SECRET
Reference
215
Anfra
Mr Williany on 127.10
HKGD
J2%.
FUTURE OF HONG KONG
1.
219
НИК
HICK 040/enter"
2:18
Play, 17/12
Thank you for your minute of 22 October. I attach Mr Paul's comments. I sympathise with much of these but the difficulty with the course he proposes is that, as in 1979, it obliges the Chinese to take a position. I am not certain that they want to be put in that corner. My own views therefore are as follows.
2. I think that Mr Rushford's proposals are moving in the right direction. I agree with Mr Clift that we shall not be able to deal with the matter unilaterally. But, if I recall correctly, the Chinese have (a) indicated that since the legal problem is ours it is for us to propose a solution (I think Gu Mu took this line with Sir P Haddon-Cave, and Liang Geng certainly did so with me) but they have also said (b) that the question is one for negotiations in due course. It seems to me quite possible that we could therefore take some ostensively unilateral action which could in due course be followed up by negotiations. The unilateral action would however have to be couched in terms acceptable to the Chinese.
3. Looked at from the Chinese angle there seem to me broadly two possible reactions to Mr Rushford's proposals. They could either breathe a sigh of relief that we had somehow been able to magic 1997 away;
or, more likely, they could consider that we were perpetuating and extending the inequities of the Unequal Treaties by unilaterally proclaiming 1997 immaterial. It would be very difficult for them politically to acquiesce in this. What they probably need from us in due course is some 'equal' negotiation which they can present as overruling the 'unequal' nature of earlier negotiations. But is is not at all clear at what stage they will
be ready for such negotiations.
4.
It may therefore be necessary for us to make some public statements beforehand roughly on the lines proposed by Mr Rushford but phrased in a way more acceptable to their view of Hong Kong's status. We should probably need to convey (more explicitly than Mr Rushford's statement does) the message that while Hong Kong as a whole is indivisible HMG holds all of it, including the Crown Colony portion, only on sufferance. This would be, in other words, virtually a unilateral renunciation of sovereignty over those parts currently regarded as held in perpetuity. This message is implicit in Mr Rushford's proposals but needs I think to be made considerably more specific if it is to have any chance of being accepted by the Chinese. I recognise that there are almost certainly drawbacks for us in such a course and these will have to be examined in more detail. I imagine that there are legal complications including those affecting nationality; I also imagine that any statement effectively putting Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula into the category of leased rather than sovereign territory could run the risk of arousing anxiety in Hong Kong. (But I suppose that the latter risk would be acceptable if public opinion in the territory saw the statement, as a whole, as reassuring on the more immediate question of the future of New Territories).
34/ get
6.4
CODE 18-77
SS 8/78
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