Ep SECRET
178
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
布政司署
港下亞
畢道
* OUR REF: TSX 1/78
來函檔號 YouR REF:
oyol
M.
PERSONAL AKK OYO
03 AUG 1981
RD Clift Esq
Hong Kong & General Department FCO
TIN SHUI WAI
27 July, 1981
I think FED mujut
Me Quad I Mr. Friar
Dove
wish
18 see but wd. leave it to their advice as
to whether Pething shalo be sent
Departments Worful. Pl. consider
arrying mine)
copies.
43117181
msgorkel (with
оздобил
30
167
Thank you for your letter of 13 July about
the Exco Memorandum on Tin Shui Wai.
2.
I agree that the statement in para 56 about China Resources being motivated "entirely by commercial rather than political reasons" looks rather stark. An unnecessary and unbureaucratic adverb. Nevertheless, I think all the evidence suggests that the profit motive was dominant in their minds. At an early stage we thought that this was not so. But, as you know, we were wrong, or misled, about the possibility that they were seeing this as a way of dealing with the problem of the future. Information over the last few months, particularly from secret reports, shows that the political side of the house (NCNA and, with less strong evidence, the Hong Kong/Macau Office in Peking) were not consulted in any detail about the deal. Also that they were extremely annoyed at China Resources for getting themselves involved both in such a big deal and in the political shenanigans which accompanied it.
3.
On your other point, the reaction of China Resources to the Exco decision on partial approval, we cannot yet be sure. Before the Exco paper was considered, and coincidentally, David Akers-Jones (Secretary for the New Territories) had a meeting with China Resources during which the former explained the difficulty of fitting a project of the proposed size into Hong Kong's planning strategy for that area and raised the question of scaling down the development in such a way that it would be viable from the point of view of both the developers and the government. China Resources said they were willing to come to an agreement with the government about the size of the project. But there was of course no substantive
/contd...
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