CONFIDENTIAL
Although accepting that the provisions of the Agreement should apply to the regional services, CAAC were at first not prepared to have this formally stated even in a document not intended for publication. They argued that this would imply Chinese recognition of Hong Kong being British territory. The problem was eventually solved by Chinese acceptance of the formula which appears in paragraph 7 of the regional routes CMU.
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5.
CAAC also pressed for the Pinyin spelling of the names "Beijing" and "Xienggang" to appear in the CMUS (but not, oddly enough, in the actual Agreement) In accordance with paragraph 1 (iii) of FCO telegram no. 833 of 22 December 1978 we were prepared to accept that the Pinyin versions of the names should appear in brackets after the English spellings, and even offered to put the Pinyin first in the case of Beijing (Peking) CAAC initially accepted this solution, but on instructions from the MFA said they could not accept that Xianggang be treated differently from Beijing, and suggested that both names in the English text to be kept by them used Pinyin, whilst both names in our copy had the old spelling. As part of the hurried finalisation of the Agreement, however, they accepted our argument that it was for them to decide on the Chinese characters to be used for foreign names in the Chinese text, and for us to decide the romanisation of names in the English, and accepted the old spellings, alone, throughout.
6.
In the text of the regional routes CLU drafted by CAAC, the words "other Chinese cities" appeared in a context which would have implied "other" than Hong Kong. They accepted, however, our redrafting which left it quite clear that "other" was "other" than Peking and Shanghai in the preamble. We successfully resisted an attempt to reinsert "other" in paragraph 4 where its meaning would have been ambiguous.
7.
On the whole, it appeared that when the Chinese had extracted what commercial benefit they could out of the special status of Hong Kong (imbalance of routes and frequency; designation of airlines), they were prepared to be fairly flexible about mere questions of principle.
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W Quantrill Esq, HKGD, FCO GH Boyce Esq, MAED, FCO
I C Orr Esq, APA, Hong Kong
K Sullivan
CONFIDENTIAL