SECRET
香港布政司署
64
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT,
HONG KONG,
TS 1/78
RJT McLaren Esq
Hong Kong and General Department
FCO
LONDON SW1
Dear Robin,
6 July 1978
HKKC acoll
INDEX
S
No ot
David Wilson has passed me your letter of 20 June about up-dating Section IV of the 1976 Planning Paper on Hong Kong which deals with the
China aspect.
Timing of an Approach
2.
jaki
**9978
FACTION
1
See HICK Oko/1
21-
1982
It is
Paragraph 19 of the Paper covers this. for Percy Cradock to say whether the conditions specified have been met. As seen from here, it appears that, although the successor government to Mao is very much in place and has defined its policies (which are all we could reasonably hope for) it is still a little early to be sure of its ultimate cohesion and staying power. In other words, the risk that an understanding reached now over the future of Hong Kong might subsequently be repudiated is not yet so small as to be worth accepting.
3.
Although the Planning Paper does not make the point, I suggest that, when we do make an approach, we should be in a position to say with plausibility that, if future prospects are not clarified soon, Hong Kong would start running down to our mutual disadvantage. Otherwise the Chinese might resent our pushing this rather delicate question at them prematurely and brush it aside - amidst their many other preoccupations - as not of immediate importance. We obviously cannot wait until Hong Kong actually does start to run down, but I think that, unless something quite unexpected happens, the time when that will happen is still a few years off and I believe that the CPG would take the same view.
4.
I had previously assumed that the prospect of the end of the Lease would first show its influence in difficulty over financing slow-maturing investments like public utilities. But there has been no difficulty over finance for either the Mass Transit Railway or China Light and Power's new power station.
SECRET
-1-