Flag A
Flag B
Flag C
Mr Quantri.
My Mebared
Williamson
CONFIDENTIAL
9
(A) Jx11
джи
Thand
UK HINA MARITIME AGREEMENT
1.
passed this direct to No Hayward,
sive of were under pressure
Reference
I love inssporation to give a rapid
you suggerens legend
25/1
reply.
སྤོ་༢༡
3
Some 2 years ago we suggested to the Chinese that a bilateral Maritime Agreement should be prepared. It quickly became apparent that difficulties would emerge over the status of Hong Kong because the Chinese insisted that the Agreement should apply to metropolitan territories only which would exclude Hong Kong. Hong Kong shipping interests were not at all enthusiastic about this.
2. Since the initial approach to the Chinese, both they and the Department of Trade have continued to make reference to the prop- osal and the Department of Trade is anxious to finalise the matter.
3. Progress now rests with the letter from Mr Prior of the Department of Trade to Mr Samuel of FED dated 7 August 1978. Hayward of FED has now produced a draft reply.
Mr
4. The draft summarises the situation as it now stands but goes on to suggest in paragraph 3 that the Embassy in Peking could be asked to sound out the Chinese informally on their current attitude. Unless there are strong grounds for doing this I would recommend that no further action whatsoever be taken on this matter until the Chinese take an initiative to raise it informally; I am not aware of any strong grounds for pursuing this at the moment, particularly since the general interests of British shippers will largely be taken care of by a proposed UK/China Bilateral Economic Cooperation Agreement which is referred to in paragraph 4 of Tel no. 66 of 19 January. I am recommending that we let sleeping dogs lie for the present because, if the Chinese maintain their attitude to Hong Kong's involvement in the Agreement we only arrive at a mutually embarrassing stalemate which I am sure both sides would wish to avoid, or a position where we would have to sacrifice Hong Kong's interests to appease the Chinese.
This latter situation would clearly create a most undesirable precedent.
5. I submit a draft comment on Mr Hayward's draft.
HKK. 175/2
RECOVER
N
30. $1
CODE 18-77
IND
24 January 1979
PA
2261,
Y
P J Williamson
1.
Hong Kong and General Department
I agree with to Williamson: unless some one was the can show that there are real benefits for Britain, I believe we should take no initiative at all. I have also suggested a redraft of para. 2 of the draft reply.
CONFIDENTIAL
[24/1
a