972 at the time of the handover to them of
the first Trident aircraft. (The subsequent assumption by Hawker Siddley Aviation that the Chinese might be thinking in terms of as many as 200 aircraft is based on flimsy grounds and seems merely to have been a figure plucked out of the air by the Chinese Ambassador that ceremony to illustrate the kind of figure which might outweigh any difficulty which such a deal might cause
at
HMG.) For a long time, the Chinese did not pursue the
matter further (for example they did not raise it during the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary's visit to China in 1976). But on 4 November, during a meeting with a British business delegation in Peking, Vice Premier
Wang Chen said that China "intends to acquire the Harrier".
/During
CONFIDENTIAL
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