SECRET
Mick 040!!
16 DEC 1961
Sir E Youde
cc PS/PUS
Minute
Mr Donald
13/12
Mr Elliott FED
Mr Rushford, Legal Advisers
DEJK
INDSX
Mr Mallaby, Planning Staff
146
255 12
FUTURE OF HONG KONG
PROBLEM
birken
86014/12
(92
See Hkkoyol, 1982 никофорі
see GUSSA
1. To consider contingency plans for the medium and long-term future
275
and tactics for the proposed visit to China and Hong Kong by the 284
Prime Minister in 1982.
RECOMMENDATION
See Hien 040/1 237 +248
ник
19/2
2.
I recommend that:
A
B
a) Ministers should endorse the attached draft contingency paper;
b) the Secretary of State should write to the Prime Minister as in
the attached draft.
FED and the departmental Legal Adviser agree. SED and SAmD have been
consulted on paragraph 12. The Governor of Hong Kong and HM Ambassador,
Peking, have contributed to the papers.
BACKGROUND AND ARGUMENT
3. The Lease of the New Territories ends in 1997.
begin to affect investment confidence in Hong Kong.
This will soon
Unless the future
is clarified, this will happen by 1985 at the latest, perhaps sooner.
4. Chinese and British views. The Chinese claim that all the treaties
affecting Hong Kong are 'unequal'. But they have not formally abrogated
them. They are deliberately equivocal about the significance to them
of 1997. On the British side, the legal position is clear cut. Unless
new powers are taken, the Governor's right to administer the New
Territories ceases in 1997. In British law there is a distinction
SECRET
/between