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10. I also hope, as you do, that this course will prove unnecessary. A solution may meantime emerge via another channel, for example via practical arrangements over Tin Shui Wai. But
I must note that so far, despite initial encouraging messages, nothing has come that way. We cannot rely on it.
11.
Finally, I come to the proposal in your paragraph 8 for a paper for Ministers. I very much approve of the idea, but the first rough draft I have seen seems to me to start off too far at the remote end of the spectrum: its initial sentence is "The purpose of this paper is to set down in a convenient form for Ministers the alternative ways in which the fate of Hong Kong after 1997 could be settled". I think our problems may be a little more immediate than that. What we need, I suggest, and what I think Ministers would value, would be a paper which concentrated on the difficult political questions that could arise if we have to talk to the Chinese and cannot confine the talks to the narrow technical issue. The two issues that are most likely to come up here are possible concessions over sovereignty and over Chinese representation in Hong Kong. These are after all issues that could be engrossing our attention before the end of 1981.
12. I am grateful to you for giving full weight to my point of view in your discussion with the Secretary of State in November. But since this letter carries the discussion a stage further and since I think it contains some necessary glosses on your letter, I should be grateful if the Secretary of State had a chance to read it.
wher
Yours
вис
PERCY GRADOCK
Cc:
Sir Murray MacLehose GBE KCMG KOVO HONG KONG
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