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to the Chinese; perhaps about the end of this year
or early in the New Year).
3.
Apart from the handling of the paper, we shall
1
need to develop over the next few months a clear idea
of what the Prime Minister might say to Chinese leaders While we must accept that
aecepting that very probably we would not by then have
the
тобу
reached 2 2 stage at which it would be appropriate to
pursuan
the options in the paper
paper
We must accept
-Mas. Thatches that it will in any case be necessary for her to
say something on the subject and the Chinese will need
to be alerted to this, say in June or July in order
to give them time to think things through. It would
be very helpful to have Percy's and your views in due
course on the substance of the approach which the
jo
We should also cononder how to Prime Minister might make and in particular how we
minimise the risk of heightened expectations of
her visit followed by a fairly deadpan Chinese response
?
leading to damaged confidence in Hong Kong.
4.
In the longer term we would also be grateful
if
both of you could fill out the ideas in the
latter part of the paper on the tactical way in
which we might approach the Chinese if confidence in
Hong Kong did begin to slide. We are of course, very,
conscious that we cannot predict how the situation
will look, much less how the Chinese might react
at the time to any of the proposals we have aired.
Ir
Indeed it is quite likely that we would end up
with a result very different from any of those which
But in any case we
we have considered. But this does mean that we have
get to be very careful to strike a balance between
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/going