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China's view is the exact opposite
she does not recognise any of
of the early treaties as being valid, including those that concern Hong Kong.
In this, she has not only been quite consistent, but in the opinion of some
international lawyers in London, should the matter ever come to litigation,
the International Court of Justice would be likely to side with China over the
matter and cite previous discussion of 'unequal treaties' that occurred when India unilaterally resumed the Portuguese colony of Goa(by force) in 1961.
The only change that can be perceived in the period since 1949 is a slight
hariening of China's intended method of deling with the issue, Whereas up
to 1963 it was seen that "When conditions are ripe, they should be settled
peacefully through negotiations and that, pending a settlement, the status
que should be maintained." (3); by 1972, Huang Hua's statement to the UN
ka was merely that as far as Hong Kong and Macao were concerned they "should
(4) be settled in an appropriate way when conditions are ripe." The omnission
of the phrase about'peacefully' and 'through negotiations' is perhaps signif-
icant and the formulation used by Huang Hus is now standard and is repeated whenever one meets Chinese officials and is, feed, repeated in the latest Supertile official statement, that of Foreign Trade Minister Li Thiang in an article
in Hung Ch' (Red Flag) in Oct. 1977. (5) The likelihood of China agreeing to
Hong Qi
any formal variation in the terms of the NT Treaty is recognised by commentators
in Londar
both her and Hong Kong as zero. On the one hand to do so would imply
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a degree of acceptance of validity of the original treaty that would destroy
nearly three decades of consistent denial. On the other hand, and much more
seriousty for Hong Kong, China's pre-eminent occupation is with the Soviet
important
Union and a large part of that is concerned with the dispute over their
northern border, itself the subject of a hotly disputed treaty which the Chinese
claim is invalid on the same grounds as the one that applies to Hong Kong.
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