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40 YEARS UNDER FOI EXEMPTION No.
no fixed period and that ultimately, preferably after due notice, Chinese responsibility would be substituted,
although the special position envisaged for Hong Kong would be preserved,
27 (1)_____.
We should at the same time be prepared to concede to the Chinese special transport, warehousing and if necessary financial arrangements. We should also accept, if necessary, an Official Chinese Representative provided his functions were defined.
20.
While these might be the elements of an arrangement acceptable to Hong Kong, it might seem more appropriate to the Chinese to present it as a package of measures to ensure closer and longer term economic co-operation and enhanced prosperity for Hong Kong, for which the way had been cleared by the elimination of the Unequal Treaties.
21.
I also suggest we would be prudent to attempt to divert the Chinese from their current ideas, not by asserting the necessity for British administration to continue, but by permitting this to emerge through analysis of how, in present circumstances, to maintain the prosperity of Hong Kong as an international centre of commerce and finance, and as a free port. We may purport to do so
as adapted to the Hong Kong situation in which a major difference results from the existence of U.K. responsibility and its significance as an element in confidence. We can do this both through the Hong Kong businessmen who have access to the Chinese leaders, and also, informally, through our official contacts in Hong Kong, London and Peking. I think it would be imprudent to become involved in negotiations until we were satisfied that the necessity for the time being of some form of continuing British administration and of the consequent legal backing for it, had sunk in.
22.
So far as reactions in Hong Kong are concerned, the essential element would be obliteration of the
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